The Quizbowl Resource Center

Thanks, just checking. The edit threw me off.

Due to availability of staff, I'm enacting a cap of twelve (12) teams. There are currently ten registered teams, and a number of shorthanded teams, so there is still plenty of room for everyone who wants to play.

Our team currently has three people. We can take at least one more. We can take two more if you're willing to rotate out. The three current members are okay with that. My email is brick at silverscreentest dot com

Hey, I think I sent an email registering a Maryland team.

DumbJaques wrote:Hey, I think I sent an email registering a Maryland team.

I didn't receive this. Could you please resend?

Do you know the time, buildings and rooms yet? Shall we assume it will be either the Reckord Armory or Jimenez Hall?

As we have reached 12 teams, the field is now officially closed. There is still room for those who wish to play; try contacting one of the short-handed teams.

Now, as for scheduling; assuming we stay at 12 teams we have four options:

Option 1: 12 team round robin (11 rounds) + Finals (up to 2 rounds)
Option 2: Split into 2 groups of 6 for the prelims & play a full round robin (5 rounds) -> take top 2, middle 2 and bottom 2 of each prelim bracket and split into 3 groups of 4 for playoffs--first, play the 2 teams you didn't play in the prelims, then do a double round robin (8 rounds) + Finals (up to 2 rounds)
Option 3: Split into 2 groups of 6 for the prelims & play a full round robin (5 rounds) -> take top 3 and bottom 3 of each prelim bracket and split into 2 groups of 6 for playoffs--first, play the 3 teams you didn't play in the prelims, then do a single round robin (8 rounds) + Finals (up to 2 rounds)
Option 4: Split into 2 groups of 6 for the prelims & play a full round robin (5 rounds) -> take top 3 and bottom 3 of each prelim bracket and split into 2 groups of 6 and play a single round robin (5 rounds) -> take top 2, middle 2 and bottom 2 of each playoff bracket and split into 3 groups of 4 and play a single round robin (3 rounds) + Finals (up to 2 rounds)

The first option only gives 11 rounds for all teams while options 2-4 give 13 rounds for all teams. I am currently in favor of Option 2 as I feel that gives the most competitive games for everyone while still not excluding anyone that stands a shot at winning it all.

Option 2 sounds like a lot of fun, though it requires diligent seeding. I suspect that wont be a problem though as we all more or less know each other and VCU tournaments are always on top of that kind of thing.

As I posted in the other thread, Eric would enjoy playing the Law Bowl questions sometime this weekend. I'm glad to read. It takes about an hour to get through the questions with a rebracket, but I'm guessing that we won't need to do that at this site, so it will only probably be a 45-minute endeavor. Would the site organizers (or potential players) have any preference between lunch hour and Saturday evening?

First, people playing this tournament next week might want to know that it only has about 3.5/3.5 science per round, with all of the removed 0.5/0.5 coming from chemistry. I realize the distribution wasn't posted, but people should be able to expect something close to a typical distribution if not otherwise notified, and this isn't nearly close enough. There are probably some other areas with changed distributions, but I don't know what they were. Someone from VCU should post the actual distribution as soon as possible.

As a science player who knows the most about chemistry, I was very irritated to see a sizeable chunk of these categories missing without any warning. If you can't competently write a category, try to find someone to fill it or make it very clear what changes are being made, preferrably well in advance, like Sack of Antwerp did.

An even bigger problem is that the messed-up science distribution wasn't the most irritating thing about this set, even from the perspective of a player who saw half of his favorite category unexpectedly missing. Of the questions that were written, a significant number were not written very well, and the difficulty from one to the next fluctuated wildly. This tournament had a significant number of difficulty cliffs and massively misplaced clues leading to buzzer races. I'll try to compile a list of some of the more obvious errors, and hopefully the extra week you have to edit will make this a more enjoyable set for everyone playing other mirrors.

Edit: There were many good questions in this tournament, but the poorer ones are the ones that stand out in my brain at the moment.

Quantum Mushroom Billiard Hat wrote:As a science player who knows the most about chemistry, I was very irritated to see a sizeable chunk of these categories missing without any warning. If you can't competently write a category, try to find someone to fill it or make it very clear what changes are being made, preferrably well in advance, like Sack of Antwerp did.

Judging from the outcry, I guess we should have done this, but I feel it is worth noting that last year's Chemistry distribution (if distributed at a rate of 1/1 Chemistry per packet) would have only filled 11/16 packets, and that distribution was not announced by anyone from the VCU, Michigan or UCSD teams. (This year's fills 8/15 packets). No one complained about that.

Let's be honest here. Most people (i.e. everyone but Michael) aren't actually upset by there being .5/.5 Chem. What you're actually upset about is that there is 3.5/3.5 science. Otherwise, this complaint would have been levied last year, and this year against Penn Bowl (I believe that was the tournament this year where a fair bit of Chemistry was replaced by Biochemistry).

If people are curious, this year's distribution is:
1/1 Misc Arts
1/1 Music
1/1 Painting

1/1 American History
.5/.5 British History
.5/.5 Classical History
1/1 European History
1/1 World History

4/4 Lit. I think there is close to 1/1 American and 1/1 Brit and then 2/2 split approximately equally between European, World and American/British. Don't quote me on this though.

.33/.33 CE
.33/.33 CE/Geo/GK
.33/.33 Geo

1/1 Mythology
1/1 Philosophy
1/1 Religion

1/1 Social Science

.46/.46 Trash

1/1 Biology
1/1 Physics
.54/.54 Chemistry
~.5/.5 Math/CS
~.5/.5 Earth Science/Astro

silverscreentest wrote:Do you know the time, buildings and rooms yet? Shall we assume it will be either the Reckord Armory or Jimenez Hall?

We'll be meeting in Jimenez 0105. Games will start an 9 am, so registration will be from 8:15 to 8:45 am. I'll be sending out an e-mail with final details tonight or tomorrow.

SirT wrote: Judging from the outcry, I guess we should have done this, but I feel it is worth noting that last year's Chemistry distribution (if distributed at a rate of 1/1 Chemistry per packet) would have only filled 11/16 packets, and that distribution was not announced by anyone from the VCU, Michigan or UCSD teams. (This year's fills 8/15 packets). No one complained about that.

Thank you for posting the distribution. However, the bolded statement is wrong: From last year's VCU Open thread:

[17:37] <&WorstQEvr> vcu open will be using the normal acf distro (the non-nats one with 1/1 your choice) with the following modifications/specifications:
[17:37] <&WorstQEvr> your choice will be split at 50% geography, 25% trash, 25% current events, and 1/1 geo will not be a separate category, thus there will be 3/3 rmp in every round
[17:37] <&WorstQEvr> in science, math is guaranteed 1 q per round and chem is not guaranteed more than 1, though there will often be a second chem in the optional science
[17:38] <&WorstQEvr> no other changes
[17:38] <mbjackson> yeah, things like that make sense and are cool
[17:38] <cheynem> that sounds pretty good
[17:38] <mbjackson> though it should probably be public information
[17:39] <mbjackson> i.e. posted

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SirT wrote:Let's be honest here. Most people (i.e. everyone but Michael) aren't actually upset by there being .5/.5 Chem. What you're actually upset about is that there is 3.5/3.5 science. Otherwise, this complaint would have been levied last year, and this year against Penn Bowl (I believe that was the tournament this year where a fair bit of Chemistry was replaced by Biochemistry).

I am certainly more upset about the 3.5/3.5 science, but that doesn't mean I am ok with the major reduction in chemistry. I don't have any problem with some chemistry being replaced with chemistry-based biochem, and in fact did so with some of the chemistry I wrote for IO. This tournament did had very little biochem anyway, and only one of the two tossups I found had any chemistry-based clues.

The biggest point I want to make is not that "you can't mess with the science distribution," but that if you are going to mess with the distribution for any category it should be explicitly stated well before the tournament happens. How would Kurtis react if you did the same thing to lit and removed half of the British lit? What about Mike Cheyne if you cut half of the American history? There is a reason the ACF distribution exists, and if you are going to change it significantly you should make that clear before the tournament happens.

Quantum Mushroom Billiard Hat wrote:Thank you for posting the distribution. However, the bolded statement is wrong: From last year's VCU Open thread

I see I misremembered, but... that was announced about a week beforehand. I'm sure the same outcry would have been had if it had been announced a week beforehand this time (judging from what people who are playing this week's mirrors have said), yet that didn't happen last year. Which brings me back to my point that it isn't the amount of Chemistry distribution that most people actually care about, but the Science distribution, and...

Quantum Mushroom Billiard Hat wrote:How would Kurtis react if you did the same thing to lit and removed half of the British lit?

As you can see from the posted distribution, European Lit was downgraded to about .66/.66 (it's actually slightly higher than this) while World Lit was upped to about .66/.66. That doesn't correspond to the ACF distribution of 1/1 Euro Lit and 0.5/0.5 World Lit, and yet no one seems to have noticed it or thought it unfair. Which brings me to..

Quantum Mushroom Billiard Hat wrote:There is a reason the ACF distribution exists,

This is what people seem to think, but is there really a reason the current ACF distribution has 4/4 of the "Big 3" besides the fact that someone came up with it however long ago and it seems to have worked okay? This is probably a better discussion for another thread, but is the ACF distribution/subdistribution really what's best?

Quantum Mushroom Billiard Hat wrote:and if you are going to change it significantly you should make that clear before the tournament happens.

We didn't think the tweaks to the distribution were very large; however, it is clear from people's responses that we should have informed them of this beforehand.

We definitely should have posted the distribution, whether or not it was adjusted.

SirT wrote:Let's be honest here. Most people (i.e. everyone but Michael) aren't actually upset by there being .5/.5 Chem.

Wrong.

I'll have more to say about it after I've actually played the tournament, but its worth pointing out that this issue has been hashed out in many threads, including here: viewtopic.php?f=21&t=8862&p=159921.

First they came for the Chemists...

SirT wrote: 1/1 Biology
1/1 Physics
.54/.54 Chemistry
~.5/.5 Math/CS
~.5/.5 Earth Science

Um, what? 0 astro in the whole tournament? no general "engineering" or other minor stuff like stats, systems analysis, etc?

gkandlikar wrote:

SirT wrote: 1/1 Biology
1/1 Physics
.54/.54 Chemistry
~.5/.5 Math/CS
~.5/.5 Earth Science

Um, what? 0 astro in the whole tournament? no general "engineering" or other minor stuff like stats, systems analysis, etc?

don't worry, man, there's .5/.5 trash to make up for it

gkandlikar wrote:

SirT wrote: 1/1 Biology
1/1 Physics
.54/.54 Chemistry
~.5/.5 Math/CS
~.5/.5 Earth Science

Um, what? 0 astro in the whole tournament? no general "engineering" or other minor stuff like stats, systems analysis, etc?

Cody meant .5/.5 earth science / astronomy.

gkandlikar wrote:Um, what? 0 astro in the whole tournament? no general "engineering" or other minor stuff like stats, systems analysis, etc?

There is no explicit "other science" distribution; answers from things like engineering found their way into the category which they closest matched.

As a logistical thing, if anyone needs lodging I should have a spare bed in my college park hotel. PM or e-mail me.

Anybody want to play basketball after this is all over? The gym is open until 10 and there are some reasonably well-lit outdoor courts.

Saturday or Sunday? I might be able to play Saturday.

I'd be down for basketball. Is that outdoor court still available?

Hey, is anyone attending this tournament able to give Bernadette and I a ride to our hotel on Sunday night? We'll be in the Doubletree Crystal City and I'd like to avoid the extremely mild inconvenience of carrying my luggage on the metro, if possible.

Visa requirements for Romanian citizens wrote:Anybody want to play basketball after this is all over? The gym is open until 10 and there are some reasonably well-lit outdoor courts.

Totally.

Prof.Whoopie wrote:

Visa requirements for Romanian citizens wrote:Anybody want to play basketball after this is all over? The gym is open until 10 and there are some reasonably well-lit outdoor courts.

Totally.

I'd be down if my parents could give me a ride that late from CP (or Aidan to a Metro on the western branch of the Red Line ) I'd be down

Visa requirements for Romanian citizens wrote:Anybody want to play basketball after this is all over? The gym is open until 10 and there are some reasonably well-lit outdoor courts.

Provided that Matt Bollinger, who is giving me a ride home, is up for staying after, I'd probably come to this.

For the people who are playing basketball, would any of you be able to give me a ride to the Hampton Inn on Baltimore Ave. afterwards? Or is there a campus shuttle that would drop me off in that area? It seems too far to walk from campus.

EDIT: Hotel fail.

On a more quizbowl-relevant note, our team would be glad to have a free agent join us if someone randomly shows up tomorrow. I'll give said person a pat on the back if they know any science.

I'd probably be up for quizbowl basketball Saturday night, but people should note that there's a guest fee of like $7.00 to use the ERC. I don't know what the deal is with the outdoor courts right now.

DumbJaques wrote:I'd probably be up for quizbowl basketball Saturday night, but people should note that there's a guest fee of like $7.00 to use the ERC. I don't know what the deal is with the outdoor courts right now.

There are courts in the Armory, right? Those might be open and free?

Visa requirements for Romanian citizens wrote:Anybody want to play basketball after this is all over? The gym is open until 10 and there are some reasonably well-lit outdoor courts.

I'm seriously upset that I'll miss this.

mhayes wrote:

Visa requirements for Romanian citizens wrote:Anybody want to play basketball after this is all over? The gym is open until 10 and there are some reasonably well-lit outdoor courts.

I'm seriously upset that I'll miss this.

It's the only chance I ever would have gotten to be picked first for a team. My wrist is feeling so much better from my basketball accident too. Dammit!

Stats through round 2: http://results.scobo.net/SQBS.aspx?org= ... =standings

The next update will probably be at lunch, whenever that falls.

http://results.scobo.net/SQBS.aspx?org= ... =standings is now updated through the end of the 5-round prelims. The top two teams in each bracket remain in championship contention.

Sam Bailey is comically underrated by the quizbowl community at large.

Stats are current through the last completed round, round 10.

Stats are done through the playoffs. Where in Svartalfheim is Carmen Sandiego? (Eric Mukherjee, Ted Gioia, Ike Jose, and Chris Ray) and Hong Kong's Next Top Baby Model (Will Butler, Matt Bollinger, Rob Carson, Sarah Angelo) ended in a tie for first at 10-3 and will play a one-game final right now. Nobody Laughs at Stanley Fish (Jerry Vinokurov, Jonathan Magin, Bruce Arthur, Andrew Hart) finished third at 9-4.

Where in Svartalfheim is Carmen Sandiego? defeated Hong Kong's Next Top Baby Model 310-300 in the final.

Thanks to everyone who came out today. If you'd like to access the discussion forum for VCU Open and are not playing VCU Trash tomorrow, you can go to User Control Panel -> Usergroups -> Select VCU Open/Trash Discussion & request to join. If you're playing VCU Trash tomorrow you may request but will not be approved until tomorrow night.

Edit: Sorry to anyone trying to get in tonight but Evan and I have gone to sleep. We'll let you in in the morning.

In the results people really wanted to know about, Quizbasketball happened with a somewhat spheroidal ball and eight somewhat evenly matched players. Game 1 was won by a team consisting of Ted, Dan, Jonathan, and Isaac over the team of Aidan, Andrew, Gary, and myself. After a trade of Dan for Andrew, the Dan/Aidan/Gary/Carsten team won 11-10 in a tight match against Ted/Andrew/Jonathan/Isaac. In a rematch and final game of the night, Ted's team prevailed decisively in a game up to 7.

marnold wrote:Sam Bailey is comically underrated by the quizbowl community at large.

laffeaux at what a hilarious jinx this was

Can you add the final into the stats? Thanks.

Magister Ludi wrote:Can you add the final into the stats? Thanks.

Done.

Hey, I submitted a request to be added to the VCU Open/Trash discussion back on Saturday. Could I get added to that by the powers that be, please?

Or, if the mirrors are all done, could a general thread be started in the regular discussion area?