Player Poll: WONDERFUL

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Player Poll: WONDERFUL

Post by Cheynem »

Welcome to this year's edition of the delightful player poll.

You will send in a ballot of 25 players. Do not include high schoolers. All players who played at least one non-open tournament this year are eligible. Please have ballots in by May 19.

For reference, players from last year's top 25 who are still active:

1. Jordan Brownstein, Maryland: 31/29/11 (1st, ICT); 58/6 (1st, Nats)
2. Eric Mukherjee, Penn: 45/10 (2nd, Nats)
3. Auroni Gupta, Michigan: 13/24/5 (tied 7th, ICT); 27/5 (13th, Nats)
4. John Lawrence, Chicago: 12/22/2 (10th, ICT); 48/3 (4th, Nats)
5. Will Nediger, Michigan: 13/20/2 (11th, ICT); 24/10 (22nd, Nats)
6. Chris Ray, Ohio State: didn't play either nationals but still active
7. Stephen Liu, Stanford: 8/39/10 (6th, ICT); 42/7 (7th, Nats)
8. Max Schindler, Chicago: 12/31/5 (5th, ICT); 28/6 (16th, Nats)
9. Jacob Reed, Yale: 8/35/7 (9th, ICT); 49/5 (3rd, Nats)
10. Kurtis Droge, Louisville: didn't play either nationals--I think technically active
11. Shan Kothari, Minnesota: 6/22/2 (19th, ICT); 28/6 (11th, Nats)
12. Adam Silverman, Northwestern: 8/21/5 (20th, ICT); 35/9 (10th, Nats)
13. Rafael Krichevsky, Columbia: 4/37/4 (tied 7th, ICT); 43/8 (6th, Nats)
14. Aseem Keyal, Berkeley: 9/18/10 (22nd, ICT); 30/2 (12th, Nats)
15. Joey Goldman, Oxford: 19/5 (38th, Nats)
16. Caleb Kendrick, Oklahoma: 5/43/7 (4th, ICT)
17. Brian McPeak, Michigan: 11/10/3 (26th, ICT); 12/5 (82nd, Nats)
18. Dylan Minarik, Northwestern: 3/34/9 (14th, ICT); 26/6 (21st, Nats)
19. Charles Hang, WUSTL: 5/37/11 (12th, ICT); 35/14 (14th, Nats)
20. Benji Nguyen, Stanford: 3/20/3 (33rd, ICT); 21/3 (35th, Nats)

Players I Think Are Now Inactive From Last Year: Neil Gurram, Austin Brownlow, Andrew Wang, Will Alston, Richard Yu

Players Who Finished in the Top 25 in Prelim Scoring at ICT or Nats:
Itamar Naveh-Benjamin, Missouri: 2nd, ICT
Derek So, McGill: 3rd, ICT
Julian Fuchs, MIT: 13th, ICT; 31st, Nats
Jason Cheng, USCD: 15th, ICT
Corry Wang, Amherst: 16th, ICT; 46th, Nats
Nathan Weiser, Stanford: 17th, ICT; 56th, Nats
Eric Xu, UVA: 17th, ICT; 9th, Nats
Sameer Rai, Berkeley: 21st, ICT; 34th, Nats
Alec Vulfson, NYU: 23rd, ICT; 43rd, Nats
Jason Zhou, Chicago: 24th, ICT; 47th, Nats
Graham Reid, Kenyon: 25th, ICT
Jason Golfinos, Princeton: 5th, Nats
Jasper Lee, Tennessee: 8th, Nats
Aidan Mehigan, Oxford : 15th, Nats
Laurence Li, Yale : 17th, Nats
Ewan MacAulay, Cambridge: 18th, Nats
Sam Braunfeld, Rutgers: 19th, Nats
Eric Chen, Berkeley : 46th, ICT; 20th, Nats
Bruce Lou, Berkeley: 29th, ICT; 23rd, Nats
Alston Boyd, Chicago : 44th, ICT; 24th, Nats
Evan Lynch, Cambridge: 25th, Nats

Obviously, scoring is not the be-all and end-all, so people should free to talk up players who deserve to be on this list but may not have the scoring chops. Please do this without threatening violence this year.
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Re: Player Poll: WONDERFUL

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

People who I think should get a bump from last year:

Jacob Reed - Jacob continues to improve across the board and is a really, really good team leader. In many ways, he reminds me of Matt Jackson in his ability to be a low-neg player who is a threat to make a strong mid to late buzz in almost any category (except perhaps physics in this case), though he doesn't quite have Matt's levels of knowledge or game instinct.

Charles Hang - Charles admittedly had a low power count at ICT and gets his stats inflated by having weak teammates. However, looking at analytic stats from This Tournament is a Crime, Charles got the second-most powers on history of any player, and was well ahead of Chris Ray, Eric, Jason Zhou, and myself in this regard. As a specialist, that ability alone probably merits a Top 25 spot, but Charles also definitely adds some decent generalism as well, clearly enough to lead WUSTL to a pair of 11th place finishes.

Itamar Naveh-Benjamin - Itamar led his team to 11th at ICT and put up a lot of really good stats, though admittedly in weak fields. I would not be shocked to see him well within the top 10 next year.

Jason Golfinos - In the mold of Itamar and Charles, Jason's a great player without a ton of support. Unlike them, he doesn't have any broad subjects he's particularly deep on, but rather has a lot of good pockets across a lot of humanities subjects; his breadth really shows in his ability to consistently put up really good PPB and get a bunch of solid middle-late buzzes.

Rafael Krichevsky - Rafael was already his team's best player on hard questions, but this year he's also improved his ability to translate this into more buzzes against top teams (notably, Ben Zhang had a higher PPG in top brackets than Rafael last year

Derek So - Honestly his numbers were pretty good before, and I think McGill caught some good tailwinds, but in any case he deserves recognition.

George Corfield - Holy Christ this dude is good at biology and music - apparently Oxford had 26 PPB on the former and 22 PPB on the latter at Nationals. Despite being a specialist (he can get a lot of science in general) he was also his team's top scorer and he only negged twice at nats!!!

Jordan Brownstein - Unfortunately, it's not possible to rank Jordan higher than 1. However, much like MattBo 2014, he did improve substantially from last year.

Most of the Top 10 players on Mike's list that I didn't mention otherwise strike me as fairly similar in ability to last year, Chris Ray's legendary Terrapin performance notwithstanding.

EDIT: One point worth considering: Despite stagnation/decline, Eric Mukherjee is still an insanely good specialist and a really good generalist. I think we all knew this, but to highlight this, I'll note that he had the second-highest "first buzz percentage" at the Michigan site of This Tournament is A Crime, with 1/3 of his buzzes being the first buzz of anyone at the site on that question (Naveed had the highest percentage). The only other team-leading scorers who got close to that number were Jordan Brownstein (with a 32% first buzz rate, though this is probably deflated by him taking almost all of his team's vulches) and John Lawrence (at 29%).

EDIT 2: This above list definitely isn't exhaustive, but I just wanted to call out these folks.
Last edited by naan/steak-holding toll on Wed May 03, 2017 8:04 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Player Poll: WONDERFUL

Post by 1.82 »

Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:Eric Mukherjee is still an insanely good specialist and a really good generalist. I think we all knew this, but to highlight this, I'll note that he had the second-highest "first buzz percentage" at the Michigan site of This Tournament is A Crime, with 1/3 of his buzzes being the first buzz of anyone at the site on that question (Naveed had the highest percentage).
This is a good place to note that I was in school this year and you can totally vote for me.
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Re: Player Poll: WONDERFUL

Post by Lake Winnipesaukee Mystery Stone »

Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:People who I think should get a bump from last year:

George Corfield - Holy Christ this dude is good at biology and music - apparently Oxford had 26 PPB on the former and 22 PPB on the latter at Nationals. Despite being a specialist (he can get a lot of science in general) he was also his team's top scorer and he only negged twice!!!
From the UK, I would just like to add my voice in praise of George. Outstanding player, and a lovely guy to boot.
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Re: Player Poll: WONDERFUL

Post by Majin Buu Roi »

Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:People who I think should get a bump from last year:

Rafael Krichevsky - Rafael was already his team's best player on hard questions, but this year he's also improved his ability to translate this into more buzzes against top teams (notably, Ben Zhang had a higher PPG in top brackets than Rafael last year).
Seriously, Rafael is amazing. I do not understand how he's not mentioned in the same breath as the likes of (e.g.) Auroni Gupta or Chris Ray more often.
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Re: Player Poll: WONDERFUL

Post by vinteuil »

Echoing the praise for George Corfield, dude's a legend.

You should seriously think about putting Stephen Eltinge in your top 25! (Or top 20 like I am.) He's got incredible consistency (look at his play in the top bracket!!) in physics, physics-y science, not-so-physics-y science, history, current events, and completely random impossible shit; he's an incredibly efficient player who contributes a great attitude as a teammate; and his (serious) generalism gets pretty far shadowed on this team, especially by Adam and Isaac. Stephen is also the only person on my team [EDIT: one of like four players in all of quizbowl] who's so goddamn good at his 1/1 that (as Will Alston alluded to above) I just put down my buzzer on physics nowadays—I'm not going to beat him to it.
Last edited by vinteuil on Wed May 03, 2017 10:18 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Player Poll: WONDERFUL

Post by Harpie's Feather Duster »

Adam Silverman got every single biology and chemistry tossup in the ICT playoffs. He also supplanted that with some pretty darn good generalism, managing to take a bunch of important questions from some of the game's best specialists in their categories. It's too bad you didn't get to see this in the Nats top bracket, but he's really good! You should consider him for your top 10!

Not going to bother making a case for myself- someone else is free to do that :party: :party: :party:
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Re: Player Poll: WONDERFUL

Post by Maxwell Sniffingwell »

Robert Williams Avenger wrote:Adam Silverman got every single biology and chemistry tossup in the ICT playoffs. He also supplanted that with some pretty darn good generalism, managing to take a bunch of important questions from some of the game's best specialists in their categories. It's too bad you didn't get to see this in the Nats top bracket, but he's really good! You should consider him for your top 10!

Not going to bother making a case for myself- someone else is free to do that :party: :party: :party:
Joining the party here for obvious reasons but ... yeah. Considering that the game isn't played one-on-one (and so being science-plus instead of history-plus is more valuable), consider Adam for your top five.
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Re: Player Poll: WONDERFUL

Post by gyre and gimble »

Nathan Weiser should be in your top 25. I'm pretty sure he's the second best US History player in the country (after Jordan). He also put up 17 powers at ICT (I think the stats awarded me one of his powers, not sure).

I'll also note here that Benji is a top-tier thought player. He got more than 50% (maybe even well over 50%?) of the social science and philosophy tossups in our games against Chicago, Michigan, and Maryland at ICT and Nationals this year. He's got a lot of generalist ability beyond that, too.

I'm biased, obviously, but I'll say that even though generalists like Caleb Kendrick or Dylan Minarik will score more points, any top-5 team would do better to have Benji or Nathan on their squad.
jasongg17 wrote:Seriously, Rafael is amazing. I do not understand how he's not mentioned in the same breath as the likes of (e.g.) Auroni Gupta or Chris Ray more often.
I hate to put the damper on any particular players, but this seems pretty exaggerated. Before people go voting Rafael above Auroni or Chris (or filling out the rest of their polls), it might be good to do some searches on this excellent resource. Rafael's stats on hard sets like TTIAC, WAO, and ICT, or even regular difficulty like Terrapin, don't compare to Auroni's or Chris's.

That said, Rafael had a great performance at Nationals and I'll be ranking him higher than last year. I'll read other posts in this thread for more convincing, but right now it's between him, Max, and Adam for the last two spots in my top 10.

Also, Jacob is in my top 5.
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Re: Player Poll: WONDERFUL

Post by vinteuil »

gyre and gimble wrote:Nathan Weiser should be in your top 25. I'm pretty sure he's the second best US History player in the country (after Jordan). He also put up 17 powers at ICT (I think the stats awarded me one of his powers, not sure).

I'll also note here that Benji is a top-tier thought player. He got more than 50% (maybe even well over 50%?) of the social science and philosophy tossups in our games against Chicago, Michigan, and Maryland at ICT and Nationals this year. He's got a lot of generalist ability beyond that, too.

I'm biased, obviously, but I'll say that even though generalists like Caleb Kendrick or Dylan Minarik will score more points, any top-5 team would do better to have Benji or Nathan on their squad.
jasongg17 wrote:Seriously, Rafael is amazing. I do not understand how he's not mentioned in the same breath as the likes of (e.g.) Auroni Gupta or Chris Ray more often.
I hate to put the damper on any particular players, but this seems pretty exaggerated. Before people go voting Rafael above Auroni or Chris (or filling out the rest of their polls), it might be good to do some searches on this excellent resource. Rafael's stats on hard sets like TTIAC, WAO, and ICT, or even regular difficulty like Terrapin, don't compare to Auroni's or Chris's.

That said, Rafael had a great performance at Nationals and I'll be ranking him higher than last year. I'll read other posts in this thread for more convincing, but right now it's between him, Max, and Adam for the last two spots in my top 10.
I agree with all of this.
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Re: Player Poll: WONDERFUL

Post by heterodyne »

You should be considering Jason Zhou for your ballot. Here are two facts about Jason:
1) He is very good at history. If you have played him you should be able to confirm this fact.
2) He has become very good at history despite a systematic inability to take in information about the world. If you have talked to him about food or Neil Patrick Harris you should be able to confirm this fact.
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Re: Player Poll: WONDERFUL

Post by Cheynem »

I'd like to see more ballots for this--somebody help Jordan get to #1!
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Re: Player Poll: WONDERFUL

Post by Cheynem »

So far, 34 people have received at least one vote. There are some exceedingly close votes right now, including who will make up the top five (and aside from #1, what order), who will be in the top ten, and who will be in the top 25 (#25 and #26 are currently separated by one point). So please send in ballots if you want to decide these important questions.
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Re: Player Poll: WONDERFUL

Post by Majin Buu Roi »

Cheynem wrote:So far, 34 people have received at least one vote. There are some exceedingly close votes right now, including who will make up the top five (and aside from #1, what order), who will be in the top ten, and who will be in the top 25 (#25 and #26 are currently separated by one point). So please send in ballots if you want to decide these important questions.
Out of curiosity, this is out of how many ballots so far?
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Re: Player Poll: WONDERFUL

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9
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Re: Player Poll: WONDERFUL

Post by Cheynem »

We still have a key tie and some close rankings, so I'll accept ballots through tonight.

12 ballots are currently in. There are two ties and a razor-thin difference between #25 and #26.
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Re: Player Poll: WONDERFUL

Post by Cheynem »

Well, the ties were not broken. I suppose this is appropriate, as it reflects a very tight mixture of votes.

Thanks to our voters: Will Alston, Naveed Chowdhury, Jason Golfinos, Andrew Hart, Jasper Lee, Stephen Liu, Eric Mukherjee, Victor Prieto, Jacob Reed, Adam Sperber, Nathan Weiser, and Richard Yu

#1 Jordan Brownstein, Maryland (300, all #1 votes)
#2 TIE between Auroni Gupta, Michigan, and Eric Mukherjee, Penn (277--both highest were #2; Auroni's lowest was #4, Eric's lowest was #6)
#4 TIE between John Lawrence, Chicago, and Will Nediger, Michigan (253--both highest were #3, John's lowest was #8, Will's lowest was #7)
#6 Jacob Reed, Yale (244, highest #3, lowest #9)
#7 Chris Ray, Ohio State (230, highest #3, lowest #11)
#8 Stephen Liu, Stanford (221, highest #5, lowest #9)
#9 Adam Silverman, Northwestern (195, highest #8, lowest #12)
#10 Rafael Krichevsky, Columbia (193, highest #7, lowest #13)
#11 Max Schindler, Chicago (179, highest #8, lowest #16)
#12 Itamar Naveh-Benjamin, Missouri (124, highest #10)
#13 Shan Kothari, Minnesota (120, highest #12, lowest #20)
#14 Kurtis Droge, Louisville (107, highest #11)
#15 Jason Golfinos, Princeton (104, highest #10)
#16 Aseem Keyal, Berkeley (102, highest #12, lowest #25)
#17 Derek So, McGill (96, highest #12)
#18 Dylan Minarik, Northwestern (95, highest #10)
#19 Charles Hang, WUSTL (82, highest #11)
#20 Stephen Eltinge, Yale (60, highest #15)
#21 Joey Goldman, Oxford (59, highest #13)
#22 Nathan Weiser, Stanford (44, highest #13)
#23 Caleb Kendrick, Oklahoma (39, highest #12)
#24 Kenji Shimizu, Michigan (38, highest #16)
#25 George Corfield, Oxford (34, highest #17)

Itamar, Jason, Derek, Stephen, Nathan, Kenji, and George are ranked as players for the first time.

Also Receiving Votes: Brian McPeak, Michigan (32); Benji Nguyen, Stanford (23); Jason Zhou, Chicago (20); Jasper Lee, Tennessee (15); Sam Bailey, Minnesota (12); Bruce Lou, Berkeley (12); Sameer Rai, Berkeley (10); Eric Xu, Virginia (9); Ben Zhang, Columbia (8); Eric Chen, Berkeley (7); Weijia Cheng, Maryland (7); Aidan Mehigan, Oxford (7); Alston Boyd, Chicago (4); Jaimie Carlson, Penn (3); Julian Fuchs, MIT (2); Jinah Kim, Penn (2); and Sam Rombro, Maryland (1)
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Re: Player Poll: WONDERFUL

Post by George Corfield »

While it is obviously flattering to be considered for this, there is little doubt in my mind (or I'd wager in the rest of UK quizbowl) that Ewan MacAulay is a better player than me (I still get psyched by remembering that I beat him to a chemistry tossup at PB 2015). My fault for not expressing this by voting I guess, but you can go ahead and make the mental substitution that puts him somewhere ahead of me.
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Re: Player Poll: WONDERFUL

Post by vinteuil »

I've updated my google sheet of results over time: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing
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