The Quizbowl Resource Center

Richard Montgomery High School is excited to announce our hosting a spring mirror of BELLOCO on SATURDAY, MARCH 29, 2014. The tournament will be held at our campus in Rockville, Maryland, and will be mirroring the BELLOCO set written by the wonderful folks at Bellarmine High School (about which more information can be found at http://www.hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewto ... 09&t=14763).

The tournament will be conducted as a round-robin with matches consisting of the reading of an untimed set of 20 tossups and 20 sets of bonuses (each consisting of three parts). We ask that teams carry no more than six players on any single team; teams planning to bring more than six players should register a second team. Players also cannot switch between their school's teams; they must stay on the same team for the duration of the tournament.

Registration:

Registration will begin at 8:15, with matches starting at about 9:00 AM.

The fee structure is as follows:
Base fee per team: $70
Each additional team: $65
Buzzer discount: -$5
Reader discount: -$5
Minimum fee per team: $50

Checks should be made out to “Richard Montgomery High School” with “It’s Academic” as the memo line. They may be mailed in advance to 250 Richard Montgomery Dr Rockville MD 20852 with Herbert Edelstein in the attention line (please remember to put the name, as we've had checks lost in the mail because they lacked a named recipient). Payment must be received before or the day of the tournament.

Please send registrations to [email protected] - in the email, be sure to clearly indicate the number of teams, buzzers, and moderators you plan to bring. Remember that forum posts do not constitute a registration.

We will most likely be capping the field at 24 teams. Teams that register after that cap has been filled will be placed on a wait list.

Field (Teams/Buzzers/Moderators) : (22/14 or 15/1)

Western Albemarle (1/1 or 2/0)
Reese's Pieces (1/1/0)
Quince Orchard (1/1/0)
#CashCrew (3/1/0)
Walter Johnson (1/1/0)
Hammond (2/1/0)
Severna Park (1/0/0)
Montgomery Blair (2/2/0)
Northmont (2/2/0)
Centennial (2/2/0)
Eleanor Roosevelt (1/0/0)
Glenelg (1/1/0)
Howard (1/2/1)
St. Luke Penny Savings Bank (2/0/0)
Gonzaga (1/0/0)

Knowledge of concepts? Can you pull up some questions from previous packet sets that similar to what's going to be on here?

zachary_yan wrote:Knowledge of concepts? Can you pull up some questions from previous packet sets that similar to what's going to be on here?

That question might be better answered in the mirror thread instead of the individual tournament announcement? Also, email has been sent, but Western Albemarle will be making its furthest north ascent of the year to this tournament (pending HSNCT money coming in).

Wilmington Charter is interested in bringing 2 teams...specifically to come play His Holiness quizbowl God Eric Xu. We will send in registration shortly.

This tournament has now been awarded platinum certification by PACE. This means that the top 25% of teams in this tournament (rounded up to the nearest integer) will qualify for the PACE NSC on the weekend of May 24-25th at the Hyatt Regency Reston outside of Washington, D.C.

With the field already over 70% full with more than three weeks to go, be sure to get those registrations in!

We now have only one spot left in the field, so if you're interested, register soon!

EDIT: With the registration of a second "St. Luke's," the field is now CLOSED. All further registrants will be placed on a wait list for the time being.

We've had multiple drops, so there are now two spots left for any interested teams.

EDIT: Updated to reflect recent activity.

All registered teams should have received an email detailing the logistics of this tournament.

This was a great tournament, although I'd like to clear up a few misunderstandings that I fear may have arisen:

To the coach of Hammond High School: "St. Luke" is not, in fact, a parochial school. "St. Luke Penny Savings Bank" is a pseudonym occasionally used by students from the Maggie Walker Governor's School for Government and International Studies when they are playing unofficially. We do not, in fact, receive a "classical education," whatever that might mean. I apologize for any confusion that may have occurred.

To the players on Quince Orchard A (especially to two blokes whose names I don't care to remember): Southern accents don't sound like that, but thank you for trying to make us feel at home. Furthermore, thank you for entering the room while we were about to begin playing our tiebreaker against #CashCrew A. We also really appreciated the way you occasionally got into shouting matches with each other instead of directing all that ire at us. Finally, my friend Connor would like to note that he was mildly flattered at the way that one of your number snidely referred to him as "looking like a mint candy" in the hallways after our game, and the entire St. Luke B team would like to note that they are not, in fact, "uptight," and that placing coal within their rectums won't transform the carbon into diamonds. Why anyone would think such a thing to be humanly possible, I cannot imagine.

--

Other than that, though, this was a pretty good tournament. I applaud Richard Montgomery for running this event, and Bellarmine for their question set. We got to play a lot of really good teams here, and they were by and large very nice people.

ERHS wants to thank Richard Montgomery for hosting this mirror and being able to bring SO MANY good teams together. Darn, we were impressed by so many teams, many of which we have never seen before and were excited to get to play West Albemarle. Gotta compliment the bang for your buck for this tournament, offering 10 rounds to every team. The only thing we were unhappy with was uncontrollable on your part, the length of the rounds was so **** long, and we were dead by the end of the day, but that's what QB is for, right?

Great tournament guys!

This was a pretty fun tournament. I liked the moderating and scorekeeping staff, and you could tell that everyone there had a good idea of what was going on at all times, and that was very encouraging!

As far as scheduling goes, I feel like the 22 team situation was very unfortunate, and I'm not sure if there was any other way to do prelim bracketing or playoffs. While I do appreciate that the RM staffers and tournament organizers got a lot of rounds (13!) in for the day, not having the chance to play a final was pretty disappointing to me and my team, since we went 4-1 in the playoffs. Maybe an earlier starting time could have avoided that if an idea of how many teams and what sort of format was going to be at the tournament? There wasn't any great delay on scoresheet processing or matches going on for too long, which I appreciated a lot.

Some of the problems Vasa mentioned were not really the fault of the tournament organizers, and even though that was very unfortunate (St. Luke's, that sounds awful, and I feel bad that you guys had to endure that), that shouldn't detract from the fact that this tournament was overall a very enjoyable experience.

I had a great time at this tourney and thank everyone at RM for giving us an opportunity out east to play this set!

Aside from the incident with our C team, I was also unhappy with a mod mistake in our prelim round vs. Maggie Walker. After one of our protests at the end of the match was deemed in our favor and Maggie Walker lost the points for the tossup and the bonus the scores were "tied" according to the mod. The mod forgot to account for the fact that Maggie Walker should have received a neg for that tossup now that their answer was deemed incorrect giving us the win by 5 points. Further, since we had not yet buzzed on the protested question, instead of a tiebreaker being read a make-up tossup should have been read to only our team. This match affected the final standings since Maggie Walker and Western Albemarle had the same playoff record and Maggie Walker was given the championship due to their prelim record. Western Albemarle won by quite a margin in their matchup against Maggie Walker winning the head to head and now both having the same record I feel that this also means that Western Albemarle were the actual winners of this tournament.

Thoughts?

Chunky Sean wrote:The mod forgot to account for the fact that Maggie Walker should have received a neg for that tossup now that their answer was deemed incorrect giving us the win by 5 points.

According to my scorekeeping, the final score before the protest was decided was 340 to 315. After our protest, your team lost 10 points, making the score 340 to 305. On the question you protested, we got 20 on the bonus. So removing that 10+20 and adding a neg was a net loss of 35 for us, making the actual final score 305 to 305, so they did in fact count a neg for us.

Yes I just looked at the score sheet again. There was no math error. That one is my fault, I am still not sure how this works out with the tiebreak though, because we should have received a chance to hear a make-up question since we couldn't even answer the protested one as it was accepted at the time the rejected upon review.

To be honest, that whole game was rather irregular, now that I think about it. The moderator was a really nice bloke but gave both teams extraordinary amounts of time to respond to bonuses, which probably affected the score.

I'm sorry about the confusion over the Charter/Maggie Walker game, that will happen with three protests sometimes. Maggie Walker won this tournament, followed by Western Albemarle, then WJ, then Centennial, then Charter fifth and Reese's Pieces (Loudon County) sixth. Stats should be up within the next couple of days. Thanks for everyone for coming, the field was great, and we enjoyed running the tournament for all you guys.

EDIT- The protest from the Charter/Maggie Walker game is still being worked out. Gabe or I should have an update sometime this afternoon, but the final standings may be impacted. Sorry for the confusion.

Kyuuan Era wrote:

Chunky Sean wrote:The mod forgot to account for the fact that Maggie Walker should have received a neg for that tossup now that their answer was deemed incorrect giving us the win by 5 points.

According to my scorekeeping, the final score before the protest was decided was 340 to 315. After our protest, your team lost 10 points, making the score 340 to 305. On the question you protested, we got 20 on the bonus. So removing that 10+20 and adding a neg was a net loss of 35 for us, making the actual final score 305 to 305, so they did in fact count a neg for us.

Yea, Charter should have heard the tiebreaker only to themselves. Maggie Walker should not have been able to buzz. However, at this point, there is no way to know what Charter would have done on that question (it could have gone dead in an unlikely case). What can be done at this point? This is a very odd situation, but it determines the outcome of the tournament. Could another BELLOCO tiebreaker be read to only that charter at some other tournament? If Charter were to get the question by the end, they would win. Otherwise Maggie Walker takes the match.

shady jawn wrote:

Kyuuan Era wrote:

Chunky Sean wrote:The mod forgot to account for the fact that Maggie Walker should have received a neg for that tossup now that their answer was deemed incorrect giving us the win by 5 points.

According to my scorekeeping, the final score before the protest was decided was 340 to 315. After our protest, your team lost 10 points, making the score 340 to 305. On the question you protested, we got 20 on the bonus. So removing that 10+20 and adding a neg was a net loss of 35 for us, making the actual final score 305 to 305, so they did in fact count a neg for us.

Yea, Charter should have heard the tiebreaker only to themselves. Maggie Walker should not have been able to buzz. However, at this point, there is no way to know what Charter would have done on that question (it could have gone dead in an unlikely case). What can be done at this point? This is a very odd situation, but it determines the outcome of the tournament. Could another BELLOCO tiebreaker be read to only that charter at some other tournament? If Charter were to get the question by the end, they would win. Otherwise Maggie Walker takes the match.

I'm just going to jump in and say that doing that would be pretty pointless. In the end, this is just a tournament and it really doesn't mean that much. There isn't money on the line or anything like that. There isn't that much of a difference between winning and losing, unless you want that extra game. Life goes on. It's pointless to dwell on something as trivial as that. Reading the question at another tournament seems unnecessary.

This is my two cents unless there are other circumstances that I wasn't aware of.

Varun. This is a regular season tournament, not HSNCT......

KnicksRule wrote:Varun. This is a regular season tournament, not HSNCT......

Very productive comment from noted quiz bowl expert Abhinav Kurada. Anyways, people paid money, took out an entire Saturday, and traveled out to RM from various places to attend. This situation changes the winner of the tournament, so I think its pertinent that this get resolved, if possible.

user was banned for 1 day for metaposting / declaring who is allowed to post on the board. do not do this. --the mgmt

shady jawn wrote:

KnicksRule wrote:Varun. This is a regular season tournament, not HSNCT......

Very productive comment from noted quiz bowl expert Abhinav Kurada. Anyways, people paid money, took out an entire Saturday, and traveled out to RM from various places to attend. This situation changes the winner of the tournament, so I think its pertinent that this get resolved, if possible.

They paid money to come and play good quiz bowl against good teams. Who won the tournament is irrelevant.

First I would like to congratulate Richard Montgomery for running this tournament well. It was great to go against teams that I had never had the opportunity of playing before, and for the majority were nice people. However, about this controversy that has arisen the day after the tournament, I implore Western Albemarle to express their sentiments about the matter, as it mainly concerns them and Maggie Walker.

As the representative for Western Albemarle, I suppose I have mixed feelings about the whole issue. One thing I do want to comment on though, and this is not meant to accuse the Richard Montgomery team of anything, because they made a tournament schedule that would most fairly create the winner out of 22 teams, is that the lack of a final game really is the cause of this issue. Had we but time (and world enough, or something like that), a one-game final should have been played off between Maggie Walker and Western Albemarle based on afternoon records in the playoffs. The inability to play that game is mostly due to everyone being kicked out of the building at 6, and Richard Montgomery is not really at fault for that, since the tournament started at a very reasonable time.

Even if the Charter game had stood up against Maggie Walker, that one-game final between Western Albemarle and Maggie Walker should have been played. The morning rounds, as I understand it, were only played to determine who moved on to the top bracket, and that was confirmed by the RM staffers (correct me if I'm wrong) who assured me at the beginning of playoffs that our loss to Centennial wouldn't affect anything in the afternoon, as the only thing that mattered was who came out on top in the playoff bracket. If this is the case, then really, the Charter A/Maggie Walker game also wouldn't really matter for the outcome of the tournament, since it was a preliminary match. Both teams still made it to top bracket, and the top bracket was a round-robin anyway, so the same records most likely would have resulted. The correct course of action (in my opinion) in both situations would be for Maggie Walker and Western Albemarle to play a one-game final to determine it, which is what should have happened at the tournament itself, regardless of the outcome of the Charter A/Maggie Walker game.

Really, this is why finals should happen, to avoid situations like this where both teams have legitimate claims to win. I would understand completely if the Maggie Walker team is upset by this turn of events, as they did have the best record of the day and did beat both teams we lost to. However, from my perspective, we did defeat Maggie Walker in the playoffs in our head to head match-up and had the same playoff record as they did. While I advocate for a one-game final to decide it at a later date (which would present its own challenge, as we won't have that same lineup again for the rest of the year), I will stand by whatever decision Richard Montgomery makes. At the end of the whole thing, we got to play a fun set against quality teams, and I'd say that was worth the drive up to Maryland for us. Kudos to Maggie Walker for an excellent performance during the tournament, and I hope that this doesn't get in the way of the relationship between our teams, which promises many exciting and close games in the future!

I was going to make a final statistics post before I made an apology post, but because the former is taking longer than expected, I guess I'll make my apologies now.

I apologize for running a tournament in such a way that the last teams were only leaving by 6:15, and for not figuring out a way to reduce the number of rounds (while preserving the integrity of the tournament) despite the awkward number of teams, which would not only have led to an earlier finishing time but also allowed for the playing of a possible final. Naturally, I'd also like to apologize that said final was not able to be played, and that a winner had to be determined off of a tiebreak that I would have rather not had to use (namely, overall record).

Even if, as Eric says, the disputed preliminary match in question should not have had an impact on the overall tournament winner once those two teams made the playoffs, I would still like to apologize to both #CashCrew A and St. Luke Penny Savings Bank A for the mishandling of the protest (especially one that turned out to have such an impact on the final tournament result). I apologize for not setting up a framework where I had to be consulted for the resolution of protests (I was not aware that a disputed protest occurred until after the tournament had been completed, which is part of the problem), and this is something that definitely has to be rectified in order to be able to properly deal with these situations.

After consulting with my coach and co-captain, we elected to give the disputed match to #CashCrew A. I understand that this is a much less than optimal solution to a particularly unfortunate problem, but I don't see any better way to resolve this issue. This decision involves making the assumption that #CashCrew A would have correctly answered the exclusive tossup that should have been given to them after an incorrect answer by St. Luke Penny Savings Bank A was wrongly accepted, which, while likely, is nevertheless an assumption that I wish I didn't have to make. I will comment more on the impact this has on the final standings in a near-future post accompanying the statistics upload (and I apologize for the delay with that; I am no longer certain that they will be up by the end of today, and can only guarantee that they will be up by the end of Tuesday).

Finally, I'd just like to apologize for all teams that were in some way inconvenienced or wronged by this tournament. Hopefully you enjoyed the matches you played and had the opportunity to engage in some agreeable competition.

Out of curiosity, and it doesn't really matter at this point, but was the moderator error of reading the replacement question to both teams protested by #CashCrew A at the tournament?

RexSueciae wrote:Out of curiosity, and it doesn't really matter at this point, but was the moderator error of reading the replacement question to both teams protested by #CashCrew A at the tournament?

Before I had any chance to think about the events, we were bombarded with the players from Quince Orchard entering the room thinking the match was complete, some of whom started to make inappropriate comments which took my attention away from what was going on. Once everything settled down we went straight into the tiebreak without a chance for me to consult my teammate or even rules for what to do on a protest tiebreak like situation (seeing as I have never been in one). It came to my attention later that the tiebreak may have been the incorrect judgement upon which I looked to more experienced players for advice on the situation, but this was done after the tournament on the ride home.

I thought the tournament was great in terms of questions and the amount of great teams there. Personally, the first round of the playoffs had some poor questions and strange answers. Otherwise, I really enjoyed it.

--ERHS QB

Mod note: Please note that all user accounts should belong to one specific person and the signature should reflect that. - JP

Thanks for a good tourney with a lot of great teams on hand. I finally saw Connor Wood and Eric Xu in person, and actually got to play the latter. One possible suggestion would be to train your moderators to be a bit more professional. We had a round in the playoffs (with Centennial B) that lasted 55 minutes because the moderators (two girls) would not stop talking between toss ups, bonuses, and questions. Additionally, advice dispensing on facts to know and not to know can come across as very condescending. I know we're not a particularly great team, just about mediocre, but our team is definitely not stupid, and advice could be dispensed with a bit more finesse and care. Other than these two minor issues, and maybe QO's unseemly behavior (paging Lawrence Simon), the tournament was a great experience for our young team. Having our butts handed to us on several occasions taught us a lot.

I am rather unfortunately of the poor behavior of my school's team at this competition. Unfortunately our coach was out of town and myself and my co-captain were pre-occupied with other events which we could not avoid. I am extremely sorry if any team did not enjoy this tournament as much as they could have because of the misconduct of my team. Parker was made captain for a day because he is a senior and I assumed he would act responsibly. Rather than living up to my hopes, he showed a rather unfortunately childish side of his personality and as a result our team and those they played suffered. Needless to say him and another player, Ben, will not be going to any competitions which me or our coach are not attending for the rest of the year. Besides that I really hope everyone that went to this competition and played seriously had an awesome time, which I think occurred because of the great teams involved and the excellence of Richard Montgomery in running tournaments.

Good afternoon,

I'm the coach of QO, many of you know me and have been seeing our team at tournaments for years. While our team has always had a little extra character, the behavior and outbursts that I've heard about from this forum (and from other sources as well) were over-the-line and unacceptable. I will take responsibility, as it was ultimately my decision (against my better judgement) to allow this team to attend this event unsupervised. Rest assured, all three players who I believe acted immaturely have been spoken to, and their parents have been contacted. That behavor is not reflective of our team or our school and will not be tolerated ever again. The two main offenders have been issued their last warning, and neither will be allowed to compete at any tournament in my absence for the remainder of this year.

We have nothing but respect for Charter, Maggie Walker or any of the other great teams who attended this event. We have both respect and grattitude for RM, since they are now the only remaining MCPS school who hosts competitions. Please accept my sincerest apology on behalf of my offending players.

Joshua M. Schuman

Prelim and Playoff stats are now posted at http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/2081.

Here's how the stats break down: Western Albemarle and St. Luke Penny Savings Bank A are tied both in afternoon record and overall record. The next tiebreaker we used after that is head-to-head, which gives first to Western Albemarle (I'll apologize again for not being able to support a final game and instead using a relatively weak tiebreaker to determine the winner). Walter Johnson takes third.

Thank you to all teams who attended, and we hope you had a relatively enjoyable experience.

So, I guess I will ask the same question I asked to tournament headquarters at the tournament. Why did Northmont get bumped to the third bracket? 10 teams made the top two brackets- if you use record as the metric, we are in the top ten, if you toss out the fact that we played an extra game and consider us with the 3-3 teams, we have better ppb than quince orchard, who made the top bracket.

Clearly, it doesnt matter that much after the fact, and the fact that we dropped a match in the consolation bracket because my kids were frustrated doesnt say much about how we would have done, but we drove 8 hours to play in this event without two varsity players so that my young kids could get experience. To not get the opportunity to play three more matches against top teams was frustrating. Please make sure that correct stat keeping is a top priority in future events. This is the second time this year we have played in an event where this has happened- student stat keepers is great, but accuracy is the most important thing.

This is a really trivial thing that I'm about to bring up, and probably matters even less now that the tournament is over, but: is it typical for book prizes to be awarded in reverse order? Like, top scorer picks last? Because if I remember correctly, that's what happened on Saturday, and I'm not sure why it was like that.

RexSueciae wrote:This is a really trivial thing that I'm about to bring up, and probably matters even less now that the tournament is over, but: is it typical for book prizes to be awarded in reverse order? Like, top scorer picks last? Because if I remember correctly, that's what happened on Saturday, and I'm not sure why it was like that.

That hasn't happened at any tournament I've ever been to. It may have been to build suspense or whatever, but the first place winner should definitely have the first choice of book.

RexSueciae wrote:This is a really trivial thing that I'm about to bring up, and probably matters even less now that the tournament is over, but: is it typical for book prizes to be awarded in reverse order? Like, top scorer picks last? Because if I remember correctly, that's what happened on Saturday, and I'm not sure why it was like that.

One way I've seen it done is to call people up in reverse order to build the tension, but then allow the top scorer to pick first after everyone is up. That does taken longer than just telling the top scorer to grab a book though, so book prizes should probably be given out from 1st onwards.

Would it be possible for you all to post combined stats?

I'll see if I can get Combined Stats up, but I can't guarantee when (if) they'll be up.

Ailing Knight-at-Arms wrote:I'll see if I can get Combined Stats up, but I can't guarantee when (if) they'll be up.

If it'd be easier, send me the stat files.

Combined stats are now up, courtesy of Fred Morlan.