NHBB Nationals Draws for Bee and Bowl - POSTED

[Great Bustard]

Many thanks to Andrew Feist for the coding that has made this possible. During the actual tournament, these will be updated in real time so that everyone can keep track of the tournament's progress. Here are the links to the respective draws. You can click on the links to see it broken down by groups / school / students, etc.

Varsity Bowl: http://www.historybowl.com/bowl_varsity/start.php

JV Bowl: http://www.historybowl.com/bowl_jv/start.php

Varsity Bee: http://hs.historybee.com/bee_varsity/

JV Bee: http://hs.historybee.com/bee_jv/


We hope to have the US Geography Olympiad, the Consolation Bee, and the Sports and Entertainment Bee draws available shortly. For those who care, here's how each draw was compiled:
1. Varsity Bowl: We have 132 teams. All were ranked 1-132. The rankings for the top teams correspond to the Madden Ranking numbers on historybowl.com. They were then broken up into 22 prelim groups (these are known by numbers this year - the number of each group corresponds to the overall tournament seed of the #1 ranked team in the group). The draw was then "snaked" so that basically, the #22 and #23 seeds, the #21 and 24 seeds, and so on back until all the #2 seeds in a group were filled out, were in the same group. This was then repeated for the 3rd and 4th ranked teams in a group, and the 5th and 6th. Thus the tournament #1 seed is in the same group with the weakest 2 seed, the strongest 3 seed, the weakest 4 seed, the strongest 5 seed, and the weakest 6th seed.

Then, a number of minor adjustments were made to compensate for the following:
-In the morning rounds, teams should not be playing teams from their home region insofar as that is possible, and certainly not another team from their same school.
-Some teams requested/required placement at the hotel throughout the day. This only impacted the possible consolation draw though. There are two morning groups (namely Executive 6 and Executive 7) whose 12 teams are all guaranteed to play afternoon matches in a bracket of 6 teams at the hotel. 2 of these matches will by necessity be repeat matches, but these are consolation matches anyway, so that's fine).
-In a few cases, if coaches had signed up to read and we needed them in a particular location, their team may have been moved very slightly in the draw. This did not happen though for any of the Madden Ranked teams and was only done in a statistically insignificant way (i.e. whether the 63rd ranked team is in all honesty better than the 64th ranked team, I really can't say, nor can anyone).

After this, the 22 groups were broken down into 3 supergroups (Executive, Legislative, and Judicial) by the process of taking the #1 seed be in an Executive Group, the #2 overall seed be in a Legislative group, the #3 seed be in a Judicial group, the #4 seed ALSO be from a Judicial group, #5 seed from Legislative, etc.) Each supergroup by necessity must have 36 teams minimum to avoid repeat matches among the upper bracket teams in the afternoon. Executive and Legislative each have 8 feeder groups, hence 48 teams, while Judicial has 36 (if we had 2 more groups, they would have been the Judicial groups with the #12 and #13 seeded teams as their #1 seed, if you follow the principle at work here). In the afternoon matches (the Varsity afternoon groups are names of colors), each of the 11 Varsity upper bracket groups will have 2 #1 ranked teams from the morning groups, 2 #2 ranked teams from the morning groups, and 2 #3 ranked teams from the morning groups. We have controlled it such that if all of the rankings followed the seeds, then the #1 seed (Bellarmine A) would face the lowest #1 seed in an Executive morning group (i.e. #22 Menifee County). Likewise the #2 seed (LASA) would, if they win their morning group, find themselves in an afternoon group with the #21 seed overall if that team, Glasgow, also wins.
This same matching principle also works for the 2 teams in an afternoon bracket who finished their morning group in second place, and the 2 who finished in third place. Each team in an afternoon bracket, though, will have come from a different morning group.

2. JV Bowl: Basically done on the same principles as the Varsity Bowl, except that everyone is playing their games at a site in Washington, DC with the exception of the one bracket, Cyrus the Great (JV morning groups are named for conquerors) that's at the hotel. All JV teams feed into afternoon hotel brackets of 6 teams (5 matches), whether Upper bracket or Consolation bracket.
There are 66 JV teams, so 11 brackets. There is only 1 JV Supergroup, though (it doesn't have a specific name, beyond "JV"). If we took only the top 3 teams from each JV morning bracket, then there would be 33 teams - which leaves 3 slots missing. Because of this, the top 3 JV teams who finish in 4th place in their morning groups (ranked first by record, then by points) will then be slotted into the Upper Bracket matches. These should be ready by the time the teams return to the hotel from their matches at sites. 4th place JV teams in the morning matches will need to come to the stat room to see if they have made it. JV afternoon brackets are named for famous Hungarians and Magyarphiles.

3. Varsity Bee: Currently at 181 players - there may be some movement with adds or drops. The top 64 students only were seeded, and were slotted into one of four divisions (Frey, Arildsen, Yu, and Roach) following the snake principle. These seeds are not public. Each division was then allotted 8 rooms at the hotel. During each of the six prelim rounds, there will be precisely 1 student seeded 1-32 in any of the 32 rooms, and 1 student seeded 33-64. Generally speaking, the students in the middle are more likely to play each other in more matches (i.e. it's more likely for the 32 and 33rd seeded players to find themselves against each other, which indeed happens) than for the 33rd and 1st ranked players to play each other, which does not.
Students who did not get a seed were randomly assigned rooms within their division for the six matches. In most matches, there will be 6 to a room, in a few cases, there will be 5 students, but even in these rooms, there will always be 1 student seeded 1-32, and 1 student seeded 33-64. Seeds were not controlled for any other factors, like school, coaches reading, etc.

4. JV Bee: Currently at 149 players - there may be some movement. Same basic principle as Varsity Bee, but with 24 rooms, and thus seeds going 1-48. The majority of rooms will have 6 players in a match, a few will have 7, but again, always 1 student ranked 1-24, and 1 ranked 24-48 in a room per match. The JV divisions are named for barbarian tribes (Huns, Avars, and Vandals), and as in the Varsity, students will only compete against students in their division during the prelims.
In both Varsity and JV, the 8 rooms in a Bee division are grouped as close as possible in the hotel to each other to ensure ease of movement. Hint: take the stairs at all times.

Tournament progression, Bowl: The morning > afternoon for both Varsity and JV is described above. For the afternoon > playoff rounds, teams are given their playoff ranking based first on where they finished in their afternoon group. Then all the #1 teams are ranked by record. Then all the #1 teams are ranked by points. So by all means, run up the score in the afternoon matches. With 11 afternoon Varsity brackets, the 11 #1 teams will be playoff seeds 1-11. The 11 #2 afternoon teams will be playoff seeds 12-22. The top 10 of 11 #3 afternoon teams will be playoff seeds 23-33. Somebody will be the 1 unlucky team that finishes 3rd in an afternoon bracket and doesn't make the playoffs. For playoff seeding purposes, supergroup affiliation is irrelevant - teams are ranked across all supergroups.
The same is basically true for the JV, except there will be 36 JV afternoon Upper bracket teams, and the top 16 will make the playoffs.
The playoffs for both Varsity and JV are seeded in the usual 1-32, 2-31 (or 1-16, 2-15, etc.) way. Playoffs are (sadly, but of necessity, due to time constraints) single elim, though this year, playoff matches will have 10 tossups each in the 1st, 2nd, and 4th quarters. Prelim matches this year only have 8 in each of the three quarters (including the first - this is different from the 10 first quarter tossups at Regionals). The first three playoff rounds in each division will be played Saturday evening, with the JV Championships, the Varsity Semifinals, and the Varsity Championships taking place after lunch on Sunday.

Tournament progression, Bee: The top 32 Varsity, and the top 20 JV players (ranked by total prelim points, and ranked overall, irrespective of division) will advance to the playoffs. The playoffs will have 3 stages for both Varsity and JV. The first two stages are set rounds with 30 questions each. There will be 4 Varsity rooms of 8 players, and 2 JV rooms of 10 players. We'll take the top 3 in each Varsity and top 4 in each JV room into the next stage. If someone gets 8 points in a Varsity or 7 points in a JV room, they're in and they put their buzzer down.
In the second stage, same deal, but we only take the top 2 in each of the two Varsity and 1 JV room. By mathematical necessity, if someone hits 11 points in Round 2, they're done and automatically in the final. The Varsity Championship final features 4 students - the JV Championship final features 2. Both are first to 12 points, irrespective of # how many questions it takes.

[Great Bustard]

One final point - the URLs along with the information in this post, will be forwarded to teams within the next few hours, and the URLs will also be available through links online at historybowl.com and hs.historybee.com within a day or two as well.

[Sniper, No Sniping!]

Shouldn't group 20's #2 seed be Daviess County (since they are #25), or is this a special case where they are transposed with Ranney A (#26) because the #1 seed in group 20, Corbin, also happens to be from Kentucky?

[Great Bustard]

Shouldn't group 20's #2 seed be Daviess County (since they are #25), or is this a special case where they are transposed with Ranney A (#26) because the #1 seed in group 20, Corbin, also happens to be from Kentucky?

Good catch, and yes, that's exactly what happened. I believe this was the only case where I moved a team who was ranked out of the bracket they otherwise they would have been in. Again, beyond the top 10 teams or so, the difference of 1 slot is statistically insignificant, so I don't think this puts one team or another at a disadvantage.

[EShipp]

When are the rankings for the bee going to be posted?

[Great Bustard]

Should have this by early next week (along with Bowl Consolation results and Final Standings for Upper Bracket teams), though you can deduce your final ranking off the Bee poster picture Jon Pinyan added to the main NHBB Nationals thread.

[jonpin]

By this, do you mean the final standings? If so, I've compiled them and attached them here. If there are any misspellings in name or school, I blame that schmuck with the illegible handwriting who made the poster.
Basically, the method of ranking was to, at all stages, rank based on the latest round reached and go to earlier rounds in order in case of tie.