The Quizbowl Resource Center

This is the official announcement for the Earlybird Tournament, which will be held at the University of Illinois on Saturday, October 23, 2010.

QUESTIONS:
This tournament will use DAFT (Dunbar Academic Fall Tournament.)

FORMAT:
The Earlybird tournament will use mACF format, with powers. In particular, Earlybird will be a 4-on-4 tournament; matches will be 20/20, with sudden-death tiebreakers; bonuses are three parts read one at a time, and there will be no bouncebacks.

In terms of tournament structure, we usually use some form of round robin, followed by rebracketing and an ACF-format final.

WHO WE'RE TRYING TO ATTRACT:
The University of Illinois ABT is pleased to invite all interested teams from any state to attend this tournament. In the past, we've attracted teams from not just Illinois but also Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky, and Missouri; we hope those teams will return and bring their state compatriots. Everyone will have the chance to play good teams on good questions. We're also interested in receiving second, third, ... teams from the same school.

COST:

The base registration fee is $65. Teams may receive a $5 discount for each working buzzer set they bring up to $10, for a minimum registration fee of $55 per team ($45 should staffers be needed). Subsequent teams after the first will be $50. Should we require staffers from schools they will receive a $10 discount per staffer off of their overall registration team.

REGISTRATION:
If you're interested in registration or have any other questions in general, please e-mail me, David Garb at [email protected]. Please use "Earlybird" as your subject line.

Teams who have indicated attendance:
Culver (IN)
Chatham-Glenwood
Loyola (x2) (2 buzzers)
New Trier (x2)
Rolling Meadows (1 buzzer)
DCC (x2) (MI)(2 buzzers)
Champaign-Centennial (1 buzzer)
Fenton (1 buzzer)(1 staffer)
Carbondale
Lincolnshire academy for the vertically challenged (Stevenson) (2 buzzers)
Stevenson Bomb Squad (Stevenson B)
St. Ignatius (x2) (1 staffer)(1 buzzer)
Jefferson City (MO)
Springfield

18 teams.

We hope to see many of you in October!

Why so late in October?

Between MCMNT, the anticipated date for EFT, and the fact that there are more clubs active this late in October we decided that the later date would help us have larger field.

Well.....perhaps. But I know a large number of teams in your area and further south who don't become active until December. Are you targeting any particular schools' teams?

We'll be there, hopefully with two teams.

With the recent news that HSAPQ plans on producing 2 HS sets this year, this tournament will now be using the Dunbar Academic Fall Tournament (DAFT.)

We are now SCOP affiliated! With that affiliation we are now offering a $15 discount off of registration to any registered SCOP Novice teams. This discount has been added to the announcement post.

FIELD UPDATE!

More teams should come to this tournament.

More teams!

We will bring two buzzers.

P.S. I hear that Lincolnshire Academy team is pretty good

I just submitted some type of paperwork to be sanctioned by the MSHSAA so hopefully some MO teams can make it out here on the 23rd to play some quizbowl.

With the official addition of Stevenson that now means that, according to the HSQB poll, we now have the #7, #12, and #21 teams attending this tournament. More top teams are rumored to be signing up so no one should miss this opportunity to play some of the best teams in the country.

Thank you so much for getting this MSHSAA-sanctioned. Hopefully I'll be able to make it to this event. :D

St. Ignatius College Prep will have at least one team and one staffer (me).

This tournament will now have a soft cap of 18 teams. That means that once/if I reach 18 teams then new teams registering will be put on a wait list until 5 teams are on the wait list, then those teams will be admitted to a field and it will be a 24 team tournament.

We're supposed to get confirmation for this by tomorrow... well, actually it was supposed to be today, but our AD failed. Should be sometime soon at any rate.

This tournament will be held in the English building. Coaches should expect an email within the next few days asking for information regarding registration. We are still hoping for more teams, 2 more can fit in the main field and the rest will go on the wait list.

We may only have one team, I'll let you know for certain next Friday.

This field is rapidly approaching 18 teams. On that note, I highly encourage teams to try to field B-teams so that we may expand the field to 24 teams.

Pending Loyola having 1 or 2 teams this field has one more spot, or is closed. I highly encourage more teams to sign up/teams already signed up to field B-teams so that we may open the field to 24 teams.

Loyola B is confirmed and the field's soft cap has now been reached.

I still highly encourage teams to try to field B teams so that we can reach 24.

David

This tournament is now PACE affiliated.

Eureka's out and St. Ignatius B is in.

field is closed. Nobody drop...please.

Statistics for the preliminary rounds are now online:

http://results.scobo.net/uiucacademicbu ... ird2010pre

Stats for the morning:

http://results.scobo.net/SQBS.aspx?org= ... =standings

Here are complete statistics, including the advantage final between Stevenson A and DCC A:

http://results.scobo.net/uiucacademicbu ... lybird2010

We're just starting the first game of a final in which Stevenson (10-0) is advantaged over DCC A (9-1).

Stevenson beat DCC 370-365 in the first game of an advantaged final to win the tournament.


Prelims: http://results.scobo.net/SQBS.aspx?org= ... =standings

Playoffs: http://results.scobo.net/SQBS.aspx?org= ... =standings

Combined: http://results.scobo.net/SQBS.aspx?org= ... =standings



Thanks to all the teams and people who helped staff. A more comprehensive post will be coming.

Garb and the ABT deserve major props for running an efficient, well-organized tournament, and all the attending teams—especially, of course, Stevenson—are to be congratulated on playing many impressive games. While I don't think anyone was surprised by who the top couple of teams turned out to be, I saw really impressive and somewhat less expected performances from (in no particular order, and not necessarily limited to) Centennial, Fenton, Glenwood, and New Trier A. I hope Centennial and Glenwood will be able to attend many quality tournaments this year so they can continue to demonstrate and hone their skills. (I mean, I hope the same for Fenton and NT, but that's not much in question.)


On the other hand, the DAFT set left a great deal to be desired. While I can't get into specifics, it contained a multitude of factual errors, confusing or nonsensical wording, odd use of tenses, sentences that did not appear to be written in English or anything else parseable, omitted alternative answers that sometimes bordered on hoses, inscrutable sentence structures, and several other tropes that are not publicly discussable because they are too content-specific.

With three weeks having passed since this set's last use, many of these issues ought to have been fixed, and for the sake of future sites, I hope these issues will be remedied. I would be glad to be more specific in an appropriate forum for such discussion, as would (I'm sure) many of the players and other moderators who dealt with these issues. In particular, it's worth noting that the finals match featured three protests concerning substantive question-related issues, all of which we eventually researched and determined that the packet was wrong about: one factual error, one omitted alternative answer, and one bit of excessive underlining. I don't expect sets to be perfect, or even necessarily close, but this was a phenomenon widespread to the point of inexcusability.

I was counting on Princeton's team to send me their edits after their mirror in exchange for a heavily discounted mirroring fee. Obviously, midterms and what not got in the way of this. If you have any suggestions/corrections, please e-mail them to me, as that would be a more efficient way of fixing any "inexcusable" errors.

Edit: Noticed I misspelled stuff when I wrote this post on my phone

Huang wrote:I was counting on Princeton's team to send me their edits after their mirror in exchange for a heavily discounted mirroring fee. Obviously, midterms and what not got in the way of this. If you have any suggestions/corrections, pkease e-mail them to me, as that would be a more efficent way of fixing any "inexcusable" errors.

Is there like a private discussion thread or something for DAFT?

As Ohio State is running a tournament on this set next week, I'd very much be interested in getting something set up so that these problems can be fixed.

Inkana7 wrote:As Ohio State is running a tournament on this set next week, I'd very much be interested in getting something set up so that these problems can be fixed.

As I've mentioned, e-mailing me actually does work, not to mention that it is the fastest way for these very real problems to be fixed. In fact, at this very moment, I am editing the question that Ryan sent me last night. E-mail: [email protected]

The stats for the match between Fenton and Stevenson A say there were 0 tossups...

octo wrote:The stats for the match between Fenton and Stevenson A say there were 0 tossups...

Fixed in this version of the stats: prelims, overall.

69 powers, good stuff Kevin Malis.

Another well-run tournament by the Garb and the ABT crew... I was glad I decided to come at the last minute. There were some very good players and teams on display which made me happy. Greg is right--Malis's line speaks for itself. Stevenson will do mad work at NSC. They tore apart both Ignatius and Loyola and it will be hard for those two teams to get over the hump for "best in Illinois".

From Jonah's post I assume there are other places running this set, so I won't go into specifics. If I recall correctly, there was a lot of discussion about the last set after it took place, and it was disappointing to see many of those criticisms go unaddressed, the most egregious of which being the unnecessarily cross-disciplinary bonus parts. All and all there seemed to be a fundamental misunderstanding of bonus content and the tossups did not adequately distinguish between teams in the top bracket. Of course, I speak from the perspective of watching Loyola and don't know how the other playoff brackets went. I don't like ripping this set because clearly there was a lot of effort put forth in its creation, but stuff that should have been corrected was not.

JackGlerum wrote:I don't like ripping this set because clearly there was a lot of effort put forth in its creation, but stuff that should have been corrected was not.

By all means, please send me these corrections (if you don't have the set, let me know). I will go through the set again tonight before I send it off to Ohio State. As for a "fundamental misunderstanding of bonus content," the interdisciplinary stuff was much less present than last year's set. If you also mean to say that the bonuses were too easy, I would disagree because this set is being used in weaker regions of the country, like Kentucky, where bonus conversion barely reached 20 PPB.

it was disappointing to see many of those criticisms go unaddressed, the most egregious of which being the unnecessarily cross-disciplinary bonus parts.

Will the Illinois fixation on things that don't entirely matter over things of greater import ever end?

Is this platinum/gold certified yet?

Yeah, it takes more than 48 hours for a tournament to be reviewed for certification. I'd suggest asking George Berry, the head of the certification committee, via email about the status of tournaments in the future.

Edit: Actually, more than 23 hours, which is the time period from the final stats being posted to your question.

ryandillon wrote:

Huang wrote:I was counting on Princeton's team to send me their edits after their mirror in exchange for a heavily discounted mirroring fee. Obviously, midterms and what not got in the way of this. If you have any suggestions/corrections, pkease e-mail them to me, as that would be a more efficent way of fixing any "inexcusable" errors.

Is there like a private discussion thread or something for DAFT?

Is this the case? I played it today, and while there certainly weren't problems on the scale of what was described here, I can remember a couple way too hard/gimme 30 bonuses and several duplicates.

I have just been informed that this tournament has been granted Platinum certification by PACE, this means that the top 6 teams have qualifed for the 2011 PACE NSC. Congratulations to Stevenson, DCC A, Loyola, DCC B, St. Ignatius, and Carbondale you all did a great job this weekend and I can't wait to see how you perform in the spring.

I split this off into two more threads:

Here is the ragey DAFT discussion, which is going to be replaced by a private discussion forum some time tonight

William Horton raised an interesting point about the PACE certification process and its review of questions, which can be found at the appropriate link.

Let's stick with Earlybird talk in this thread from now on.

Fred wrote:Yeah, it takes more than 48 hours for a tournament to be reviewed for certification. I'd suggest asking George Berry, the head of the certification committee, via email about the status of tournaments in the future.

Edit: Actually, more than 23 hours, which is the time period from the final stats being posted to your question.

Hey so I guess I'm gonna have to be 'that guy' again. So yeah, I know it's Thanksgiving and people are out of town from their usual places of residence, but PACE should probably get on reviewing tournaments for certification again. According to the website, teams/tournaments have not been done in 5 weeks now and considering that the announced first date for registration for platinum teams is in 4 days, reviewing/certifying tournaments again/soon would be cool.

Prelims
Playoffs
Combined

The PACE qualification emails stemming from this tournament were sent about four weeks ago. Next time, please check with your coach before making such statements.

dtaylor4 wrote:Prelims
Playoffs
Combined

The PACE qualification emails stemming from this tournament were sent about four weeks ago. Next time, please check with your coach before making such statements.

Considering the fact that the website seemingly is not/has not been updated, there would be no way to know that unless directly involved in such e-mail chains. Please check the website in issue before making statements that my points are irrelevant.

Secretary of Bobcats wrote:

dtaylor4 wrote:Prelims
Playoffs
Combined

The PACE qualification emails stemming from this tournament were sent about four weeks ago. Next time, please check with your coach before making such statements.

Considering the fact that the website seemingly is not/has not been updated, there would be no way to know that unless directly involved in such e-mail chains. Please check the website in issue before making statements that my points are irrelevant.

PACE is well aware of and working to address this issue. This morning I agreed to take over from the person previously responsible for this, as he has found himself too busy with other responsibilities. This evening I should have both access to the website and to the certification committee's list of qualified teams and affiliated tournaments in order to begin making this information more publicly available. Given that the end of my semester is rapidly approaching, I appreciate your patience as I begin working to address this backlog of information.