NHBB Northern NJ on Jan. 19 at Ridgewood HS

[Great Bustard]

Typically, NHBB doesn't advertise individual tournaments here, but I wanted to put in a word about our Northern NJ History Bee and Bowl on Saturday Jan. 19 at Ridgewood High School, Bergen County, NJ - about 25 minutes west of the GW Bridge, which is almost certain to be the largest regional tournament NHBB has run to date, with 50-70 teams expected. We're going to be using this (and a few other mid-Atlantic tournaments) to give potential Nationals readers some experience, and it's set to be a great competition. The field, like all NHBB events, is maintained on the regional site page, located here for N NJ: http://www.historybowl.com/regionalsite/new-jersey/ This tournament will also definitely have a middle school field, so middle (and even elementary!) schools are more than welcome to join us.
I've been doing some visits to area schools this week to help talk up not only NHBB but also quizbowl in general, so if you're hosting a tournament from Jan-May 2013, this is a great place to come and get the word out too, since quite a few schools are coming who haven't yet done many Saturday standard qb tournaments. Just as a reminder, this tournament will run on B set - the other use of B set in the greater area will be in Newtown, CT on Feb. 10 (a Sunday!).
Finally, just a word on our other upcoming area events:
Long Island at Half Hollow Hills on C set, Jan. 12
New Jersey States at Princeton on A set, Feb. 23 (this is open to out of state teams; no pre-qualifying is necessary, and this tournament will also likely have 40+ teams)
New York City - probably on a Sunday in late March on C set (will have a strict field cap; NYC teams get priority as this will likely be done in conjunction with the NY Historical Society)

For other NHBB events, the calendar at http://www.historybowl.com/bowlsites/ is up to date. I will adjust the pages on the forums with the dates next Tuesday. For any NHBB questions, shoot me an email or PM. Thanks!

[Great Bustard]

This is coming up on Saturday, with a projected field of 65 teams. See http://www.historybowl.com/regionalsite/new-jersey/ for field and schedule update (a longer post on that will follow tomorrow). Come take on Ridgewood N! Sign up at http://www.historybowl.com/registration through Thursday for the largest NHBB regional and largest NYC metro quiz bowl tournament of any sort of the year!

[Great Bustard]

Looks like we'll be at 68 teams, with a bunch of teams with the potential to go deep at Nationals (St. Joe's, High Tech, Irvington). Seton Hall Prep, Millburn and West Windsor Plainsboro North could be darkhorses.Mountain Lakes and Ranney could spring a minor upset too. Ridgewood is spread very thin, but their A team could surprise. So could their N team. Looking forward to a great day on Saturday!

[Great Bustard]

Congratulations to our champions from yesterday:
Northern New Jersey History Bowl
Varsity: St. Joseph A
Runner Up: Irvington A
Junior Varsity: Ridgewood J
Runner Up: Bergen Academies B
Varsity MVP: Jack Mehr, St. Joe's
JV MVP: Thomas Cleary, Ridgewood

Northern New Jersey History Bee
Varsity Champion: Andrew Brod, Millburn (6-4 in final)
Varsity Runner Up: Pat LeBlanc, High Tech
JV Champion: Alex Oltarsh, TriBeCa (6-2 in final)
JV Runner Up: Ben Bechtold, Ridgewood

US Geography Challenge Qualifying Exam - B Set Version
Varsity High Score: Rohan Kodialam, High Tech, 88
JV High Score, Andrew Huang, High Tech, 78

Full stats should be up on our websites by Wednesday; there may be a further report coming from Jon Pinyan who did a great job leading our stats effort as well.
Thanks to everyone who came and made our largest regional tournament ever possible. I'm keenly interested in feedback and suggestions from teams who attended. Some thoughts from my end: Having 5 rounds of playoffs worked great, and went almost exactly according to the tournament schedule we had planned. That allowed 32 teams to make the Varsity playoffs, though a few left early. We'll try and make a bigger point to teams that they really need to stick around for their playoff match, though it's hard to force a 32 seed to want to play the 1 seed. For the Bee, we could have run with our usual format, but that would have seen us up against a hard limit in the # of available questions, and would have taken even longer to run. I liked being able to take roughly the top 1/3 of students into the Bee final. There's a lot of variability in the Bee, given that we only have 3 prelim rounds, and despite our seedings, it's very hard to have a balanced bee prelim draw for all. That makes taking more students into the Bee finals even more desirable an option. Some of the communication could be improved in terms of students knowing where they needed to be when, though 95% of students had no trouble with it, and no rooms started early without the needed players. We've definitely learned the value of having outside readers and staffers, especially at our larger tournaments, and continue to encourage all qualified members of the quizbowl community to contact us if interested in helping us with our regional and national tournaments.
A big thanks to all the teams who came, and especially to Jon Pinyan, Maggie Larkin, Bob Borders, Nolwenn Madden, Marisol Brady, Alan Blayne, Rohit Prakash, Ed Goralski, Liz Reiser, numerous volunteers among the faculty, students, and administration of Ridgewood High School, and all our readers from the teams who attended. Overall, as always, there are certainly ways we can continue to improve, but I was very happy with how the day went, and hope that those who attended share that sentiment as well. For those in the greater mid-Atlantic/NYC area, see you at Princeton on Feb. 23 for A Set!

[jonpin]

Just as a tack on, the format used for the Bee playoffs was more or less a trial run of the format that will be used at nationals. A rough percentage, about 35-40%, was taken of the field in both levels. Varsity had 21, JV had 18 advance to the playoffs. Both levels used three "quarterfinal" rooms, with a 20-question round. The top two from each room advanced to the six-player "semifinal", another 20-question round. The top two from that went on to the first-to-6 final.

The bracket for the Bowl playoffs is attached.

[ryanrosenberg]

With the 20 question rounds, is there a limit to the number of questions a player can get before they have to sit out the rest of the round?

[ProfessorIanDuncan]

I believe it was 8 like the prelims. I know that in two of the three rooms it didn't happen for sure. It may have happened in the third room but for hte most part playoffs tend to be more even than prelims.

[Dirty Water]

In the third room, one player hit eight, and the next highest scorer got 5, followed by a 3.

[Great Bustard]

Rohan Kodialam and Adithya Kannan, both from High Tech, and both in the JV division hit 8 in the first stage. They were the only students to do so for either stage of the Bee finals for Varsity or JV. Also, The Bergen Record ran this article on the tournament: http://www.northjersey.com/news/1876301 ... l?page=all
obviously, the questions referenced in the article will be switched out for subsequent iterations of B set. That said, we'll use the article to help booster our recruiting in North Jersey next year, and are planning on doing more press coverage of this sort going forward.

[jonpin]

Just as a post-hoc realization: in future setups of this sort, if a 20-question round is being used to select two players, then 7 points should be sufficient to test out, because it is mathematically impossible for someone with 7 points to miss out, and thus any further questions that student gets are just removing an opportunity for the other players to earn a point.