Page 1 of 1

Region 1 SCT at MIT (February 16, 2013)

Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2013 5:00 pm
by t-bar
MIT will host the Region 1 (Northeast) NAQT SCT on February (EDIT: 16), 2013. We apologize for the delay in getting an announcement up; hopefully it will not prevent anyone from attending.

LOGISTICS (added January 31): Registration will be in room 6-120 starting at 8:30 AM. Please arrive by 9:00 AM; we will aim to start games by 9:15 AM. If we require 9 or fewer game rooms, they will all be in Building 2 of MIT's main campus. Any additional rooms we may need will be in the adjacent Building 4. Unfortunately, the hallway connecting Buildings 2 and 4 is currently closed for construction, so moving between them requires either going outside or taking a detour through Buildings 6 and 8. However, we should have more than enough rooms to house one division in each building, so no switching at all should be necessary between rounds.

IMPORTANT: Since MIT is hosting a high school tournament the week after SCT, and due to the last-minute nature of these preparations, we will NOT be able to provide a full complement of staff. (EDIT January 31: Our high school tournament has been moved, so our staffing situation is no longer as dire as it was at one point. However, we still welcome outside staffers, and will still offer the following discounts for staffers affiliated with a school in attendance.) For that reason, we are offering steep discounts to schools that bring moderators; essentially, we will only be charging enough to cover our question costs. We will be offering a flat discount of $75 for the first qualified moderator from a school and $60 for further moderators. You may only claim a discount for a number of moderators less than or equal to the number of teams you bring, though if you have more than that we would certainly love to have them.

The full fee and discount schedule is as follows:
First team: $120 each
Subsequent teams: $100 each
Buzzer systems: $10 discount each
Clocks: $5 discount each
First moderator: $75* discount per qualified moderator; please tell us as soon as possible whether you will be taking advantage of this discount
Subsequent moderators: $60 each
New school: $20 discount for any team from a school that has neither competed in nor hosted an SCT in the past two years

*Jeff has informed me that NAQT's registration system only accommodates a single level of moderator discount, so your discount will go into the system as a $60 discount, and we will reimburse you with $15 in cash on the day of the tournament. In the event that any other features of our (somewhat unusual) price schedule are incompatible with NAQT's system, we'll resolve the differences in cash too.

The minimum fee for any given team is the question fee for that team, as outlined on the NAQT website:
http://www.naqt.com/sct/2013/host-requirements.html wrote: The cost of the questions is $40 for the first team from a school and $35 for each subsequent team. Other than this per-team licensing fee, there is no other fee to be paid to NAQT to host a Sectional. Teams that qualify for the "new school" discount cost only $25 for the first team and $20 for each subsequent team.
Please note that the moderator discount brings you to either exactly this question fee or $5 above it. Therefore, bringing a buzzer in addition to a moderator gets you only a $5 discount.

You can register for the SCT here. We hope to see you on February 16!

Re: Region 1 SCT at MIT (February 9, 2013)

Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2013 11:54 pm
by t-bar
The most up-to-date official field can be found here.

Division I Field (8 teams):
Brown A
Columbia
Dartmouth A
Dartmouth B
Harvard A
Harvard B
NYU A
Yale A

Division II Field (18 teams):
Amherst
Boston College A
Boston College B
Brown B
Dartmouth C
Harvard C
Harvard D
Middlebury
MIT
NYU B
SUNY-Stony Brook
Vassar
Wellesley
Wesleyan A
Wesleyan B
Williams
Yale B
Yale C

Buzzers (21) and clocks (1):
Amherst (2 buzzers)
Boston College (1 buzzer)
Columbia (2 buzzers)
Dartmouth (1 buzzer)
Harvard (7 buzzers)
McGill (1 buzzer)
MIT (1 buzzer)
NYU (1 buzzer)
SUNY-Stony Brook (1 buzzer)
Wesleyan (1 buzzer)
Williams (1 buzzer)
Yale (2 buzzers; 1 clock)

Re: Region 1 SCT at MIT (February 9, 2013)

Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2013 9:23 am
by Adventure Temple Trail
Yale is collecting interest and plans to sign up teams in both divisions. I'm glad to try and seek out staff in the area if that would help, and am also willing to read on my bye round should my division have an odd number of teams.

EDIT: Seems pretty likely that this will indeed be two Division I teams and two Division II teams.

Re: Region 1 SCT at MIT (February 9, 2013)

Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2013 4:18 pm
by t-bar
Any outside staffers you can get would be great; we may also work out a bye-round staffing setup if feasible.

Re: Region 1 SCT at MIT (February 9, 2013)

Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2013 1:12 pm
by t-bar
Logistical information has been edited into the first post in this thread. Keep those registrations coming!

Re: Region 1 SCT at MIT (February 9, 2013)

Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2013 10:18 am
by Adventure Temple Trail
Is the staffing situation under control?

What are the plans for rescheduling if snow makes it difficult or impossible for teams to come on Saturday? It's unclear whether we'll get closer to three inches (probably doable) or a foot (not so much), and it might be premature to change anything now, but it's worth considering...

Re: Region 1 SCT at MIT (February 9, 2013)

Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2013 1:32 pm
by t-bar
We are following the weather predictions, and will make a decision closer to the tournament date about what to do. One option that falls short of canceling the tournament is to run a shorter schedule (we are currently planning to do a schedule with up to 13 rounds for some teams, but there's another option that cuts that to 10) to absorb delays and allow people to get back on the road earlier.

We currently have sufficient staff lined up, though obviously any transportation issues that affect teams will affect our long-distance staffers (Ahmad and Cameron) as well. We ask all teams to be patient and flexible as we wait for more information about the weather, and we'll do the same.

Re: Region 1 SCT at MIT (February 9, 2013)

Posted: Thu Feb 07, 2013 9:32 pm
by Fado Alexandrino
Is there an update of what's happening? If it is this weekend, McGill won't be able to make it; the five hour drive would probably last twice as much.

Re: Region 1 SCT at MIT (February 9, 2013)

Posted: Thu Feb 07, 2013 9:40 pm
by Important Bird Area
We're looking at the weather forecast and considering our options; expect a formal announcement on the status of this SCT site later tonight or early tomorrow morning.

Re: Region 1 SCT at MIT (February 9, 2013)

Posted: Thu Feb 07, 2013 9:51 pm
by t-bar
Given the predicted weather for this weekend, the Region 1 SCT will be rescheduled for Saturday, February 16. I just sent the following e-mail to teams and staffers:
I wrote:MIT just announced that it will be closed tomorrow. In light of this, and the increasingly grim weather reports, the tournament will definitely be postponed until next Saturday. We will definitely have several rooms available at MIT, and I'm about 85% certain that we will have enough rooms to run the entire tournament here. If that's not possible, we might be able to move part or all of the tournament to Harvard (for example, we could have the D1 tournament there and the D2 tournament at MIT). We'll keep you updated on any developments.

For the teams: I expect that there will be substantial reshuffling of who can bring how many teams. I'll ask Jeff to re-open registration on the NAQT website, and we'll be understanding and flexible as you figure things out in the coming week. We ask that you do the same as we figure out how our staffing situation might change.

Stay safe this weekend; we hope to see as many of you as possible in one piece in a week.

Re: Region 1 SCT at MIT (February 9, 2013)

Posted: Thu Feb 07, 2013 9:57 pm
by Important Bird Area
t-bar wrote:I'll ask Jeff to re-open registration on the NAQT website
Registration will now close on February 14th. Teams, please go here to update your registrations for the new date.

Re: Region 1 SCT at MIT (February 16, 2013)

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2013 1:08 am
by t-bar
Due to staffing restrictions, we are currently unable to accept any new registrations unless they come with a moderator. In addition, while we have 17 rooms reserved, three of them are rather inconveniently located, so we would rather stick to a number of teams that requires at most 14 rooms if possible. As the current field stands, it looks like that equates to at most 9 teams (4 rooms) in D1 and 22 teams (10 rooms) in D2.

Re: Region 1 SCT at MIT (February 16, 2013)

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2013 5:04 pm
by Habitat_Against_Humanity
t-bar wrote:Due to staffing restrictions, we are currently unable to accept any new registrations unless they come with a moderator. In addition, while we have 17 rooms reserved, three of them are rather inconveniently located, so we would rather stick to a number of teams that requires at most 14 rooms if possible. As the current field stands, it looks like that equates to at most 9 teams (4 rooms) in D1 and 22 teams (10 rooms) in D2.
How badly do you need staff? A spur of the moment one-day trip to Boston to staff a quizbowl tournament sounds bizarrely appealing to me. Yale, what are your travel plans? Maybe I could hitch a ride. Or I could take the 4:40 AM train and leave on the 6:30 or 9:30 train.

Re: Region 1 SCT at MIT (February 16, 2013)

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2013 6:27 pm
by t-bar
Habitat_Against_Humanity wrote:
t-bar wrote:Due to staffing restrictions, we are currently unable to accept any new registrations unless they come with a moderator. In addition, while we have 17 rooms reserved, three of them are rather inconveniently located, so we would rather stick to a number of teams that requires at most 14 rooms if possible. As the current field stands, it looks like that equates to at most 9 teams (4 rooms) in D1 and 22 teams (10 rooms) in D2.
How badly do you need staff? A spur of the moment one-day trip to Boston to staff a quizbowl tournament sounds bizarrely appealing to me. Yale, what are your travel plans? Maybe I could hitch a ride. Or I could take the 4:40 AM train and leave on the 6:30 or 9:30 train.
We'd be glad to have you if you're available, and I'm sure the last team or two that wants to get into the field would appreciate it. E-mail me when you know for sure or if you have any questions.

Re: Region 1 SCT at MIT (February 16, 2013)

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2013 7:01 pm
by Excelsior (smack)
Habitat_Against_Humanity wrote:How badly do you need staff? A spur of the moment one-day trip to Boston to staff a quizbowl tournament sounds bizarrely appealing to me. Yale, what are your travel plans? Maybe I could hitch a ride. Or I could take the 4:40 AM train and leave on the 6:30 or 9:30 train.
We already have too many people to fit in our cars, and are sending some people via Megabus as is, alas.

Re: Region 1 SCT at MIT (February 16, 2013)

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2013 5:25 pm
by t-bar
With the registration of Williams B, the field is now closed at 9 DI and 21 DII teams. In DI, we will run a full round-robin and then rebracket into the top 5 and bottom 4 teams for a second round-robin. In DII, we will have three prelim brackets of 7 teams each. The top 3 teams from each bracket will advance to a championship bracket of 9 teams, where they will play the 6 teams they have not yet played. The middle 2 and bottom 2 will advance to middle and bottom brackets of 6 teams each, where they will play another round robin.

Teams have been sent an email with more logistical information; let me know if you didn't get it.

Re: Region 1 SCT at MIT (February 16, 2013)

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2013 9:39 pm
by JLai
Hi, so I'm not sure why I'm posting this since I don't really care too much one way or the other but...

Since MIT gets an automatic bid to ICT for hosting, is there any way you guys would consider dropping your house team in Div I? I only brought this up because having 9 teams is kinda messy and a schedule for 8 teams would be much cleaner. With 9 teams there has to be double byes and teams get 11-12 matches, but with 8 teams we could play a double RR, avoid byes and time spent rebracketing, and play 14 matches. Also the current field is like 7 or 8 deep in terms of potential ICT qualifiers and it'd be cool for all of the teams to get multiple shots at each other.

Obviously if you guys really want to play it's no problem, and we'll work with the current schedule.

Thanks!

Re: Region 1 SCT at MIT (February 16, 2013)

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2013 10:51 pm
by Habitat_Against_Humanity
Sorry, I just realized I left this reply I typed hours ago open in a tab and forgot to send it. I crunched some numbers (i.e. figured out Amtrak/Megabus fares) and weighed some options, and it won't be feasible for me to come this weekend. I didn't think you were expecting me, but I thought I should post to be official. I might just be able to staff future tournaments though.

Re: Region 1 SCT at MIT (February 16, 2013)

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2013 1:11 am
by t-bar
JLai wrote: Since MIT gets an automatic bid to ICT for hosting, is there any way you guys would consider dropping your house team in Div I? I only brought this up because having 9 teams is kinda messy and a schedule for 8 teams would be much cleaner. With 9 teams there has to be double byes and teams get 11-12 matches, but with 8 teams we could play a double RR, avoid byes and time spent rebracketing, and play 14 matches. Also the current field is like 7 or 8 deep in terms of potential ICT qualifiers and it'd be cool for all of the teams to get multiple shots at each other.
It's a decent suggestion, but I think we'll stay with 9 teams. For one thing, we're planning to have DI teams staff a room on their bye, which isn't possible with 8 teams. The 8-team DRR would certainly be appealing for its simplicity in other situations, though.

Re: Region 1 SCT at MIT (February 16, 2013)

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2013 1:28 am
by gyre and gimble
t-bar wrote:
JLai wrote: Since MIT gets an automatic bid to ICT for hosting, is there any way you guys would consider dropping your house team in Div I? I only brought this up because having 9 teams is kinda messy and a schedule for 8 teams would be much cleaner. With 9 teams there has to be double byes and teams get 11-12 matches, but with 8 teams we could play a double RR, avoid byes and time spent rebracketing, and play 14 matches. Also the current field is like 7 or 8 deep in terms of potential ICT qualifiers and it'd be cool for all of the teams to get multiple shots at each other.
It's a decent suggestion, but I think we'll stay with 9 teams. For one thing, we're planning to have DI teams staff a room on their bye, which isn't possible with 8 teams. The 8-team DRR would certainly be appealing for its simplicity in other situations, though.
I think the idea is that the members of the dropped MIT team would staff, i.e. the tournament would run exactly how you have it planned now except that the bye team is always the MIT team. Not that I'm for or against this; for me the pros of this would be that I get to play 2 more games and the cons would be that I don't get to play MIT and I'd feel bad because it was my idea that staffing this tournament would be a collaborative effort. I'm guessing most others would care a lot more about the pros though.

Re: Region 1 SCT at MIT (February 16, 2013)

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2013 1:33 am
by Adventure Temple Trail
Yeah, it seems feasible on paper to do things either way - with 9 teams and a bye, you can have three rooms staffed by house staffers and then one room staffed by bye-round staff - but with 8 teams and no byes, you can have three rooms staffed by house staffers and one room staffed by the people who'd otherwise be playing. Personally, as a customer paying to attend this tournament, I'd rather get something like 13 guaranteed games in 13 rounds (full RR in seven games, then break half and half double RRs with four teams) than have a schedule with two byes where I get fewer games and also have to read for the same entry fee. I don't want to come across as mean to MIT, which has been gracious enough to host us and has planned to run a house team to make its hosting more bearable for itself, and I don't want to upend things this late in the game, but it does seem to make more brute financial, logistic, and mathematical sense for the teams that are paying if they drop the house team.

Re: Region 1 SCT at MIT (February 16, 2013)

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2013 2:44 am
by t-bar
Fair enough; we will yield to the well-reasoned consensus. Per Matt Jackson's suggestion, we'll play a full round robin, followed by a 4/4 split and two half round robins.

Re: Region 1 SCT at MIT (February 16, 2013)

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2013 9:35 pm
by marnold
Not that that there's any obvious way to fix this without the byes, but whichever team ends up 5th is going end up totally screwed since the 6 games against the bottom of the field are going to tank their SOS.

Edit: right? Or am I misunderstanding something?

Re: Region 1 SCT at MIT (February 16, 2013)

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2013 9:42 pm
by Matt Weiner
I don't think that's quite true, since the strength-of-schedule adjustment is designed to compensate for the presumed advantage in raw points scored by that team against weaker opponents. Either the field is fairly strong top to bottom, in which case the team will get a good SOS correction, or it's not, in which case the team will score 500 points a game against the bottom bracket and get credit for that. Looking at who is registered, it seems like the former is likely here.

Since all the data from the other sites is up (minus two micro-sectionals that are only going to qualify the automatic winner's bid anyway and the Buffalo site that is running tomorrow as well) one could probably figure out exactly what sort of stats are needed to qualify out of the bottom bracket here; they probably are feasible to achieve.

Re: Region 1 SCT at MIT (February 16, 2013)

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2013 9:48 pm
by Important Bird Area
Matt Weiner wrote:the strength-of-schedule adjustment is designed to compensate for the presumed advantage in raw points scored by that team against weaker opponents. Either the field is fairly strong top to bottom, in which case the team will get a good SOS correction, or it's not, in which case the team will score 500 points a game against the bottom bracket and get credit for that.
Matt has this right. (Incidentally, complete stats for all of last weekend's SCT sites are now available on naqt.com.)

Re: Region 1 SCT at MIT (February 16, 2013)

Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2013 2:37 pm
by t-bar
Stats after round 7 are posted at http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/1291/. DI prelims are done; we will now play a double round robin among the top 4 and bottom 4 teams. There are two more games in the DII prelims, after which we will rebracket into an upper bracket of 10 and a lower bracket of 8 and play crossover games.

Re: Region 1 SCT at MIT (February 16, 2013)

Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2013 9:08 pm
by t-bar
In Division I, Yale A cleared the field by a whopping six games. Harvard A won the Undergraduate championship by virtue of being the only undergraduate team in the top bracket.

In Division II, Harvard C was 12-1 after the conclusion of the playoffs, while Yale B was 11-2. Yale put up 11 powers to take the first game of the advantaged final 475-370, but Harvard came back to win the second game and the title 430-380.

Full stats are up at http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/1291/. Please email me ([email protected]) with any stats corrections.

I'd like to thank all of our outside staffers: Mirza Ahmed, Wes Eddings, Chip Horton, Danila Kabotyanski, Cameron Orth, the students from Lexington High School, and the Harvard players who rotated through staffing. Many thanks to all of you; we couldn't have run the tournament without you! I also noticed that Aaron Cohen stepped in to moderate a DII game after DI was done; thanks to him and anyone else who might have helped out in some way I didn't notice. I hope everyone enjoyed the tournament!

Re: Region 1 SCT at MIT (February 16, 2013)

Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2013 12:16 pm
by marnold
This tournament ran very well, especially for how big it was.

Also, back on what I said above, seems weird that Dartmouth will be on the bubble despite having Adj. PPB higher than 8 teams ahead of them, in part because they had their TPPTH adjusted down like they were playing a below-average field. Maybe have the SOS be field-wide or based on teams played but not weighted per actual games played, then just rely on the rule about finishing ahead to prevent teams from tanking into a lower bracket to run up TPPTH? Doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things of course.

Re: Region 1 SCT at MIT (February 16, 2013)

Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2013 12:49 pm
by jonpin
Looking at those 8 teams: Rice, Cornell, Ottawa have auto-bids. Cornell and RPI played on D-2 questions and put up above 20 ppb and 6 adj tppth. The other four, Michigan State, Northwestern, UCSD, and Wisconsin played a harder schedule and had a higher TPPTH before adjusting for schedule.

As Matt said, if the field isn't stacked top to bottom, you'll be fine as long as you throw a crapload of points on the board, but in six games against Harv-B and Dart-B, Dartmouth A only got ~60% of the tossups. I was in the process of looking up some more stats for comparison, but NAQT literally just went down, so I can't compare that 60% number to UCSD or Northwestern.

Re: Region 1 SCT at MIT (February 16, 2013)

Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2013 12:51 pm
by Important Bird Area
naqt.com works right now (Division I D-values)

Re: Region 1 SCT at MIT (February 16, 2013)

Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2013 2:20 am
by t-bar
I discovered some errors in the scoresheets, which I have corrected. The corrected versions of the "All Games" files are posted on the database entry; I didn't bother with fixing the prelim reports, though if somebody really wants me to I could do so. I have also sent the corrected stats to NAQT, and they are reflected in the current D-values.

Most of the errors, especially in DI, were due to undercounting tossups earned, so the most noticeable effect will be a decrease in PPB for some teams. However, one game outcome was affected: the round 4 Harvard A-NYU A game, which was thought to be a tie at the time (with Harvard winning the tiebreaker), turned out to be an outright victory for NYU. This changes the final order of finish, but not Harvard's status as undergraduate champion.

If you kept score on your own, I encourage you to check for discrepancies with your records. It's possible that in fixing a math error, I exposed a misrecording of the game itself, changing the stats away from their correct values. Please let me know if you think this happened.