The Quizbowl Resource Center

This is the announcement for Chicago Open History 2015: Quizbowl's New Chains Discovered, an all-history tournament that will take place at the University of Chicago on Sunday, July 19, 2015. This tournament will be the third side event of CO Sunday, in the late-afternoon/early-evening timeframe after the conclusion of the fine arts and literature events.

Important: format and submission instructions updated May 16, 2015.

Packet submission

This will be a packet-submission tournament. I will be the head editor. Please email me your packets by Wednesday, July 8th 2015. Teams submitting packets after July 8th may or may not be allowed to play at my sole discretion.

Please submit packets following this distribution:

US history 7 tossups (one question: to 1789; two questions each: 1789-1877, since 1877, your choice)

European history 7 tossups (at least one each ancient, medieval, early modern, late modern; no more than two from the same country)

World history 7 tossups (at least one each: Latin America and the Caribbean; Africa; Middle East/Central Asia/South Asia; East Asia and Southeast Asia)

Your choice 3 tossups (including areas not listed above, as well as questions of transnational or global significance)

Format

The format will be eleven-team full round-robin, followed by advantaged final if necessary.

There will be powers.

How to register:

Contact me by email or post in this thread. All team names will be the titles of English Civil War-era pamphlets as determined by the head editor.

Field:

The field is limited to eleven teams of four players each.

Teams (11):

Evan Adams/Kenji Golimlim/Auroni Gupta/Jason Zhou
Will Alston/Mike Bentley/Andrew Hart/Marshall Steinbaum
Jason Asher/Mike Cheyne/Trevor Davis/Patrick Liao
Sam Bailey/Mik Larsen/Tejas Raje/Mike Sorice
Jordan Brownstein/Matt Jackson/Eric Mukherjee/Chris Ray
Naveed Chowdhury/Seth Ebner/Will Mason/Ben Zhang
Michael Coates/Matt Lafer/Ryan Westbrook/Doug Yetman
Cory Haala/Ike Jose/Dylan Minarik/Andrew Wang
Charles Hang/Will Holub-Moorman/Jacob Reed/Richard Yu
Daniel Hothem/Derek So/Victor Prieto
Stephen Liu/Jay Misuk/Will Nediger/Jordan Palmer

total registrants: 43/44

Packet submission:

Liu/Misuk/Nediger/Palmer submitted 6/23
Asher/Cheyne/Davis/Liao submitted 6/29
Bailey/Larsen/Raje/Sorice submitted 7/8
Adams/Golimlim/Gupta/Zhou submitted 7/8
Hang/Holub-Moorman/Reed/Yu submitted 7/8
Haala/Jose/Minarik/Wang submitted 7/9
Chowdhury/Ebner/Mason/Zhang submitted 7/9
Brownstein/Jackson/Mukherjee/Ray submitted 7/9
Coates/Lafer/Westbrook/Yetman submitted 7/10
Alston/Bentley/Hart/Steinbaum submitted 7/10

Staffers:

Rob Carson
John Lawrence
Andrew Nadig
Ramapriya Rangaraju
Ashvin Srivatsa

Last updated 7/19 --JTH

Are you going to post the distro/submission rules?

Still up in the air; see the subsequent post. --JTH

A subject for discussion:

My original concept for this tournament involved the return of bonuses, allowing writers to explore interesting material that is too difficult or just plain too wacky for a tossup even at CO History. I have considered implementing the suggestion of two-part bonuses (that is: just the medium and hard parts) found in the UCU discussion thread (starting here).

Discussion in the irc resulted in conflicting views on the merits of bonuses. Possible concerns include:

1) CO History is one of several tournaments coexisting on Sunday; it needs to be tossup-only to fit in the schedule

2) Some people dislike bonuses at single-subject tournaments

Do you have strong opinions about the presence or absence of bonuses at next year's CO history? Please post in this thread! Once we reach consensus, I'll post my thoughts about distribution.

In the abstract I'm fine with bonuses because they're amusing to play, but I think the overriding concern is trying to fit more events into Sunday, so I'd prefer it lack them.

Ukonvasara wrote:In the abstract I'm fine with bonuses because they're amusing to play, but I think the overriding concern is trying to fit more events into Sunday, so I'd prefer it lack them.

Also, the lack of bonuses means more wacky tossups, which I am all for.

I am obviously biased, but having bonuses means hearing more history questions, which I am all for. It also helps reduce game variance and gives people an opportunity to hear more wacky, cool things about history that there isn't a full tossup's worth of material on (is someone really gonna write a full tossup on individual ports of the Axumite empire?)

Not if you post about it in this thread!

As I mentioned in the Gorilla Literature Singles thread, I was planning on announcing CO Lit 2015 sometime soon, hopefully next week. (I just figured out the format today.) Of course, Stephen already announced CO Visual Arts 2015 a while ago. Are people okay with these three (History, Lit, and Visual Arts) being the three Sunday events for next year's CO, or is there demand for one of the three events to be Trash? If the latter, I'm willing to consider putting my planned Lit singles on hold till 2016.

Regardless of which side events are chosen, I thought the three events that ran at this year's CO Sunday were the perfect length. In the interest of an equally smooth Sunday next year, I hope that if a format with bonuses is decided upon, the length of the packets is no greater than Urgent Call's 16/16, and is ideally even shorter.

ThisIsMyUsername wrote:if a format with bonuses is decided upon, the length of the packets is no greater than Urgent Call's 16/16, and is ideally even shorter.

If bonuses exist, that is indeed the plan.

20/0 please.

Another option you could consider: I'm in the process of writing a Beatles packet (inspired by Jacob Reed's, but without music theory), and the compromise I've come to with myself is doing single-part, 5-point, related-to-the-tossup bonuses. It lets me ask something harder than a tossup would allow, but very quickly. It's kinda like "you buzzed early enough, here's 5 extra points for power," but instead of playing with hard clues on the same answer line, it's playing with answer lines I couldn't otherwise use. Doing these would probably let you keep 20 tossups in a packet, or push you to 16 tossups in a smaller timeframe. That said, I'm doing it in a shootout packet rather than a set for a full side event, so the novelty of it may not feel perfect for the fuller event. Still, it's an option.

in on these shenanigans wrote:Another option you could consider: I'm in the process of writing a Beatles packet (inspired by Jacob Reed's, but without music theory), and the compromise I've come to with myself is doing single-part, 5-point, related-to-the-tossup bonuses. It lets me ask something harder than a tossup would allow, but very quickly. It's kinda like "you buzzed early enough, here's 5 extra points for power," but instead of playing with hard clues on the same answer line, it's playing with answer lines I couldn't otherwise use. Doing these would probably let you keep 20 tossups in a packet, or push you to 16 tossups in a smaller timeframe. That said, I'm doing it in a shootout packet rather than a set for a full side event, so the novelty of it may not feel perfect for the fuller event. Still, it's an option.

This idea is a great replacement for the "need to create a lot of hard early clues...chord progression bowl here I come!!" approach I took.

Something like what Brad proposes (tossups with one single, related, ultra-hard bonus part) might be fun -- you could do 16 of them per round, though to standardize things it'd probably be easiest to have tossups worth 10 and the related bonus also worth 10, like the second quarter of HS History Bowl now. A 20/0 event would also be fine, but if we're again going to have a three-side-event day on CO Sunday, it's probably fair to discard suggestions that there be two- or three-part bonuses in the interest of time.

I'm also not super-enthused at the idea of a format which requires fifteen submitted packets to be combined into five, but if the event couldn't exist without some sort of packet sub component, I suppose that limits options.

Something like what Matt suggests would be fun and an interesting change of pace, though I would like tossups to have powers, or even powers and superpowers, like Gaddis and the fourth quarter final round of NHBB tournaments.

If need be I can shorten my set by a packet or two. I had planned for 10+2 packets but I guess none of the side events this year were that long. That could leave at least a little more flexibility for the history tournament.

Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:I would like tossups to have powers

This tournament will certainly contain powers.

Matt Jackson wrote:I'm also not super-enthused at the idea of a format which requires fifteen submitted packets to be combined into five

Ideally, we would set this up with submission guidelines meant for packet combination (ie, not just instantly throwing out two-thirds of the submissions because too much quizbowl).

I still think this is the best way to avoid the kind of quasi-single-elim that happened in 2013.

So, decision-making time:

CO History 2015 will not have bonuses. (At some point in the future I would like there to be another UCU-style history tournament with bonuses, but it's better if that event is not trying to share a schedule with two other subject tournaments.)

Here's the first draft of the distribution:

US history 6 (two each: 1789-1877, since 1877; one each: to 1789, your choice)

European history 6 (at least one each ancient, medieval, early modern, late modern; no more than two from the same country)

World history 6 (at least one each: Latin America; Africa; Middle East/Central Asia/South Asia; East Asia and Southeast Asia)

Your choice 3 (including areas not listed above, as well as questions of transnational or global significance)


Submissions would be half-packets of 10 tossups looking like this:

US history 3 (one each: to 1877, since 1877, your choice)

European history 3 (three different countries; pick three of the four: ancient, medieval, early modern, late modern)

World history 3 (pick three of the four: Latin America; Africa; Middle East/Central Asia/South Asia; East Asia and Southeast Asia)

Your choice 1

(with the intent that three 10-tossup submissions would be combined to produce a 20-tossup plus tiebreaker full packet)

Updated 8/4 per discussion of colonial American history below --JTH

I am unsure as to why pre-1789 US history should be equated with the period in which the country has been most globally relevant and been at its greatest extent, i.e. since 1877. I would also say that any more than 30% US would be excessive.

I really struggled trying to find questions to go pre-1789 US; while I agree that it could probably stand to feature more than was in our tourney, I think giving it equal weight as pre and post Reconstruction US is a bit excessive.

Very well, I'll shift that around a bit.

Since RILKE was just announced, I figured it'd be appropriate to bump this. I suppose Jeff's busy with SCT, ICT, and all coming up, but is there any plan for the specific format for this tournament? Perhaps it'd be interesting to run this as a singles tournament as well, as opposed to the traditional doubles format, but this would obviously depend on interest.

I had been planning to run this as traditional doubles (or larger teams if more than 30 people wanted to play it).

If people are interested in a singles format, post here and I'll think about format changes. (Notably: I'm not sure how possible it is to run packet-submission singles, or how much (more) of my June it would consume to write the entire tournament myself.)

Presumably packet-submission singles would work something like the Gorilla lit tournament, except with Jeff editing. If things needed to be equalized, people who didn't submit packets could be randomly assigned rounds where they get byes.

I am fine with team sizes of any number from 1 to 4 depending entirely on what allows Jeff to best produce a good tournament.

I'd prefer a team format.

I know I'm late to the party here, but I'd like to argue for pushing it to having everyone write a full 20/0 packet (for doubles, that's easy!), and having an ideal target be combining 2 packets into one. I think this will give us more variety, more total questions, and allow greater schedule flexibility. Of course, if Jeff feels he just won't have time to edit more questions, obviously this comment can be disregarded.

What kind of alternate formats did you have in mind, Chris? I thought two brackets of seven would be worse than three brackets of five (one fewer team gets to play, everyone has to write more, and a higher percentage of submissions get thrown out).

Is this still doubles or has it expanded? Dan Horatio Puma and I are playing this, but need to know if we should recruit people who actually know non American history.

The plan was to start with doubles and expand if demand warranted, but I have no objection if people wish to start forming three-player teams right away.

I'm playing this. I'd like a doubles partner, too!

Tentatively, I'm planning to play with Marshall again, assuming CO plans work out. If not, I'm obviously open to teaming with others.

EDIT: Preferably others who know lots of US history.

I'm currently planning to play this, but I have not yet pinned down my summer plans, so it is still in flux.

I'll be there. If someone doesn't mind my horrible negging all the time, drop me a line.

I'm playing this.

If I'm at CO I'm playing this.

bird bird bird bird bird wrote:The plan was to start with doubles and expand if demand warranted, but I have no objection if people wish to start forming three-player teams right away.

Given that sets of two have started to coalesce, it seems ill-advised to envision this as a tournament for trios rather than for teams of either 2 or 4 players (with a doubles tournament people can easily pair up; with a 4-person event teams can easily form by merging two sets of doubles partners; a 3-person event is likely to force some teams to break up or become suboptimal since doubles partners didn't account for adding a third person and many such third people will already be taken). At any rate, committing to an actual number -- is it actually 3-person teams now, or is it not? -- is important.

Very well then. I'll say "doubles for now." If and when the field fills (around 30 interested players), we can discuss expanding teams at that point.

Field update is now in the first post.

I'll play.

I'm playing.

EDIT: With Evan Adams

Seeking teammate.

theMoMA wrote:Seeking teammate.

I'd be interested in teaming up for this.

Edit: This was supposed to be a PM, d'oh! No hard feelings if you'd rather play with someone else.

If I wind up going, which is still uncertain, I'd like to join up with someone to take our rightful place at the bottom of the standings.

Charbroil wrote:I'm playing this.

I'm playing with Richard Yu.

I am looking for a teammate for this.

Assuming we both can make it, Mik Larsen and I will be playing together.

If the doubles format holds, I'm playing with Jordan Brownstein.

I don't currently have plans for the month of July, and I've always wanted to go to CO in some capacity, so I'm a free agent for this. I know some US History and a little bit of post-1900 history in Europe and Latin America. I'd prefer to play with somebody who knows other things.

Andrew and I are indeed playing this tournament together.