UMR Fall Tournament (12/1/07) at U. of Missouri - Rolla

[Deckard Cain]

The University of Missouri-Rolla Academic Competition Organization would like to invite you to the 3rd Annual UMR Fall Invitational Tournament, to be held on our scenic campus in Rolla, Missouri on December 1, 2007.

Format:

This tournament will be run in tossup-bonus format. Games consist of twenty tossups worth ten points each, and if answered correctly are followed by non-rebounding bonuses worth up to thirty points. The questions will be written by members of the UMR Academic Competition Organization, as they have been for past tournaments.

At the moment, we are limiting the field to twenty-four schools and one team per school.

We will be including powers and negs in this tournament. A “powerâ€

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

Like, the tournament already is well over half full...

[Deckard Cain]

Our current field stands at 19 teams:

Belle
College Heights
Cuba
Elsberry
Eureka
Festus
Fort Zumwalt West
Hancock
Helias
North Kansas City
Ozark
Pilot Grove
Richland
Rockwood Summit
Saint Clair
Savannah
Weaubleau
West Plains
Wright City

[Jeremy Gibbs Lemma]

Weaubleau

I thought you guys were joking about that one :-P

[Deckard Cain]

The field above has been updated. We are happy to announce that we are now PACE affiliated. Also, registration will be closing on November 17, or when we reach or field cap of 24, whichever comes first.

[STPickrell]

Weaubleau

I thought you guys were joking about that one :-P

I believe I learned from the Missouri board that it is pronounced Wee-bloh.

[Deckard Cain]

Congratulations to Savannah, who defeated North Kansas City in a thrilling final to win the UMR Fall Tournament. Helias defeated Cuba for third place.

Results:

Pool Play
Playoff Bracket
Combined Stats

[AndyShootsAndyScores]

So, not to be the cause of any flaming, but why did NKC lose? They had everyone, including Savannah, blown out by a long shot.

Sounds like something BMHS would do. Play well the whole day, right up until the time it matters most.

[Gautam]

what questions were used at this tournament?

[dtaylor4]

The questions will be written by members of the UMR Academic Competition Organization, as they have been for past tournaments.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

Here are some quotes from my response to the tournament on the Missouri board that I guess are applicable to why NKC lost.

Math - a lot of the math was, even to me, readily apparent that it was very inappropriate for a high school tournament, especially considering the time limits. I think this even more can apply to the science calculations too. This has been a frequent problem with Rolla sets, and you guys really, really, really need to figure out a way to ease it down, even if it means finding an outside source to do this stuff. Grant on our team is a robot at math and he was having real problems getting the stuff being asked done in time.

Distribution - The distribution seemed very odd throughout the day. I am very curious what the distribution of the games were, because I am pretty sure it was at least 1/1 sports, at least 1/1 other trash, and at least 2/2 calculation, many of which were basically unanswerable. I don't remember there being enough arts, RMP, geography, and social science in the set, and those could potentially be there if the trash were cut to 1/1 (which I think should be the amount of trash in any tournament that isn't hybrid or specifically trash).

Pyramidality - This is a response of a player used to ACF questions, so this doesn't really apply to anyone but the top teams, but I and people who have heard the recordings thought lots of the questions had giveaway clues way way way too early, for instance that Thor had a hammer or that The Tin Drum is part of a Trilogy with Cat and Mouse and Dog Years, or that Pershing led the American Expeditionary Force. This happened a lot, and sometimes it was in the leadins, or other times it was later but still too early. While I understand that a lot of that won't be a problem to many of the teams there, it still can't hurt to try and structure the clues more properly. This produced difficulty cliffs, and when I have the set I will go through them more.

Bonuses - A lot of the bonuses were lacking in differentiation between parts. What I mean is that a lot of times they had 2 or 3 parts that were about the same difficulty. This produced a lot of really easy 30s or hard 10s. Also, this is my personal preference, but I and many others think that bonuses should be 3 parts of 10 points each where one part is easy, one part is medium, and one part is hard so that teams are rewarded based on how deep their knowledge is more than how broad it is.

The final game - Given that it's the final game I don't think it would have been out of line at all to write the packet harder, longer, and make it more pyramidal. I mean, I counted at least 5 buzzer races we lost, and that doesn't include those Savannah may have lost. Also, I think it isn't inappropriate to modify the distribution, because it's not a good idea to have that kind of game include 3/2 trash at least. Although It's not really a good idea to have that anyway. On the flip side, I can point to a number of other solid final packets that would have been very appropriate for a game between NKC and Savannah, teams that have enough mastery of the canon to be buzzer racing a lot of the time on questions this easy. Also, related to that I hope Savannah gets more into college questions because from what I saw they will be doing better at nationals this year then they did last year, and that could really help them do even better.

And Matt announced the distribution, which worked against us I think -

This was the final distribution we used:

Science 6/6
Biology 2/2
Chemistry 1.5/1.5 *
Physics .5/.5 *
Math 2/2
History 6/6
American before 1865 1/1
American after 1865 1/1
World before 1900 1/1
World after 1900 1/1
Geography 1/1
Current Events 1/1
Arts 6/6
American Lit 2/2
Non-American Lit 2/2
Art 1/1
Music 1/1
General 4/3
Sports 1/1
Non-sports trash 1/1
General knowledge 1/0
Religion/philosophy/myth 1/1

* Odd-numbered rounds had 1/0 physics and 1/2 chemistry; even-numbered rounds had 0/1 physics and 2/1 chemistry.

Also, there was a problem where I buzzed in reflexively off of hearing that something was founded at a shipyard with the answer solidarity all ready to go, but the moderator sounded like he'd said London (my teammates also thought that, as did our coach), so I didn't answer it since I figured I was wrong. It turns out he said Lenin instead, so I would have been right, powered it, and we would have won. Also hurting us was the fact that there was no classical music tossup and that the "classical music" bonus was about scores to films, with the answers being "Jaws, Fiddler on the Roof," and "Star Wars" along with the preexisting 2/2 trash elsewhere. If you want a recording and a tossup by tossup breakdown I have the final recorded, and I sent it to Mike Bentley to mess with for his podcast.

[AndyShootsAndyScores]

The fact that Pershing commanded the AEF was the first thing I learned about him in middle school. I figured that something had been changed for the finals, considering you scored over 400 PPG up until the semis and finals.

Also, did you say nothing on the Solidarity question? If so, you really had nothing to lose with saying Solidarity, regardless of what the mod said.