Goldfish National Championship Tournament

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Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by pblessman »

This spring, your team can compete on NAQT questions against teams from all across the nation (and the world!) without even having to leave the comfort of your school! On April 30, Culver Academies will host the First Annual Goldfish National Championship Tournament- the first asynchronous National Championship featuring NAQT questions and buzzer systems!

All participating teams will be e-mailed a specially written NAQT packet with 30 TU and 24 PLEASE MAKE FUN OF ME BECAUSE I SPEAK NEITHER LATIN NOR ENGLISH, and on April 30 each team will get out their buzzer system and play a match against their favorite goldfish, moderated by the team coach (hence the tournament name!). The coach records the TU and Bonus scores for each question as well as on which word the team buzzed in and submits this info in Excel format.

The data will be analyzed to come up with two groups of results: The first list will show how many points each team scored against their goldfish on 24 TU/Bon, while the second group of data will show head-to-head scores for all possible permutations of teams. This means that if a hundred teams compete in this tournament, you will be able to see how you stack up against ninety-nine other teams!

The entry fee per team is $10; each school can enter as many teams as they like. The entry fee must be submitted by April 23 via PayPal to Phil Blessman at pblessman [at] yahoo [dot] com. Please also feel free to write Phil at the same address if you have any questions! We hope you can all make it!
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by TheCzarMan »

Goldfish?
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by cdcarter »

TheCzarMan wrote:Goldfish?
National rankings based on one packet?
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by Maxwell Sniffingwell »

This seems so bad on so many levels.
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by AKKOLADE »

What if the fish dies in the midst of the match? Does that invalidate results?

What about clownfish?

Are cats banned from competing?

How will you make an underwater buzzer?

How will Thomas Jefferson's players prepare a fish in a bowl of water without short circuiting themselves?

How will you justify ranking fish and humans alike on a single 24/24 packet that won't even give the beginning of a significant sample size?
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by dtaylor4 »

Also, why waste a perfectly good packet when you could just do a written test?
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by Ondes Martenot »

Huh? Goldfish? Is this an episode of the twilight zone or something?
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by pblessman »

I knew there would be a lot of questions!

What about clownfish?

Are of course allowed...

Are cats banned from competing?

Only if they don't eat the Goldfish... or Clownfish... or whatever fish (if any) you're competing against.

How will you make an underwater buzzer?

The Goldfish will have no buzzer... might seem unfair, but on the other hand, I am pretty sure the "Goldfish" will have a disadvantage against most any high school quizbowl team anyway, even if you gave him a buzzer...

How will Thomas Jefferson's players prepare a fish in a bowl of water without short circuiting themselves?

You would hope they could find a way. Somebody's mentioned they're supposed to be smart...

How will you justify ranking fish and humans alike on a single 24/24 packet that won't even give the beginning of a significant sample size?

Well... I'd love to do a full set of 15 packets and do the analysis of all iterations, but eventually I'll probably have to do some other work... or play with my kids... or sleep... Of course there are severe limitations as to how valid these results are. But, at the same time, what we effectively have here is a full round-robin of ALL teams competing, which I hope will be many. Each match effectively occurs on the same packet, but you can't have everything. This means that we should be able to extrapolate pretty well how well each team would have done against any other team on this packet... Not the same as a live tournament, but it definitely beats the KMO.

Also, why waste a perfectly good packet when you could just do a written test?

The written test doesn't take into account at which point in a question a team buzzes in, which of course is the big difference between good and great teams.

Huh? Goldfish? Is this an episode of the twilight zone or something?

Goldfish, Pet Rock, Potted Plant... any of these would work. The idea, of coures, is that essentially the team is just playing against the packet, and against teams who are not there, i.e. still try to get questions as early as possible to do well when compared to the other teams.
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by AlphaQuizBowler »

This seems like an interesting concept, although it shouldn't really claim to be a national championship or national rankings (I think the national championship in the title is a joke, though). One question I have, though, is what if two teams record buzzing on the same word?
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by pblessman »

Thanks, AlphaQuizBowler! Indeed, this event should be viewed as somewhat tongue-in-cheek (and fun, I hoped!)... I figured the Goldfish in the title made that clear... Therefore, this is not trying to compete with NAQT and PACE as a National Championship in that sense- we are only aiming to crown the National Champion in beating up on a Goldfish (and running some comparisons between teams as well...).

I'm planning on resolving buzz-in ties by giving each team half the points they would have gotten had they gotten the question outright, e.g. if Teams A and B both buzz in correctly on the same word and get 20 and 30 on the bonus respectively, then Team A would get 15 points (5+10) and Team B 20 (5+15). This is supposed to represent that in the actual game each team would have had a 50% chance of getting the TU, so they should get the corresponding expectation value.
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by quizbowllee »

Wait a minute... You're serious? I thought this was a joke...

This is one of the worst ideas I've ever heard. I'm 100% on board.
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by quizbowl »

This seems very much like KMO to me. Except with buzzers instead of computer.
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by pblessman »

I'm a simple-minded guy, obviously... WHY is this such a bad idea?
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by evilmonkey »

Oh my... I don't know quite what to say. Its an interesting concept, in theory.

Isn't it true that, in a game situation, a player's ability to think may be altered A) by the presence of another team or B) by the presence of a pressure situation (get this or lose mentality)? Also, isn't a player's ability to think affected by playing many rounds over the course of the day?

Just as a clarification: Would every single bonus be read to each team? Because, obviously, if you are simulating each game, then you'd need the results of each bonus. Otherwise, you'd have teams not having read a certain bonus.

If a lot of teams get on board with this, it would obviously be a great way to have a national ranking system going into the HSNCT and NSC, assuming all coaches are honest. It would in no way replace Nationals, since you can't really replace 10 prelims plus another day of playoff matches against real people with a single match against a goldfish.
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by aestheteboy »

I think this is an interesting idea; I too wonder why people consider it the worst idea ever or something.

I just wouldn't ever pay for it. If you decided to do this as a charity/service to the qb community, I'd definitely participate. I might even pay if only you decided to get a real pyramidal packet rather than NAQT!
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by AlphaQuizBowler »

aestheteboy wrote:I just wouldn't ever pay for it.
Is $10 really a prohibitive cost? That's not much more than tournaments charge if you calculated the per-round cost. Besides, they can't do this for free because I imagine that NAQT is charging them for the questions.
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by pblessman »

Here are the answers to the most recent questions:

1. Bonuses will be tied to TUs, i.e. if you get question 7 right we'll read Bonus #7, independently of whether you have answered all previous TUs correctly. This is necessary so we're comparing apples with apples (otherwise a team could "play" another team and both teams answer the same bonus on different TUs).

2. I'm happy to be completely transparent about the finances here: NAQT is charging us a $25 flat cost +$1.25 per team. The amount of time I and my little elves will spend on compiling all results is considerable... I am not exactly sure how many hours it will be (and to some degree this will depend on how many teams compete). If I have to talk my team into doing this I envision buying large amounts of pizza... I'm planning on using an Excel spreadsheet macro to make things easier, but this will be far from automated... if there is any profit left over, any excess will go to support the Culver Academies Quizbowl Program (not into my pocket). I semi-randomly chose the $10 per team cost as an amount which compares VERY favorably with the only other similar competition (KMO-$38.00), is similar to the per-round cost teams pay at most tournaments, and seemed like a virtually insignificant cost... this is basically a nominal fee here, less than a small latte per player. If cost is really the issue for teams (which I have a hard time imagining...), I'll be happy to consider to lower the cost somewhat... but I'm not going to do this for free. If somebody else wants to run the event for free, I'm happy to pass it on to them (Put me down for four teams!).

3. Players affected by presence of other players, etc... Yes... Basically I was tring to make this as similar to real QB as possible (without having all teams travel to a central location and then do a full round robin, which would take days or even weeks...) Basically what we have here is something that I believe is more similar to real QB than KMO or ChipBowl over IRC (the only remote options out there), but not as similar to real QB as real face-to-face QB. Nothing, I believe, can replace real face-to-face QB. This is just one more opportunity for teams to experience competition, especially because it could open the doors to the many teams who never travel to NAQT tournaments to compare themselves in at least a semi-meaningful way to other teams across the country.
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by aestheteboy »

pblessman wrote:The amount of time I and my little elves will spend on compiling all results is considerable... I am not exactly sure how many hours it will be (and to some degree this will depend on how many teams compete) . . . If somebody else wants to run the event for free, I'm happy to pass it on to them (Put me down for four teams!)
I apologize. I had assumed that you had already come up/would be able to come up with a program that would automate the process of comparing teams. If not, I have to say it's a pretty bad use of human resource. (nC2) number of games with 30 tossups . . . do you really want to do that by hand?
On the other hand, if somebody could come up with such software, I'd be perfectly willing to write 20/20 packet, punch in the data, and publish the results. Again, I think it's an interesting idea . . .
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by cdcarter »

aestheteboy wrote:
pblessman wrote:The amount of time I and my little elves will spend on compiling all results is considerable... I am not exactly sure how many hours it will be (and to some degree this will depend on how many teams compete) . . . If somebody else wants to run the event for free, I'm happy to pass it on to them (Put me down for four teams!)
I apologize. I had assumed that you had already come up/would be able to come up with a program that would automate the process of comparing teams. If not, I have to say it's a pretty bad use of human resource. (nC2) number of games with 30 tossups . . . do you really want to do that by hand?
On the other hand, if somebody could come up with such software, I'd be perfectly willing to write 20/20 packet, punch in the data, and publish the results. Again, I think it's an interesting idea . . .
This would not be very hard. I think I could swing it, and it would be better than some excel macros. I think the idea is interesting, although the results would need to have a big flashing "these results will be wacky"
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by evilmonkey »

I will join your team of elves if you're not done by May 10.

If you have TU/bonuses linked, why are there 30/24.

How do you plan on resolving two teams buzzing at the same time?
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by pblessman »

Thanks for offering to help!

30/24 for "ties".. 3 TUs at first and then sudden death. This should resolve 99.9999% of all ties. On the Goldfish list only 24/24 would be used, i.e. 6 TUs are purely to resolve head-to-head ties.

Ties on buzz-ins is described above... basically I give each team 50% of the points they would have gotten.
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by Ben Dillon »

How will you work negs?

I ask because playing against a "goldfish" becomes more strategic than I thought at first. For example, playing against a live opponent, you are aware of whether or not the other team has negged. Since only one team can neg, you can still safely try for power.

To wit: When a player negs, it might not actually work out to be a neg, if he or she was outnegged by the other team. In fact, I presume the neg won't even count when your team is second to the buzzer. (I'll assume that if both players neg simultaneously, each gets -2.5 by your tie-breaking rule, which is fair.)

Hence, coaches may coach players to play it differently than they normally do as to how aggressive they should be. For example, the aggressive player might think to be more aggressive, because they're trying to outbuzz 40 other teams, but perhaps they should be coached to be less aggressive because they should be waiting for more aggressive players on the 40 other teams to neg. Also, players should be advised to interrupt more than they normally would, because most other teams have either already powered, scored, or negged on the question, and so there's less chance of negging yourself.

Or am I overthinking all of this? :)
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by pblessman »

Ben Dillon wrote:Or am I overthinking all of this? :)
Yes. That's the short answer. :)

The longer answer is that we'll score everything as closely to how live head-to-head NAQT quizbowl works, so negs will only be negs for the first team to neg. The second team who negs doesn't get penalized. Tie negs will cost you -2.5. I don't anticipate strategy being bizzarrely different, apart from the fact that you don't know what other teams are doing on any particular question. Still, answering questions correctly will be rewarded, answering questions correctly earlier will be rewarded even more...

:arminius: And why the heck is Herman the German in here as a "smilie" option? I really do think it's the coolest thing ever that he is available, but it's bizarre... I grew up 10 miles from where the statue stands...
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by PaladinQB »

pblessman wrote: :arminius: And why the heck is Herman the German in here as a "smilie" option? I really do think it's the coolest thing ever that he is available, but it's bizarre... I grew up 10 miles from where the statue stands...
There was a protest at the 2006 NAQT ICT involving Matt Weiner and the acceptability of "Herman" for Arminius. I don't know for sure as I wasn't too active on this board at that time, but I assume that's why it's a smilie. There are some more details as to the situation here.
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by ihavenoidea »

Or am I being completely stupid here and that is what you proposed all along? :oops:

EDIT: Owned
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by Pilgrim »

ihavenoidea wrote:Or am I being completely stupid here and that is what you proposed all along? :oops:
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by Ondes Martenot »

Anyway....I'll speak with my coach but you can put us down for a tentative. The idea behind it all is still taking some time to settle in....
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by Matt Weiner »

This is a satire on KMO, right?
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by pblessman »

Satire? Not really... if the funny title is making people think it's a satire, I'm sorry. I do see this as an alternative to KMO- providing a more quizbowl way for teams to compete remotely. Not perfect, but it's a start, I believe...
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by Golran »

We're gonna be in, just need to determine how many teams we'll use (Ward Melville).
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

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Put Brindlee Mountain down for 3 teams.
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by Matthew D »

Put Scottsboro down for one team
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by Ondes Martenot »

I'm sorry if I'm a little slow in getting this. If you have multiple teams from one school, they all hear the same questions, but at different times or something like that. In that case, Bergen could probably have three-four teams.
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by AndyShootsAndyScores »

aarcoh wrote:I'm sorry if I'm a little slow in getting this. If you have multiple teams from one school, they all hear the same questions, but at different times or something like that. In that case, Bergen could probably have three-four teams.
Yeah, kind of liking doing the KMO at different times.
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by Stained Diviner »

If you neg, should you try a different answer at the end of the question in case your "opponent" has an earlier neg? In a normal match, if your opponent had already negged, you hopefully would have waited for the end of the question and probably answered it correctly, earning ten points and the bonus.
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by evilmonkey »

ReinsteinD wrote:If you neg, should you try a different answer at the end of the question in case your "opponent" has an earlier neg? In a normal match, if your opponent had already negged, you hopefully would have waited for the end of the question and probably answered it correctly, earning ten points and the bonus.
Hmm, interesting twist. I believe he's got a point.
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by Ben Dillon »

That doesn't sound right to me at all. You have no way of knowing whether your opponent has already negged, powered, or even buzzed in. Knowing what happened to them defeats the purpose of it being a blind match against an opponent. Would knowing about a neg affect whether or not you interrupt? Of course, but you might still interrupt if you thought there was still a chance for power on the question.

More importantly, under no circumstances should you get a second bite at the apple. One buzz per team, I should think. You buzzes in, you takes your chances, you gets what result you gets.
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by Captain Sinico »

I... disagree? Also, what?

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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by Matt Weiner »

Ben Dillon wrote: You have no way of knowing whether your opponent has already negged, powered, or even buzzed in.
I agree, this whole thing IS a terrible idea!
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by pblessman »

Two clarifications to questions:

1. You can enter more than one team per school, but players should of course not listen to the questions when they are being read to other teams from the same school. Ideal would be if you have more than one buzzer system and more than one coach- then you can have each of your teams compete at the same time, but in different rooms. If you have only one buzzer system or only one coach, you can have the same coach read the questions for each team, with teams competing sequentially.

2. Each team will only get to answer each TU once. There will be no opportunity to wait out negs... unless that's your strategy and you want to wait until the end of each question anyway. (Certainly a legit approach which might garner the team a very respectable "Goldfish" score, but the team would most likely suffer head-to-head.)
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by Stained Diviner »

Mr. Blessman just made his ruling, so this probably is a moot point by now. However, since you are theoretically playing 100 opponents at once, or whatever the number is, there is a good chance that at least one of them negged before you did.
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by Captain Sinico »

ReinsteinD wrote:Mr. Blessman just made his ruling, so this probably is a moot point by now. However, since you are theoretically playing 100 opponents at once, or whatever the number is, there is a good chance that at least one of them negged before you did.
But c'mon! Apples!

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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by Maxwell Sniffingwell »

pblessman wrote:2. Each team will only get to answer each TU once. There will be no opportunity to wait out negs... unless that's your strategy and you want to wait until the end of each question anyway. (Certainly a legit approach which might garner the team a very respectable "Goldfish" score, but the team would most likely suffer head-to-head.)
So teams aren't even going to be playing it like it's real quizbowl, eh? I thought the whole point of this was to get the score of a hypothetical QUIZBOWL match between the teams.

I.e. if Dorman-EP yields a 300-240 score, I would like that to mean that if Dorman actually played EP on this packet, they would win 300-240, plus or minus buzzer ties/random chance stuff.
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by AndyShootsAndyScores »

cornfused wrote:
pblessman wrote:2. Each team will only get to answer each TU once. There will be no opportunity to wait out negs... unless that's your strategy and you want to wait until the end of each question anyway. (Certainly a legit approach which might garner the team a very respectable "Goldfish" score, but the team would most likely suffer head-to-head.)
So teams aren't even going to be playing it like it's real quizbowl, eh? I thought the whole point of this was to get the score of a hypothetical QUIZBOWL match between the teams.

I.e. if Dorman-EP yields a 300-240 score, I would like that to mean that if Dorman actually played EP on this packet, they would win 300-240, plus or minus buzzer ties/random chance stuff.
No one said it was perfect. Let's not deride it until it's had its chance.
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by cdcarter »

pblessman wrote:2. Each team will only get to answer each TU once. There will be no opportunity to wait out negs... unless that's your strategy and you want to wait until the end of each question anyway. (Certainly a legit approach which might garner the team a very respectable "Goldfish" score, but the team would most likely suffer head-to-head.)
If there was some sort of simple way to run the scores as if each team made a buzz and a giveaway buzz, perhaps you could do it both ways (not to say that I have the program finished, but it is getting close :) )
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by tomburr »

Having a "giveaway" buzz after a neg makes sense. Each time a team negs, they should be given a chance to answer at the end of the question. This answer, if correct, would be recorded. When this team matches up with a team that negged earlier than they did, the giveaway buzz counts and the neg does not. Also, when a team negs but gets the giveaway buzz, they should complete the bonus as if they had gotten it. Once again,this would only be used in the situation where an opposing team negged first.
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by AndyShootsAndyScores »

tomburr wrote:Having a "giveaway" buzz after a neg makes sense. Each time a team negs, they should be given a chance to answer at the end of the question. This answer, if correct, would be recorded. When this team matches up with a team that negged earlier than they did, the giveaway buzz counts and the neg does not. Also, when a team negs but gets the giveaway buzz, they should complete the bonus as if they had gotten it. Once again,this would only be used in the situation where an opposing team negged first.
Thirded, or whatever number we're on.
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by pblessman »

Wow... the emotion about the giveaway neg issue... I love it! I guess maybe I should explain my reply: I am facing two problems here:

1. When one team negs after the other has already negged, it is difficult to determine how the earlier neg would have affected the second team's actions. Obviously, we can't perfectly simulate a game situation here, because in this case...

a. ... you don't know how the other team has acted. This means in particular that you don't know what answer the other team gave as a neg- this would be potentially very useful information for the second team (might even be a giveaway, depending on the question...).

b. ... you don't know the current game score. The game might be very close, a blow-out one way or the other, you might need to catch up 50 points (or be ahead 50) with one question to go. In a live game, these factors will affect whether you try to still power a question, even if the other team has already negged. So even though it is true that MOST teams will wait out the question in MOST situations when the other team has already negged, this is certainly not always true. I am going to make a completely unscientific estimate that in 25% of cases teams actually still do buzz in before the end of the question when the other team has already negged. If we allowed the second buzz, these 25% of cases would not be considered.

2. If I were to allow a team to give a second answer after they have already negged, we are effectively giving the team two chances at the question. This sounds very odd to me... and which players can buzz in? Any player? To be consistent, we'd have to allow any player to buzz in, because presumably the whole team would have waited until the end of the question. But this would (most likely) give the same player two chances at the same question. The player would find out that his or her first answer is wrong, and then gets a second chance... it just doesn't feel right.

So- I really appreciate the emotion around this issue- I am truly trying to make this as much like a "real" quizbowl game as possible. In my opinion, this is as close as we can get on the neg issue. There is simply too much (in my mind) speaking against allowing a team a second shot at the question, so much so that I feel allowing a second buzz would distort the game more than the lack of ability to wait out the negged questions. That being said, we'll see how this competition goes, and if there is overwhelming support that this has to change next time because there are a lot of double negs which affect game scores, I'll be happy to reconsider for the next round of Goldfish.
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by tomburr »

How many teams are you capping the field at? 100? I still don't quite see how that would be logistically possible, at nearly 5000 match-ups. If I could be convinced that it will actually be workable, South Fork would be in for up to 3 teams.
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Re: Goldfish National Championship Tournament

Post by pblessman »

I'm not planning on a cap, but I am anticipating a field of about 100... 5000 match-ups is a lot, but data analysis will be at least semi-automated, so I am hopeful results will only take us a few days to compile.
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