Fri 5/29: Afternoon/Evening Tournament near Chicago-O'Hare

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Fri 5/29: Afternoon/Evening Tournament near Chicago-O'Hare

Post by pblessman »

The Fourth Annual Midwest Championship has been moved to Friday, May 29, 2009 (the day before the Preliminary Rounds of the NAQT National Championship). The Midwest Championship will be held at the Sheraton Suites, Elk Grove Village, approximately 9 miles from the NAQT tournament site. This is the hotel our teams (Culver A and B) are staying in. We have four suites reserved for the tournament and will use our suites as competition rooms. This means that the competition is limited to eight teams. We will give preference to teams from the midwest , but will consider other teams as well if the field does not fill with midwest teams. Teams will play seven games.

The fee structure is as follows:

Registration fee: $90 per team

Qualified Reader discount: -$40 (we will play timed rounds- you should be able to get through 20 NAQT questions in two 9-minute halves while being comprehensible)

We will play a full eight team round robin starting at 4:00 PM CDT, so you must be able to get to the hotel before 3:45 PM to play. We will then play four rounds, take a break for dinner at 6:00 PM (we'll order pizza), and then finish up 7-8:30 PM. If there is a tie for first place we will play it off at that point, if not the top team in the round robin will be declared the champion. NAQT registration is open until 10:00 PM, so teams should still be able to swing by the Nationals site and register after the tournament.

Please express interest by e-mail ASAP: blessmp [at] culver [dot] org

Let me know if you have any questions!

Thanks!

Phil
Last edited by pblessman on Thu May 14, 2009 11:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Fri 5/29: Midwest Championship near Chicago-O'Hare

Post by BGSO »

What set will this be using?
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Re: Fri 5/29: Midwest Championship near Chicago-O'Hare

Post by JackGlerum »

DII SCT
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Re: Fri 5/29: Midwest Championship near Chicago-O'Hare

Post by pblessman »

BGSO wrote:What set will this be using?
The tournament will use the NAQT Division II SCT questions. I would say these are intermediate in difficulty between IS and HSNCT level.
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Re: Fri 5/29: Midwest Championship near Chicago-O'Hare

Post by Matthew D »

Hey Phil, how many teams do you have so far?
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Re: Fri 5/29: Midwest Championship near Chicago-O'Hare

Post by pblessman »

I only have Culver A and Culver B so far! :grin: So six slots are still open, but my gut tells me there is going to be considerable interest in this- I am anticipating many teams to start e-mailing and posting over the next few days.
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Re: Fri 5/29: Midwest Championship near Chicago-O'Hare

Post by pblessman »

Hmmm... not to get overly anxious, but I kind of expected a more substantial response by now... I know it's only been up two days, but I haven't had anybody express interest yet (either by e-mail or on the board). I had thought having the opportunity to play real matches on pristine questions the night before Nationals would attract a huge crowd... Are non-Midwest teams holding back due to the Midwest title to the tournament? Are people concerned about the entry fee? (even though it's $50 if you have a reader... that doesn't seem outrageous to me...). Help?
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Re: Fri 5/29: Midwest Championship near Chicago-O'Hare

Post by master15625 »

I don't mean to be sort of pessimistic here, but having this competition, the night before a major tournament, might make people not want to attend. Namely, they may feel that it is important to get a good nights sleep and may see signs of fatigue if they participate in quizbowl the night before and then have to participate in an extremely important tournament the next day may make people tired.

Just my two cents.
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Re: Fri 5/29: Midwest Championship near Chicago-O'Hare

Post by pblessman »

I figured being done by 8:30 PM addressed the fatigue issue, but maybe I misunderestimated the stamina of high schoolers. Would this be a different proposition for DCDS )and others) if we:

A. Started earlier?
B. Played fewer matches?
C. All of the above?
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Re: Fri 5/29: Midwest Championship near Chicago-O'Hare

Post by Matthew D »

well.. I think for my team it would be the midwest championship title but we have talked about it during practice... also the price thing did come up but I guess we can bring it back up again and see
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Re: Fri 5/29: Midwest Championship near Chicago-O'Hare

Post by quizbowllee »

Brindlee Mountain will likely play. Put us down for two teams. I will know definitively tomorrow afternoon.

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Re: Fri 5/29: Midwest Championship near Chicago-O'Hare

Post by Matthew D »

Phil
Are you still thinking about the 4 pm start time on Friday? or going earlier?
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Re: Fri 5/29: Midwest Championship near Chicago-O'Hare

Post by quizbowllee »

We won't be in Chicago until Friday afternoon. If the tournament starts before then, we won't be able to compete. I will talk with the team tomorrow and see if they want to do this or not. I don't want them to get burnt out before HSNCT is over. That is already a pretty stressful weekend.
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Re: Fri 5/29: Midwest Championship near Chicago-O'Hare

Post by pblessman »

I'm going to stick with the 4 PM start time. If people are worried about going too late, I'd rather cut a couple of rounds and finish at 6:30 PM or 7:00 PM (two four team RR, rebracket top two and bottom two for a total of five matches). If we do this, I will reduce the fee by $10 to $80 {-$40 if you bring a reader}). Sorry about the high fee, but this is basically my way of making sure everybody has a reader. At home I can find faculty volunteers to read, but that's not an option here...
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Re: Fri 5/29: Midwest Championship near Chicago-O'Hare

Post by Sir Thopas »

pblessman wrote:I'm going to stick with the 4 PM start time. If people are worried about going too late, I'd rather cut a couple of rounds and finish at 6:30 PM or 7:00 PM (two four team RR, rebracket top two and bottom two for a total of five matches). If we do this, I will reduce the fee by $10 to $80 {-$40 if you bring a reader}). Sorry about the high fee, but this is basically my way of making sure everybody has a reader. At home I can find faculty volunteers to read, but that's not an option here...
$40 for just 5 games is still pretty exorbitant, dude.
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Re: Fri 5/29: Midwest Championship near Chicago-O'Hare

Post by at your pleasure »

If you really need readers, you could send an SOS out. Anyhow, 90 dollars is a lot for a glorified 8-round side event.
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Re: Fri 5/29: Midwest Championship near Chicago-O'Hare

Post by pblessman »

Sir Thopas wrote:$40 for just 5 games is still pretty exorbitant, dude.
NAQT gets $163.00 of the money for providing the questions ($35 flat fee + 8*$16), and I need to make around a 1000 copies so every team can get a full set of questions (16 packets each, which cost $35 when purchased online). I also have to factor in money to be spent on trophies ($50?), and I think it's fair that teams chip in a few bucks ($5?) toward the cost of the rooms they are using (but Culver paid for). So:

NAQT questions: $163.00
Copying (each team gets full set of questions): $ 50.00
Trophies/Awards: $ 50.00
Room share ($5 per team): $ 40.00

TOTAL $303.00

That means if I make my own teams pay for playing in our own tournament, I would be making a $17.00 profit. If I only factor the actual cash flow, six other teams giving me $40 each doesn't even cover my actual cash expenses (questions, copying, and trophies) meaning I am subsidizing this tournament out of my team's budget. So... in summary, I believe $8 per game is fair in this case, but if the cost of the tournament is what is REALLY holding anybody back, please let me know, and I will be happy to cut your fee by $10, if it makes the difference.

If some teams don't bring readers I will pay readers who volunteer to work this event. My standard pay is $5 per game, but my intention is to give readers $30 for five matches or $40 for seven matches to cover the back and forth from the tournament site. I also feed readers at tournaments, and this will be no exception, so this factors in for another $5 or so per volunteer I need to hire. I know my policy on paying readers is not in line with general practice in the quizbowl community, but I feel strongly that paying people for their time is the right thing to do. Other tournament directors are free to run their events differently, but this is my policy at home tournaments as well (with the exception of salaried faculty volunteering for my tournaments- I am not allowed to pay them stipends per school policy).
Last edited by pblessman on Sun May 10, 2009 10:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Fri 5/29: Midwest Championship near Chicago-O'Hare

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

Yeah, which is why this tournament may be a crazy idea.
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Re: Fri 5/29: Midwest Championship near Chicago-O'Hare

Post by at your pleasure »

Yeah, the best thing to do would be to either cut costs somewhere(You could probably cobble together enough laptops for a paperless tournament), run all packets on a two-day basis(8 rounds Friday, 8 rounds Saturday) or call this off and donate the rooms and readers for a worthy quizbowl-related cause(prehaps letting Ted Gioa run the 6 unread rounds of KLEE).
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Re: Fri 5/29: Midwest Championship near Chicago-O'Hare

Post by Sir Thopas »

Really, trophies?
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Re: Fri 5/29: Midwest Championship near Chicago-O'Hare

Post by pblessman »

Anti-Climacus wrote:Yeah, the best thing to do would be to either cut costs somewhere(You could probably cobble together enough laptops for a paperless tournament), run all packets on a two-day basis(8 rounds Friday, 8 rounds Saturday) or call this off and donate the rooms and readers for a worthy quizbowl-related cause(prehaps letting Ted Gioa run the 6 unread rounds of KLEE).
1. I've got plenty of laptops, but I want to provide each school with a full set of the questions, which I can't do electronically as it violoates NAQT distribution policy.

2. Is Walt Whitman interested in participating in this tournament if it's four hours on Friday night (4-8:30 PM) and four hours on Saturday night (7-11 PM)? I highly doubt it, so if you're not interested in doing this, don't suggest it. If you are intersted in doing it, you are officially on- my teams will play, and I am sure we can find four more.

3. Please don't suggest I cancel my tournament. That's insulting. If you don't like the tournament, don't attend.

I have a really hard time understanding how this can be about the money. How can people be this perplexed about $40-$50 on the day before a $595 tournament they are flying to across the country and staying in a $100+ a night hotel room for? If it makes all the difference in the world, I'll run this for $20 a team or even free and just eat the cost, but I just don't get it...

All I am trying to do here is provide teams with an opportunity to play real matches which matter as an opportunity to warm up for Nationals. I've done those scrimmage matches every year I've gone, and I find them less than inspiring. Readers and teams who don't always take it seriously, questions some people have already heard or read, current event questions which are out of date...

So: If you would like to have some real competition on Friday night to get ready for Nationals (because I know my team is rusty after having our last real tournament in March), than please let me know how we can make that happen. If the money is stopping you, let me know what you can pay, and we'll work something out. I hope I can get a good field!
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Re: Fri 5/29: Midwest Championship near Chicago-O'Hare

Post by pblessman »

Well... I''m an optimist, so I will announce that the field is half-full!

Here's a field update:

Brindlee Mountain A
Brindlee Mountain B
Culver A
Culver B

We have four slots still open. Please let me know if you are interested!
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Re: Fri 5/29: Afternoon/Evening Tournament near Chicago-O'Hare

Post by the return of AHAN »

Phil,
If you need a reader, I'm available that night.
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Re: Fri 5/29: Afternoon/Evening Tournament near Chicago-O'Hare

Post by pblessman »

Hmmmm... I have gotten three offers to read, but still only one school interested, meaning the field is still half full. Any others out there thinking about this?
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Re: Fri 5/29: Afternoon/Evening Tournament near Chicago-O'Hare

Post by quizbowllee »

Unfortunately, we probably won't make it to Chicago in time to compete. We were going to try and leave earlier if the tournament field filled, but that looks unlikely. Sorry to back out, but it doesn't look like this tournament is going to happen anyway...
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Re: Fri 5/29: Afternoon/Evening Tournament near Chicago-O'Hare

Post by pblessman »

I am cancelling the tournament due to lack of interest.
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