Should finals packets be harder than the prelims?

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

Split from the GSAC announcement thread --Mgmt.

The set will contain 12 packets, with the last two rounds being harder in difficulty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuN1D6Np1y8

[Down and out in Quintana Roo]

This tournament was hard, but fun, and we'll try our best to come back to it again this year.

The set will contain 12 packets, with the last two rounds being harder in difficulty.

But, yeah, i wish this wouldn't happen.

[Longstride]

This tournament was hard, but fun, and we'll try our best to come back to it again this year.

The set will contain 12 packets, with the last two rounds being harder in difficulty.

But, yeah, i wish this wouldn't happen.

The last two rounds assumed to be the finals, what is the problem about this?

[Frater Taciturnus]

This tournament was hard, but fun, and we'll try our best to come back to it again this year.

The set will contain 12 packets, with the last two rounds being harder in difficulty.

But, yeah, i wish this wouldn't happen.

The last two rounds assumed to be the finals, what is the problem about this?

It forces the tournament (and any potential mirrors) to be limited in the non-finals rounds to using no more than 10 packets, and only 9 if you want to play any potential tiebreakers on a the same difficulty as the rest of the tournament. This can mean having to do logistical gymnastics as teams register and drop out at the last minute (as is very often the case in quizbowl).

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

It negatively impacts the results of finals at sites where the teams might not be as good as at the main site too. In Missouri, we had basically normal scores throughout the playoffs where the top 2 teams were putting up 300-400 points in each game, then in the finals the score was 290-165 or so, and the third place game was decided on a score of 105-95 among teams who could also all hit 300 in most games but weren't at all prepared for the increased difficulty. It really did a disservice to the teams in our top 4, and was frankly the worst thing about the set last year.

[Khanate]

I don't see much of a problem with increasing finals difficulty if its only the clues that are increasing in difficulty. I understand that the results of the finals could be skewed if the answer difficulty goes up significantly, but whats wrong with a difficult tossup on Hemingway or Neptune?

[dtaylor4]

I don't see much of a problem with increasing finals difficulty if its only the clues that are increasing in difficulty. I understand that the results of the finals could be skewed if the answer difficulty goes up significantly, but whats wrong with a difficult tossup on Hemingway or Neptune?

Usually, when finals questions are made that much harder, this is not the case.

[Cheynem]

I think I would be okay with finals questions perhaps written a tick longer, knowing it would have to gradate knowledge between the two best teams. I would also be okay with not explicitly setting out to write harder, but moving harder questions that appear in other packets. The problem I have seen is when finals packets are explicitly harder they become very very hard.

[Cody]

but moving harder questions that appear in other packets

This almost always results in the exact same thing as purposefully making the Finals packets harder because it encourages people not to choose difficulty appropriate answers (for the tournament) due to the rationale that it can be moved to the Finals if it is too hard.

[Cheynem]

I would definitely agree that no questions should be intentionally selected or written as harder than the others.

[Mechanical Beasts]

It forces the tournament (and any potential mirrors) to be limited in the non-finals rounds to using no more than 10 packets, and only 9 if you want to play any potential tiebreakers on a the same difficulty as the rest of the tournament. This can mean having to do logistical gymnastics as teams register and drop out at the last minute (as is very often the case in quizbowl).

While I certainly think some arguments in this thread are persuasive, I don't really understand this one. A twelve-packet tournament can use no more than ten rounds for non-finals in whatever case, since finals need to happen (unless you want the lower brackets to be playing matches during the finals, which you can do with ten team tournaments doing a 4/6 split, for example, but you don't get that circumstance often), and if you're reserving a packet for tiebreakers it already can't be a finals packet unless you are somehow sure that a team in a tiebreaker for making the top bracket won't make it to the finals (a risky assertion). Unless this refers exclusively to tiebreakers for final rank (i.e., in the top bracket, you might want to play a final match and a match to resolve a tie for fifth, and you might want to do so on the same packet).

While the other arguments here are good arguments against harder final difficulty, George's arguments are good arguments for writing longer tournament sets. HFT for the past three years has been fifteen, sixteen, and sixteen rounds. There are plenty of field sizes that our set length could not satisfy, but they're uncommon as anything. If they so desired, teams even had the leeway to not use the final packets at all--if they did that, they'd still have had twelve additional packets to use for nonfinals rounds. That's overkill, of course, but short sets require short tournaments or a lot of tiebreaker-related luck; neither is a good bet.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

I don't understand why people are seemingly so unconcerned about the fact that by intentionally producing certain packets a different way than the rest of an event, they weaken the continuity and logical results of all the matches for the tournament. The goal of an event should be to determine the team that plays best on whatever particular style of packets the set chooses to use as its overall goal, and by changing that for 2, or 6, or whatever number of rounds editors do that with, it makes those games inconsistent and less meaningful. I vehemently reject the idea that tournaments should switch gears partway through in the name of a completely nebulous, undefinable, and wrong belief that "harder=realer=better for the important games."

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

It forces the tournament (and any potential mirrors) to be limited in the non-finals rounds to using no more than 10 packets, and only 9 if you want to play any potential tiebreakers on a the same difficulty as the rest of the tournament. This can mean having to do logistical gymnastics as teams register and drop out at the last minute (as is very often the case in quizbowl).

While I certainly think some arguments in this thread are persuasive, I don't really understand this one. A twelve-packet tournament can use no more than ten rounds for non-finals in whatever case, since finals need to happen (unless you want the lower brackets to be playing matches during the finals, which you can do with ten team tournaments doing a 4/6 split, for example, but you don't get that circumstance often), and if you're reserving a packet for tiebreakers it already can't be a finals packet unless you are somehow sure that a team in a tiebreaker for making the top bracket won't make it to the finals (a risky assertion). Unless this refers exclusively to tiebreakers for final rank (i.e., in the top bracket, you might want to play a final match and a match to resolve a tie for fifth, and you might want to do so on the same packet).

While the other arguments here are good arguments against harder final difficulty, George's arguments are good arguments for writing longer tournament sets. HFT for the past three years has been fifteen, sixteen, and sixteen rounds. There are plenty of field sizes that our set length could not satisfy, but they're uncommon as anything. If they so desired, teams even had the leeway to not use the final packets at all--if they did that, they'd still have had twelve additional packets to use for nonfinals rounds. That's overkill, of course, but short sets require short tournaments or a lot of tiebreaker-related luck; neither is a good bet.

I actually find George's argument to be the only convincing one in the entire thread. The reality is that most quizbowl writers are not particularly prolific, and, further, suffer from procrastination so severe and so pervasive that one wonders if it is not some kind of disease that is spread by touching buzzers. Most tournaments not only will not plan to have 15-16 packets, but will actually fall short of their already-small intended number of packets, as half-written packets are combined during the panicked few days before the event. HFT should indeed be held up as a shining example for all to follow, but it's the exception.

In this reality, where you're likely to have systematic packet shortages, George's advice to not make finals harder (because they might not be used as finals at some some site) is a good prescription.

[Nick]

God forbid a tournament only guarantees teams 8 games.

[cvdwightw]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that the proper response here, if you really want a finals packet, is:

-Set out to write as many packets as you're supposed to be writing
-Set a writing deadline that is sufficiently far enough ahead of the tournament to do editing for difficulty
-During editing, if you see questions that are too hard, quarantine them in a separate packet and make whoever wrote them write difficulty-appropriate replacements
-Fill out the quarantine packet(s) to the correct distribution create a finals packet, should you want one

No matter how well you think you're controlling difficulty, you're probably not. It's better to move too-hard questions to a separate packet than to delete them entirely.

[Longstride]

I do see the point here. Going over 2010 GSAC results (http://results.scobo.net/SQBS.aspx?org= ... =standings); there seemed to be a sharp dropoff on the playing skill in the finals. TJ A which was regularly posting 400-500 points per game beat RM (also putting up ~400/ppg) by only 255-180 in the last round. Is there a legitimate case to be made that it is "better" when finals are harder or does it simply become a case where the finals are "closer" because of the difficulty preventing a high scoring run-away.

[Mechanical Beasts]

In this reality, where you're likely to have systematic packet shortages, George's advice to not make finals harder (because they might not be used as finals at some some site) is a good prescription.

But if the finals packets aren't used as finals at some site, what is used as finals? Unless the mystery site's solution is to have a one-game final as the only option, no packets can be gained by making the finals packets the same difficulty. The best case scenario is that you burn one of the equal difficulty finals packets, and then you have... not enough packets to play a final on? If they're final packets, they're so called because they're intended for the finals, and in fact you cannot have a finals packet moonlight as a tiebreaker packet unless that tiebreaker cannot possibly involve teams involved in the final and takes place during the final (and what non-single elim formats play games among teams not involved in the final OR games at the same time as the final, besides the one that I already mentioned in my comment? and, again, that's a corner case).

[Cody]

If they're final packets, they're so called because they're intended for the finals, and in fact you cannot have a finals packet moonlight as a tiebreaker packet unless that tiebreaker cannot possibly involve teams involved in the final and takes place during the final (and what non-single elim formats play games among teams not involved in the final OR games at the same time as the final, besides the one that I already mentioned in my comment? and, again, that's a corner case).

If you only have 12 rounds and need to break ties, then, yes, the finals can become tiebreakers for places below the top 2. Unless you are arguing that tournaments should only break ties that are left after the playoffs with statistics, I don't see how that could possibly call that a "corner case". In addition, plenty of tournaments break ties for a trophy place on packets instead of with statistics.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

Like at our site, where the third place game was decided on a score of 105-95 by 2 teams who both averaged in the mid-200s for the rest of the tournament. I read that game, and you can't convince me that packet was anything but a disservice to both teams to break that tie.

[Mechanical Beasts]

Like at our site, where the third place game was decided on a score of 105-95 by 2 teams who both averaged in the mid-200s for the rest of the tournament. I read that game, and you can't convince me that packet was anything but a disservice to both teams to break that tie.

Right, and I'm not disputing that. As I explicitly said in my posts, I accept the single case where the ties to which you're referring are ties for final placement, rather than, for example, prelim bracket ties. Those could sensibly be played on the finals packets, since they're already disqualified from the finals. I referred to it as a corner case because I've seen plenty of tournaments that didn't break final placement ties; I'm not saying that it's an ideal practice, but it's certainly common. It's absolutely true that

1)if you're handed a set with different-difficulty finals, you should try your hardest to play final placement rounds on packets of equal difficulty to the rest of the playoffs (and therefore to the rest of the tournament), and
2) if your set is being used at one or more tournaments where teams will play final placement rounds, you should provide plenty of rounds, not differentiate your finals difficulty, or both.

[BlueDevil95]

I don't see much of a problem with increasing finals difficulty if its only the clues that are increasing in difficulty. I understand that the results of the finals could be skewed if the answer difficulty goes up significantly, but whats wrong with a difficult tossup on Hemingway or Neptune?

Sorry to bring this thread up again, but I like the last part of Adil's post. If a house-write is looking for mirrors in a region where good quizbowl is sparsely distributed, maybe tossups on Kohlberg or Savonarola aren't appropriate, but I really, really like the idea of tougher tossups on pretty common answer lines for the finals packets. I think more housewrites should do this, but that's just my opinion.

[Coldblueberry]

I don't see much of a problem with increasing finals difficulty if its only the clues that are increasing in difficulty. I understand that the results of the finals could be skewed if the answer difficulty goes up significantly, but whats wrong with a difficult tossup on Hemingway or Neptune?

Sorry to bring this thread up again, but I like the last part of Adil's post. If a house-write is looking for mirrors in a region where good quizbowl is sparsely distributed, maybe tossups on Kohlberg or Savonarola aren't appropriate, but I really, really like the idea of tougher tossups on pretty common answer lines for the finals packets. I think more housewrites should do this, but that's just my opinion.

Yeah. This kind of difficulty increase shouldn't be "harder answers." It should just be harder clues inside.