ANNOUNCEMENT: Penn Bowl 2017 (10/21/17)

[Hobbie Klivian]

I am pleased to announce Penn Bowl 2017 (Penn Bowl XXVI) for the Fall semester of 2017. We plan to run this tournament at the main site on October 21st.

QUESTIONS

This tournament will be written by writers from Penn and following collaborators: Athena Kern, Ankit Aggarwal, Nathan Weiser, Sam Rombro, Ankit Aggarwal, and Samir Khan. The tournament will be edited by a team of editors consisting of Eric Mukherjee, Jordan Brownstein, Jason Zhou, Chris Chiego, and others. Eric Mukherjee will be head-editing. There will be 15 packets of power-marked questions not longer than 8 lines (including bolding for power). The target difficulty is roughly the same as past Penn Bowls.

The distribution we are using is as follows:
4/4 Literature (1/1 American, 1/1 British, 1/1 European, 1/1 World & Other)
4/4 History (1/1 American, 1/1 Continental European, 1/1 British+Classics, 1/1 World)
4/4 Science (1/1 Biology, 1/1 Chemistry, 1/1 Physics, 1/1 Math and Other)
3/3 Arts
3/3 RMP
1/1 SS
1/1 Geography, CE, and Trash

Each packet will also have a tiebreaker tossup from literature, history, or science.

HOSTING

We are looking for mirrors in all regions. The mirror fee will be $40 per team. All mirrors of this tournament should aim to run on either October 21st or 28th, pending a confirmation of these dates.
At the main site, we will use the following fee structure:
Base fee: $120 per team
Working buzzer discount: $5 each
Approved moderator discount: $15 each
Travel discount: $10 (more than 200 miles one way according to Google maps)

If you have any questions, please contact pennquizbowl@gmail.com.

METHOD OF PAYMENT (borrowed from Cody Voight)

All teams must pay by the day of the tournament. We prefer to accept payment in person right before the tournament starts, but we will accept checks by mail ahead of time if your procedures require it. Teams who do not pay by the day of the tournament will be charged a $25 penalty and will have two weeks to pay their total amount before we start mailing letters to your school administration about it.

We can accept cash, personal checks, or checks from school, school district, or quizbowl club funds. We have no ability to process purchase orders or credit cards, but we will accept Paypal and Venmo. Bringing forms of payment outside of the three listed will be considered nonpayment and subject you to the $25 late payment penalty.

All checks must be made out to either "JinAh Kim" or "Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania" (must be exact wording). If you bring a check not made out to either "JinAh Kim" or "Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania" and have no other method of paying for the tournament, you will be subject to the $25 late payment penalty. If you require a pre-tournament invoice or W9 in order to have a check cut, let us know early enough for your school to process the payment. We can generally send you an invoice the same day.

MIRRORS

Please contact pennquizbowl@gmail.com if you're interested in hosting a mirror or have any other inquiries.

Current mirrors:
Upper Midwest: University of Chicago, 10/28 (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=20360)
Lower Midwest: University of Missouri-Columbia
South Atlantic: UGA, 10/21 (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=20416)
SoCal: UC Irvine, 11/18
NorCal: Stanford, 10/21 (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=20296)
Northeast: Harvard, 10/28 (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=20433)
Canada: Queen's University, 10/21 (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=20435)
Florida: New College, 10/28 (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=20425)
UK: Cambridge, 10/14
Minnesota: UMN, 10/21 (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=20342)
South: Rice, 10/28 (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=20504)
Lower Mid-Atlantic: UNC, 10/28 (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=20519)

Current field (TEAMS/BUZZERS/STAFFERS): 31/34 Teams
Penn State (2/1/0)
Lehigh Valley (1/1/0)
Villanova (1/0/0)
NYU (3/1/0)
High Tech (2/3/0)
JHU (3/2/0)
Rutgers (1/0/0)
Maryland (3/1/3)
Virginia (2/4/0)
Princeton (1/1/0)
Cornell (2/3/0)
GVHS (1/0/0)
Delaware (1/2/0)
Gettysburg (1/1/0)
Columbia (3/3/0)
CCIU (1/0/0)
Pitt (2/2/0)
"Miller Indaices" (1/0/0)

[armitage]

Any thoughts on running an open playtest mirror like EFT and EMT?

[Hobbie Klivian]

Any thoughts on running an open playtest mirror like EFT and EMT?

This is a possibility; if it happens, it will likely be held a week before for a relatively small field. More details will be announced in the future.

[Antrobus63]

Any chance of moving your date? I was looking for college tournaments we (LVA) might attend--hadn't seen Penn Bowl come up in the NJ-NY tournament dates & Pennsylvania doesn't have a post yet--and saw your tournament date under the DC Metro thread. We at LVA are hosting our tournament on that date, are locked in because of other HS tournament and SAT test dates. We did put it up on GPQB before May 21, I believe, but there's no reason you would have checked that date. Also, I admit that not that many high school teams are going to come to Penn Bowl this year, but we were hoping to attract some elite HS teams from the Northeast, a few of whom attended PB 2016--Great Valley, High Tech, Ithaca. Also, we were hoping to attend Penn Bowl 2017 ourselves. So, while I don't really expect you to move your date, I just thought I'd ask if it's a possibility.

[Hobbie Klivian]

Any chance of moving your date? I was looking for college tournaments we (LVA) might attend--hadn't seen Penn Bowl come up in the NJ-NY tournament dates & Pennsylvania doesn't have a post yet--and saw your tournament date under the DC Metro thread. We at LVA are hosting our tournament on that date, are locked in because of other HS tournament and SAT test dates. We did put it up on GPQB before May 21, I believe, but there's no reason you would have checked that date. Also, I admit that not that many high school teams are going to come to Penn Bowl this year, but we were hoping to attract some elite HS teams from the Northeast, a few of whom attended PB 2016--Great Valley, High Tech, Ithaca. Also, we were hoping to attend Penn Bowl 2017 ourselves. So, while I don't really expect you to move your date, I just thought I'd ask if it's a possibility.

Sorry, it would be quite difficult for us to change the date of the main site at this point; since it appears that your tournament will be mainly run on a IS-A set, I would guess that the overlap in interested teams would be minimal. I hope that your team and other HS teams inconvenienced by the date conflict will still get a chance to play Penn Bowl through other nearby mirrors or an online mirror.

[Ewan MacAulay]

Any thoughts on running an open playtest mirror like EFT and EMT?

This is a possibility; if it happens, it will likely be held a week before for a relatively small field. More details will be announced in the future.

Would it be possible to make the UK mirror this early test mirror? Cambridge would prefer to host this on either the 7th or the 14th of October.

[Hobbie Klivian]

We are still looking for mirror sites; if you're interested in serving as the mirror for your region, please contact us at pennquizbowl@gmail.com.

[Charbroil]

Any thoughts on running an open playtest mirror like EFT and EMT?

This is a possibility; if it happens, it will likely be held a week before for a relatively small field. More details will be announced in the future.

Any updated news on this?

[Hobbie Klivian]

Since most EFT mirrors are happening on the same day as our proposed online mirror, we will unfortunately not hold an online playtest barring significant interest on a different date (like Sunday 10/15). The UK mirror will serve as a playtest of the set.

EDIT: A separate online mirror may be held in the future after the main site.

[Periplus of the Erythraean Sea]

If the editors are okay with this - would anybody else be interested in a Skype mirror of this tournament? I'd certainly like to take a crack at it, given its excellent editing squad and all. Hypothetically the mods wouldn't need to be Penn people putting their time in, either - we set team entry fees equal to mirror fees, add on a per-team fee to pay the mods (maybe $20 or so) and just have all the entry fees going to the mirror fees and compensating a few readers for putting their day in.

[The Abydos Helicopter]

Would be interested in this.

[The Billiards Fool]

Any chance we can get a field update? (it would make planning easier for us). Thanks!

[Mike Bentley]

If the editors are okay with this - would anybody else be interested in a Skype mirror of this tournament? I'd certainly like to take a crack at it, given its excellent editing squad and all. Hypothetically the mods wouldn't need to be Penn people putting their time in, either - we set team entry fees equal to mirror fees, add on a per-team fee to pay the mods (maybe $20 or so) and just have all the entry fees going to the mirror fees and compensating a few readers for putting their day in.

I enjoy Skype tournaments.

[Hobbie Klivian]

The field has been updated. I've added a tentative field cap of 26 teams based on current staff count, but we will almost certainly be able to expand in the future. If you're interested in attending, please get your registrations in soon!

As for the Skype tournament, we're still working out the details; due to the aforementioned overlap with EFT mirrors on the weekend of the 14th, it would likely have to be after the main site on 21st. For now, if you're interested, please fill out the form below.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

[bmccauley]

Great Valley had reached out that they plan to bring one team. Thanks!

[Periplus of the Erythraean Sea]

(mods, please feel free to separate the Skype mirror discussion)

This skype mirror field is looking potentially really, really strong. Would people be open to having a gentleman's agreement of sorts not to aggregate into 24ppb superteams? I think it'd be awesome to have a mirror where most of the matches are fairly close.

[Hobbie Klivian]

The field of the main site has been expanded to 34 teams; we still have some space, so please get your last minute registrations in!

Also, could an admin create a private forum for this set?

[Hobbie Klivian]

Prelim: http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournament ... s/prelims/
Playoffs: http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournament ... /playoffs/

[jacke]

Prelim stats can be found here: http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournament ... s/prelims/

I know you guys don't have your stats done yet, but my name is erroneously listed as Edmonton (this was almost assuredly our fault). The correct spelling is "Edmondson." Can you guys change this by any chance?

[Hobbie Klivian]

Congratulations to Columbia A, who defeated Virginia A in two games of disadvantaged finals!

I would like to thank all the teams who came out and competed today. Also, a huge thanks to all the Penn staffers and external staffers (Ophir, Naveed, Emma, Alex, Jackie, Everett) who helped the tournament run as smoothly as possible. Full stats will be uploaded by tomorrow afternoon.

EDIT: Full stats are now uploaded except the final round between Penn State B and Maryland C, whose scoresheet I seem to have misplaced. Please PM me for any stat corrections.
Also, the private discussion forum is now live; please request to join from usergroup tab if you want to provide feedback on the questions