The Quizbowl Resource Center

This is an invitation to participate in the Sixteenth Annual Scobol Solo, to be held on Saturday, October 29, 2016. The tournament is at New Trier High School in Winnetka, just north of Chicago. The only mirror currently scheduled is a conference in Ohio.

The finances of this tournament will be different than in past years. Checks should be made payable to Reinstein QuizBowl and mailed to:
Reinstein QuizBowl
PO Box 57
125 Shelter Road
Lincolnshire, IL 60069
If this causes any problems, contact me.

Unlike most other tournaments, this one will feature one-on-one matches (i.e. no teams). Each match will consist of twenty tossup questions without bonuses. Each individual who enters is guaranteed seven matches, which will take place from 9:00-3:30. We will then have a Championship Match at 3:30 featuring the top nine students all playing at once.

The cost to participate is $35 per player for the first eight players on your team. If you can supply a moderator, then the cost is only $25 per player for the first eight players, and it is only $15 per player if you have two moderators. I am willing to negotiate if you have more than two moderators. Lunch will be provided for everybody. Keep in mind that moderators will be unable to watch their own players' matches. Even if you don't moderate, there will be several times that some of your students play at the same time. If you wish to enter more than eight players, they will be entered on a standby basis. If there is room for them to play, they will play for free. I will let you know by October 21 how much room we have--we are hoping to have exactly 128 students total.

Old questions are here.

The tournament is set up so that matches always feature two students with identical records.

Please return the attached form with a check. To hold some spaces for your school while your business office is cutting the check, email me at [email protected] or call me at (847)784-6616. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

FAQ
Q: Do you need staff?
A: Yes

Field updates are here.

There are now 89 spaces filled and 39 spaces left.

There are now 127 spaces filled and 1 space left.

The tournament is now full.

However:
There is no waitlist, and there will inevitably be some drops.
We need lots of staff.
We need lots of buzzers.

We now have openings for two students.

EDIT: Never mind. Full again.

I now have 3-4 openings. If they don't get filled by the end of the day this Friday, I will give them to standbys.

I have at least one open spot to give away, possibly more. First come, first served.

Congratulations to John Waldron of Barrington for winning the 2016 Scobol Solo tournament! Second place went to Matthew Lehmann, also of Barrington, and who was undefeated in the preliminary rounds; the final phase of the championship match went down to tiebreaker questions. Third place went to Ali Saeed of Stevenson; fourth, Jakob Myers of Naperville North; fifth was a tie among Jack Mayer of Loyola Academy, Ethan Strombeck of Auburn, and Aristotle Vainikos of Carl Sandberg; eighth place went to John Banta of Lake Forest; and ninth place went to Lily Hamer of Homewood-Flossmoor.

Full statistics are available from the preliminary rounds, and I will post the scoresheet from the championship match in the next few days. I will also eventually figure out more interesting things to do with the buzz-point data (suggestions are welcome).

The question set is not yet clear for discussion, but I'm sure David welcomes private feedback at [email protected].

This was a fun tournament. Winning was nice too. Congratulations to all those who joined me in the final and many thanks to all those who made this possible.

Thanks to Jonah, who made this tournament work so well. In case you didn't notice it in the stats, this tournament has a stat for conversion depth, which means the percent of a question that got read before a correct answer was given. We did this by having the moderators mark where each question got answered and having the software track the information. We hope to give lots of data when the set is cleared. If there are other statistics that people want to see, let us know, and we'll consider it.

As of right now, nobody is planning to mirror the questions. There are some people considering it, so I am not going to release the questions for at least several months.

Thanks to our staffers Farrah Bilimoria, Jeff Brigham, Gregory Burgener, Colby Burnett, Owen Doak, Jason Dutmers, Ryan Fedewa, Brad Fischer, Bruce Fitzgerald, Linda Greene, Patrick Hogan, Jonathan Kersky, Mike Kolton, Denise Kreb, Sara Landis, Mike Laudermith, Jonathan Legendre, Sharon Lorinskas, Becky Mathew, Matthew McGinnis, Dylan Minarik, Ali Nagib, Logan Nelson, Katie Parks, Ashok Poozhikunnel, Tejas Raje, Michael Sacks, Jamie Simon, Mike Sorice, Jim Stankevitz, Andrew Wang, Luke Wigtil, and some anonymous standby student who stepped up when a moderator got sick.

Thanks to Andrew Wang for writing the Bio, Myth, and a lot of the Chem. Thanks to Jonah for editing.

If you have some suggestions for improvement for next year, let me and Jonah know.

A brief wrap-up is now posted, as is the scoresheet from the championship match.