The Quizbowl Resource Center

This is the general announcement for the Virginia Commonwealth University mirror of this year's Early Fall Tournament (EFT), which will be held in Richmond on Sunday, October 3, 2010. EFT is a novice-difficulty tournament aimed at new players being written by Brown and UIUC. For more information, please see the official EFT 5 announcement thread.

FEES:*
Base fee - $100 per team
Buzzer discount - $5 per buzzer (no limit)
Staffer discount - $10 per staffer (no limit)**
Travel discount - $10 per 200 miles travelled (one-way)

To get a discount, buzzers must actually work for the purpose of a normal quizbowl game; that is, they must have eight working activators, a working control box, and either a working power cord or a fresh battery, as applicable. Don't waste everyone's time bringing broken buzzers to the tournament. That's actually worse than bringing no buzzers at all! Don't bring broken staffers either.

* Any other potential discounts should be discussed with the TD and will decided on a case by case basis.

** high school teams looking for discounts for our high school events are more than welcome to send staff to this for a staffer discount to a future VCU high school event.


REGISTRATION:
To register, please e-mail George Berry at [email protected] with the number of teams, buzzers and staffers you plan to bring, along with an e-mail address where you can contacted with details. The field is currently capped at 24 teams, so registration is first come, first serve.

LOCATION/DIRECTIONS/PARKING:
This tournament is being held on the 3rd and 4th floor of Hibbs Hall on the Monroe Park Campus. The nominal address of Hibbs is 900 Park Avenue if you need something to put in your GPS, but be aware that Hibbs does not actually face the street, so you will have to park and then walk to the area where the building is in order to find it. I suggest printing out the appropriate campus maps and bringing them along--note that Hibbs is directly across from the Cabell Library, which will probably be easier for you to find if you have not been to the VCU campus before.

It is almost certain that the one and only door to Hibbs which will be unlocked for the weekend is the door on the north (interior) side of the vestibule that is on the library side of the building. We will endeavor to have signs up that point you to this door.

PARKING:
On Sundays, parking on the street is free and available in most places around the campus; the best place to park for access to Hibbs is on one of the residential streets such as Park Avenue, Floyd Avenue, or West Avenue that branch off Harrison Street to the west near the Hibbs/library area. If you cannot find a space in that area, then you can try parking on Floyd Avenue near the Commons, or, further south, on Main Street. If all else fails, you should use the parking deck at Harrison and Broad, which is about three blocks north of the tournament building and will charge you somewhere between zero and five dollars to park all day on a Sunday.

TIMES:
Registration will run from 8:15 to 8:45, with the goal of starting Round 1 as soon as possible after 9:00.

FORMAT:
Packets will be ACF-format; tournament format will be determined by the number of teams present, but will be a round-robin followed by ACF-format finals. Each team is guaranteed 10-11 games.

FREELANCE STAFFERS:
You are like, our favorite people ever. Contact me if you want to staff the tournament.

PAYMENT:
All teams must pay on Sunday morning in one of two forms: cash, or a personal or institutional check made out to "Quizbowl at VCU". Do not make checks out to any other person or entity besides "Quizbowl at VCU." If you need an invoice ahead of time so that your sponsor can cut a check, let me know.

--George Berry, tournament director, EFT 5
[email protected]

The field for this tournament will be maintained in this post:

Registered: 18 teams
Liberty x2
Virginia
Maryland x3
George Mason x2
Georgetown
Wake Forest
St. Anselm's
William and Mary x2
Duke
UNC x2
CMU x2

Hey so if you are planning to come to this you should like let me know so I know how bad we will need to find outside staff.

UNC will bring probably 2 teams, I will know better probably by the end of this week.

CMU is coming to this, probably with 1-2 teams.

Georgetown is considering sending a team.

Duke is bringing two teams and one buzzer.

Georgetown is considering sending a team.

Bruce, did you find Kevin Leahy?

Speaking of that, would anybody like to drive Georgetown to this tournament? I'm in Arlington VA but can meet you anywhere in DC.

We have two teams now (plus 2 buzzers and a moderator).

Duke B has dropped and W&M B has registered, so at this time I am going to waitlist any furthur entrants unless we get some really good staff to pop up.

We have had a late drop-- it would be really great if another team could appear for this.

EDIT: GMU B puts us back at 18

Frater Taciturnus wrote:Stats

Maryland puts up 780!

Frater Taciturnus wrote:Stats

it doesn't make sense to attach the preseason team rankings to their stats for the following reasons:
1) it's a preseason poll and everyone knows that bullcrap (look how many votes Minnesota "B" got yesterday)
2) it causes confusion at early tournaments like this where teams are not fielding their full side, due to the difficulty of the tournament. For instance, Chicago A was a really good team, but as it was EFT they were missing some people who belong on the Chicago A team (that is partially based on hearsay, and does not knock any Chicago players, because they are all insane).
3) It's EFT. "This will be a novice-difficulty tournament aimed at new players, similar to past incarnations of EFT and ACF Fall." Do you apply rankings to when the Reds go play the Padres on a little league field with metal bats?

I understand why it was done, to promote the poll, and to give people voting in the poll a slightly easier time (though at most tournaments they have to just look at the top of the standings). But for a novice-difficulty tournament it's inappropriate, and seeing standings like that may make novice players think twice about whether they actually want to come out and get their ass-wooped by the #X team in the country. And we don't want to see something like that that prevents the spread of collegiate quiz bowl.

See I believe this has the opposite effect: a team of novices coming off a 500 point beatdown looks at the stats and sees that team is the number 5 team in the country, and realizes that they lost because they were playing one of the very best teams in all of quizbowl.

Frater Taciturnus wrote:See I believe this has the opposite effect: a team of novices coming off a 500 point beatdown looks at the stats and sees that team is the number 5 team in the country, and realizes that they lost because they were playing one of the very best teams in all of quizbowl.

I would feel better if I got a $700,000 payday. You can tell its one of the best teams in the country, if you just ask somebody, or look at the stats. Like I had clear understanding at my first collegiate tournaments that Chicago was probably going to be the best team we would play, and that would be confirmed when we saw statistics later in the day. This isn't big collegiate athletics, we are not trying to draw a crowd to see the ranked matchup of Maryland taking on Virginia. That is the point of rankings. I mean, if you something about a TV contract or media coverage that I don't know about then keep going at it.

nalin wrote:3) It's EFT. "This will be a novice-difficulty tournament aimed at new players, similar to past incarnations of EFT and ACF Fall." Do you apply rankings to when the Reds go play the Padres on a little league field with metal bats?

Glad that noted novices Trevor Davis, Chris Ray and Bruce Arthur played so well out there on the Little League field yesterday! C'mon guys; I'm gonna get you an ice cream.

The poll's reification is so completely and thoroughly absurd that I'm truly delighted it appears to be happening.

Fred's jab is humorous, although I'm not sure if it's appropriate. EFT has historically not been the same type of tournament as ACF Fall or Fall Novice. My understanding of the last few years is that it is supposed to be a tournament for (virtually) everyone--easy enough that all teams can get answers and know what's going on, but challenging enough lead-ins and hard bonus parts to provide some challenge to veteran players. Trevor and Bruce aren't novices, but they were playing solo, which I don't see anything wrong in unless they blocked some teams from coming.

That said, I find the application of the poll rankings pretty annoying. In college sports, the polls are a combination of butt kissing, being in the "in crowd" with the voters, and play. I'm not sure why we want to take the negative elements of that and make it "official" in a quizbowl setting.

EDIT: I think I misunderstood Fred's jab. Sorry.

I don't see the point in using the rankings. For example, Virginia isn't even at full strength, which undermines the value of putting them in.

Congratulations to Maryland A for defeating Trevor Davis of Carnegie Mellon in an advantaged final to win the 2010 Early Fall Tournament mirror.

I would like to thank every team that came out today to play and compete. I felt that top to bottom this was an incredibly great field, and even at the end of a long day of quizbowl I was very glad to see great attitudes from everyone.

I apologize for the tournament going so late and for the other logistical issues that we faced through the day.

I look forward to seeing everyone at ACF Fall on November 6th.

Playoff stats will be posted tonight.

I don't think anyone at the VCU site took the inclusion of ratings even 10% as seriously as HSQB posters did. From my perspective, it was all good fun. And maybe it will remind some people that the ratings exist, and we'll get more ballots in the future.

Here's a working link to the prelim stats, by the way.

Playoff stats are available here, unfortunately the scoresheets for the following games appear to be lost. If these turn up I can and will update the stats with them.

-William and Mary A vs Georgetown (round 11)
-George Mason b vs Liberty B (round 12)
-Duke vs UNC A (round 12)

Chris' request for combined stats is fulfilled here

Good lord, has this really been a six-post discussion of the poll rankings? It was pretty much universally received as a joke and really, even if that weren't the case, I think George's point has logical merit while Nalin's appears to yell "I wish I had $700,000!" for no particular reason. Attempts to bring in the possible realities behind current NCAA rankings are exceeding "Brandishing a fire poker" on the rational debate-o-meter.

Also, I sure wish people would stop throwing around their (incorrect) declarations that EFT is a novice-only tournament in the style of ACF fall or Collegiate Novice. In addition to very notably not placing those kinds of eligibility restrictions (ridiculous hybrid teams showed up to EFT two years ago!), it's consistently billed by the editors as a regular tournament geared to be more new-player friendly than the typical fare. More importantly, freaking everybody played EFT this year - look around the stats from the various sites. That shouldn't even be surprising, considering that it's one of only two regular events this entire semester (as Andrew Hart alluded to in yet another stupid spate of discussions about this nonsense). Moreover, I'd ask people to consider the implications of abolishing the tournaments that are both established team-friendly and new team-friendly (or functionally abolishing them by declaring that they must be one or the other) - that's really not a wedge we want to see driven in, particularly not when we've already got at least half of the schedule that's squarely in either the decidedly novice or hard(++) open event categories.

EDIT: Rargh, George, combined stats! Post combined stats!

Also, it seems that you guys also didn't correct the typo with my last name. It's definitely "Meng," not "Ming." I don't know why people think my last name is spelled with an i...

Sorry, but it's been a pet peeve of mine ever since I started school.

I think people would stop throwing out these accusations if the writers of the tournament hadn't declared that EFT was a novice geared tournament like ACF Fall in the announcement thread.

Cheynem wrote:I think people would stop throwing out these accusations if the writers of the tournament hadn't declared that EFT was a novice geared tournament like ACF Fall in the announcement thread.

Which has been believed in more recently: Thor, or what EFT writers say about the difficulty of their tournament?

DumbJaques wrote:..., I think George's point has logical merit while Nalin's appears to yell "I wish I had $700,000!" for no particular reason.

In all fairness, I also wish I had $700,000.

Ronnie the Bear wrote:

DumbJaques wrote:..., I think George's point has logical merit while Nalin's appears to yell "I wish I had $700,000!" for no particular reason.

In all fairness, I also wish I had $700,000.

It takes less than that to give me the ice cream you promised...

I need to turn a profit, Bruce.

Morraine Man wrote:

Cheynem wrote:I think people would stop throwing out these accusations if the writers of the tournament hadn't declared that EFT was a novice geared tournament like ACF Fall in the announcement thread.

Which has been believed in more recently: Thor, or what EFT writers say about the difficulty of their tournament?

I've never said EFT is anything but harder/regular questions on easier answers.

Frater Taciturnus wrote:Playoff stats are available here, unfortunately the scoresheets for the following games appear to be lost. If these turn up I can and will update the stats with them.

-William and Mary A vs Georgetown (round 11)
-George Mason b vs Liberty B (round 12)
-Duke vs UNC A (round 12)

Chris' request for combined stats is fulfilled here

Thanks for correcting the typo, but I'm on the combined stats list twice; my playoff stats are contained at #19 and my prelim stats are at #42 on the individuals list.

I have no idea why that is.

Anyway, the full total combined stats are now posted.