BELLEROPHON (10/30/2010)

[Tanay]

This is a preliminary announcement for BELLarmine’s Eminently Reputable Official Pre-Halloween Obstacle (New!), or BELLEROPHON, a tournament scheduled for Saturday, October 30, 2010 at Bellarmine College Preparatory's campus in San Jose, California. The tournament will run from approximately 9 am to 5 pm, with a more detailed schedule provided closer to the tournament date.

Format:
Rounds will feature 20 tossups with bonuses provided by HSAPQ. Our expectation is that every team in attendance will play at least 8 or 9 rounds, not including playoffs. Prizes will be awarded to top teams and individual players, and the top 10% of the field (or so) will qualify for the PACE National Tournament.

Pricing:
The cost to register will be $70 for the first four-player team from a school. Additional teams are $60 each. Teams bringing a working lockout buzzer system will receive a $10 discount per buzzer; teams who can contribute an experienced reader/scorekeeper will receive an additional $5 discount per staffer.


Confirmed Field: (12 teams)
Bellarmine house (5 teams)
Harker (1 team)
Mills (1 team)
Mission San Jose (3 teams)
Riordan (1 team)
Santa Teresa (1 team)




We warmly invite teams to attend who do not normally participate in quiz bowl tournaments outside of Quiz Kids.

To register, please email Chris Fleitas (cfleitas AT bcp DOT org) by Friday, October 22nd with the following information:
School Name
Number of Teams
Will you be providing a buzzer?
Will you be providing a reader/scorekeeper?


Registered teams will be provided with more detailed information regarding parking, campus layout, etc. Please feel free to contact Mr. Fleitas if you have any questions about the tournament.
We look forward to hearing from you soon!

Thanks,
Tanay Kothari

[Carambola!]

We'll show up with at least one team.

[Tanay]

We anticipate having a house team or two for this tournament.

[Tanay]

I have been informed that, barring any changes in format, this tournament will meet standards for PACE affiliation.

[Tanay]

After some deliberation, it's been decided that this tournament will likely be run on a HSAPQ set. The BATE set will instead be used for a tournament to be held at Bellarmine in the spring.

[Tanay]

Bumping this to note several updates in the field.

[Tanay]

The field for this tournament has been finalized and will consist of the ten teams listed in the initial post. We look forward to seeing everyone on the 30th.

EDIT: This post was less final than the next.

[Tanay]

Two more teams signed up over the weekend. The field now consists of twelve teams and is final.

This tournament will begin with two randomized brackets of six teams each that will play a round robin before lunch, followed by a record-based round robin consisting of three brackets of four teams each. This guarantees each team at least 8 rounds of play. With the final round(s) and awards taken into account, we anticipate that BELLEROPHON will end by 5.

We could also use one more moderator.

[kayli]

Wouldn't it be better to do a round robin and break ties at the end?

[Tanay]

Wouldn't it be better to do a round robin and break ties at the end?

That's interesting, but I don't understand why it would be better (besides the obvious "having 11 prelim rounds" thing). We designed this format so that teams could play teams of similar strengths after lunch, but I guess I'd be open to hearing any reasoning you have on this issue.

[cvdwightw]

Well, there are really two thoughts on the issue of why the given format is a subpar playoff format. The first is that it's always better to run a full round robin if you don't know the strengths of one or more teams, and the amount by which it is better is inversely proportional to the number of teams that advance to the top playoff bracket (fewer teams advancing means a round robin is more better). Bracketing such that team #3 in one bracket is better than team #2 in another bracket can really mess things up. The second is that even if you want to do two prelim brackets, a far better format is to advance six teams to the top playoff bracket and either play a full round robin again or play the top three teams in the other bracket. The reason for this is that you are not playing off ties, and therefore end up with the distinct possibility of a one-loss team finishing in seventh place. As someone who's been in this exact situation (one-loss team missing a playoff bracket by literally failing to convert three bonus parts), I can vouch that this really sucks for the team on the short end of the stick. If you play a tiebreaker game, the team that doesn't advance at least feels as if they had a legitimate chance to advance that did not depend on how well they played against weaker teams.

An unrelated thought is that at CBCT, we started at 9:40-9:45 because of UCI Scheduling forgetting (again!) to activate the keycards they gave us, we played twelve rounds, and finished by about 5:15. Granted, we had two staffers in almost every room and did not have a final.

[Tanay]

The second is that even if you want to do two prelim brackets, a far better format is to advance six teams to the top playoff bracket and either play a full round robin again or play the top three teams in the other bracket.

This made a lot of sense and we decided we would do it. Thanks.

[Tanay]

This happened. MSJ "C" and MSJ "E" were our finalists, with "E" winning the title in an advantaged final in which "C" had the advantage. The top scorer was "Aaron Rowand" (Phil Yakushev) from the house team Phil Fills for Mills. Stats will be up within the next few days. Thanks to everyone who showed up to compete and to Jeff Hoppes and the Bellarmine alumni that helped make everything run smoothly.

[Tanay]

Stats are here: http://results.scobo.net/Bellarmine/BELLEROPHON

Brackets have been adjusted so that they're appropriate. Note that Phil was 4-1 in prelims but was dropped to moderate and ensure even brackets for the rest of the tournament after lunch. Also, MSJ is even deadlier than stats would suggest, since their top players were split between MSJ E and MSJ C.

[Carambola!]

Just wondering, how come on the PACE website it says that two Bellarmine teams instead of two MSJ teams that qualified for NSC at this tournament?

[Blackboard Monitor Vimes]

Just wondering, how come on the PACE website it says that two Bellarmine teams instead of two MSJ teams that qualified for NSC at this tournament?

There was roster overlap with teams that had qualified at previous tournaments.

[Important Bird Area]

The PACE qualification discussion has been split into a new thread.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

Since Fred showed that the PACE qualification rules unequivocally give Mission San Jose two bids, have they been given back to them?

[Frater Taciturnus]

Since Fred showed that the PACE qualification rules unequivocally give Mission San Jose two bids, have they been given back to them?

There have been a couple different instances of this, and I want to try to fix all of them at once.