Mid-Atlantic Championships 2015

[luke1865]

What did people think about this set? It seemed a bit odd to me.

[Important Bird Area]

What did people think about this set? It seemed a bit odd to me.

Please note that there are a number of future tournaments using this set, so do not post details of the question content.

[Maury Island incident]

What did people think about this set? It seemed a bit odd to me.

Please note that there are a number of future tournaments using this set, so do not post details of the question content.

Obviously second this. Also, there were some pretty good observations made by Daniel Yan about it on the "Emergency Situation: All Writers Needed (Resolved)" thread without revealing specific question content. I'd encourage you to look at that and use it as a model for anything you would post about a set in a public thread.

That being said, I did really like this set, which I thought felt more polished than past NHBB sets. This is remarkable, with it being written so quickly and all. It did an excellent job keeping questions convertible at the end by most teams but reasonably hard to power, and also kept stock clues to a minimum. The set really filled its role as the hardest NHBB regional set without tossing up egregious answerlines, and I applaud editors for that. However, I thought there was more science history than normal. Otherwise, I agree with what Daniel said about it.

[Bosa of York]

more polished than past NHBB sets.

kept stock clues to a minimum.

These might have been true for the Bowl, but, in my opinion, there were many, many problems with at least the first three rounds of the Bee.

[Maury Island incident]

more polished than past NHBB sets.

kept stock clues to a minimum.

These might have been true for the Bowl, but, in my opinion, there were many, many problems with at least the first three rounds of the Bee.

I did notice the Bee questions were being buzzed on earlier than in the Bowl. Does anyone know if Bee questions are the length of first quarter tossups?

[Sima Guang Hater]

more polished than past NHBB sets.

kept stock clues to a minimum.

These might have been true for the Bowl, but, in my opinion, there were many, many problems with at least the first three rounds of the Bee.

Please feel free to send your criticisms to [email protected]

[jonpin]

In other news, who won & etc.?

[luke1865]

The whole format was also strange, and it seemed to increase the level of luck involved in topic choice. I'd also be really interested to see distribution. This is more related to bee than anything else.

[Great Bustard]

In other news, who won & etc.?

Just received stats from Ben Zhang who directed:
Varsity Bowl
High Tech over E. Brunswick 270-240 in final
High Tech over Hunter College 280-230 in semifinal
E. Brunswick over Bethlehem Central 290-240 in semifinal

Junior Varsity Bowl
Hunter College over St. Joseph 290-140 in final
Hunter College over Middlesex Co. Acad. 350-120 in semifinal
St. Joseph over Methacton 260-170 in semifinal

Varsity Bee
1. Rohan Kodialam, High Tech, 7 points in final stage
2. Mohan Malhotra, Wilmington Charter, 5 points in final stage
3. Eric Wolfsberg, Bethlehem Central, 2 points in final stage
4. Shravan Balaji of E Brunswick (prelim points leader) and Ben Bechtold of Ridgewood tied for 4th

Junior Varsity Bee
1. Douglas Simons, High Tech, 6 points in final stage
2. Luke Tierney, Hunter College High, 5 points in final stage (prelim points leader)
3. Joe Kale, Notre Dame Prep, 3 points in final stage

[Lo, Marathon Ham!]

I really enjoyed the set and the change in format for the Bee. While the traditional format is nice, this new format really put the pressure on the players to try and accumulate as many points as they could and also shifted buzzing strategies as it was no longer first to a certain number but rather about maintaining a lead. It certainly helped to make the Bee portion much less dry.

As for our bowl results, unfortunately I was missing the other half of our power duo, Varun, this weekend since he had several other events come up (soccer tennis, go-karting, paintballing, and playing FIFA), but he will indeed be in attendance with our team at the National tournament which should lead to much stronger results.

[Al Hirt]

I thought the bowl questions were far better than the Bee questions, really taking some cool angles and answer lines for stuff I never thought would come up. The Bee questions seemed chockful of fraudable answer lines and buzzer races three words in (though this certainly seemed better during the finals as compared to the semis and prelims). The Bowl questions had those too but especially towards the end of the tournament I had never felt more rewarded for my knowledge by any set. I'm not sure why I felt such a difference and I could be wrong in perception.

Big thanks to Dave Madden, Eric Mukherjee and everyone else for putting this together. Undoubtedly my favorite set of anything to date (at least the bowl questions).

[johntait1]

Could someone elaborate on what this new format for the Bee was? We played with the regular format at Tennessee State. Also, is the format going to be different that last year's for Nationals? Thanks.