sports! 2021 at the University of Waterloo

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Signac Attack
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sports! 2021 at the University of Waterloo

Post by Signac Attack »

I'm happy to announce that the University of Waterloo will be hosting an online playing of its house-written sports! set on August 1st, 2021

The tournament's opening meeting will start at 9:45 and games will start at 10:00 AM ET. More information about the set being played can be found here

The event plans to be played in pairs and include 7 packets of power-marked tossups and bonuses. Players can use this form to register. Players can sign up as free agents but are asked to attempt looking for a teammate before doing so. The tournament is open. However, preferences will be given to players on the Canadian circuit and those who have previously expressed interest in the tournament.

The field cap, based on our current staffing capabilities, is 8 teams. I have listed the teams in the order that they have signed up. The cap can be expanded subject to any external staffers we receive. The deadline to sign up is July 26th.

The cost is $20 CAD per team. If you have any questions about the mirror, do not hesitate to contact me at uwquizbowl [at] clubs [dot] wusa [dot] ca with the subject "sports!".

A list of confirmed teams will be updated periodically below. Last Updated July 22nd.
Ryan and Angus
Pierre-Luc...et Dubois (Dennis and Joe)
Paul
Alex and Kevin
Russell and Nabhaan
Parth and Ian
Hannah + 1
Daniel and Marcus
Zach Bernstein
University of Waterloo 2022
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cruzeiro
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Re: sports! 2021 at the University of Waterloo

Post by cruzeiro »

This was very good.

It was hard (as the stats bear out; they're posted) and probably a bit harder than you intended - which I think reflects the fact that as a set, it seemed like you took the philosophy that if you didn't know anything about a particular sport or area of the distribution, you were going to suffer (plenty of bagels on stuff that people don't know much about, which honestly, I'm fine with - if you don't know anything, take your zero, although this obviously came disproportionately in some parts of the distribution compared to others).

At the same time, you did a good job of rewarding knowledge (see: everyone who played got multiple powers; anecdotally, people who I know to be particularly interested in certain sports got plenty of early buzzes in those categories, including in "minor" Non-Big 5 sports that don't typically appear in "normal" quizbowl sets). I think you did a good job of rewarding deep knowledge in stuff that's not normally asked about and having enough of a gradient to distinguish between people's levels of interest/engagement in each sport. Because a lot of your distribution trod new ground that most people will never touch, getting that right is a good indicator that you did a very good job overall.

There were, of course, a couple things that were maybe a bit too deep cuts (Zach, you talked about maybe putting together detailed stats from your scoresheets that will probably bear that out, and I'm sure anecdotally you have some ideas of what I mean), a bit of rough around the edges for some answer lines (easily fixable, although annoying in the moment), but honestly, that comes with the territory of writing a set & being new to writing. It's to be expected and doesn't take away from the work that you did.

Overall: would definitely recommend if you like sports, but know ahead of time that if your team has knowledge gaps, you're going to suffer some from those.
Dennis Beeby
Waterloo Collegiate Institute, 2011
University of Ottawa, 2016
Queen's University, 2017, 2019
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Cheynem
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Re: sports! 2021 at the University of Waterloo

Post by Cheynem »

Will this set be mirrored anywhere else, maybe online?
Mike Cheyne
Formerly U of Minnesota

"You killed HSAPQ"--Matt Bollinger
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Signac Attack
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Re: sports! 2021 at the University of Waterloo

Post by Signac Attack »

Hi Mike, the set is definitely available to be mirrored elsewhere, including online with sufficient interest. Based on the valuable feedback of Dennis and other vets on the Canadian circuit, we will likely tweak a couple of things. However, Waterloo does not plan to host a second mirror during the month of August. In the fall, Waterloo could host another mirror or give the set to a school from another circuit to run a tournament for a small mirror fee.
Zach Bernstein
University of Waterloo 2022
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everdiso
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Re: sports! 2021 at the University of Waterloo

Post by everdiso »

I enjoyed this tournament a lot and I'm very glad that I decided to spend 7 hours playing it. I'll post my general feedback (not commenting on specific questions) here:

- First of all, there were lots of good questions that felt rewarding to get and fun to listen to.
- Much as Dennis said, this was very much a sports tournament for sports fans. Most regular pop culture sets, like Acronym, have some clues in sports questions that are just tie-ins to other kinds of pop culture, meant to let non-sports fans compete on sports questions against fans. None of that here. If you don't like sports, you won't like this tournament at all. But if you do follow sports, it'll ask about a lot of things you know and care about. Those non-sports clues always frustrate me a little, so I greatly appreciated this aspect of the set.
- This tournament was very hard. In general, this was a good thing, as it really rewarded engagement with the subjects; occasionally, it went overboard, particularly on bonuses (or with tossups about one particular country's soccer). Some bonuses had no easy parts (and two or three hard parts), but I agree with Dennis that no easy parts is probably better than the standard quizbowl experience of frequently getting a free 10 points without needing to know anything. I shouldn't really complain about zeroing bonuses about sports I've never watched in my life. The bonus difficulty could still probably have been more even, though.
- I think the tossups were good at being cosistently pyramidal. Most tournaments have a decent number of tossups that either have a massive cliff in the middle or seem to jumble the order of their clues, with some easier ones coming before harder ones, but that very rarely happened here. (I can recall one seemingly apyramidal tossup, and one or two that dropped something easy too early, but that's it.)
- There were also very few transparent tossups, which I'm thankful for - getting beaten to something you know because your opponents guess it early is very frustrating. There wasn't much opportunity for B.S. buzzes in this set. The player who knew the most was going to get the tossup first.
- As many people pointed out, the college sports was excessive. Specifically, this comes out of a decision in the distribution: I think college sports should've come out of the sections for its sports in the distro, rather than getting its own dedicated section. This resulted in a) too much college sports and b) too much football and basketball in the set overall, since those are the most popular American college sports, so they wound up having significantly more of the distribution than, say, baseball.
- College sports was also very poorly converted at our site, but I'm not actually sure if this is because it was too hard (I know nothing about it, so I can't judge) or just because nobody in Canada really follows that stuff. Maybe the difficulty will be appropriate when it gets played by Americans.
- There was definitely too little golf and tennis.
- I was glad to see hockey and soccer not get shafted as they do in the standard distro, and really enjoyed getting to play more questions on both of those sports. This was one of the best things about the tournament, I think.
- The vast majority of the clues in the set could be characterised as being about "stuff that's happened". Obviously, this should form the bulk of any sports set, but I think there could've been a bit more about tactics/strategy, rules, and league structures/competition formats. There were a few questions about that and I thought they were very good; I would've liked to see more.
- I thought the set also could've had a bit more about very recent/current content. I imagine this is probably a result of its being written over a long stretch of time.

Overall, thank you to Waterloo for writing and running the kind of set I've always been waiting for! I would definitely recommend that other people who like sports play this. I will warn you, though: do not expect to get many questions about sports you don't pay attention to. (This means that playing with (a) teammate(s) who follow different sports from you may be a good idea.)
Paul Kasiński
University of Toronto, 2020
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