ANNOUNCEMENT: Penn Bowl 2019

[mtebbe]

I am pleased to announce Penn Bowl 2019 (Penn Bowl XXVIII) for the Fall semester of 2019. We plan to run this tournament at the main site on October 19th.

QUESTIONS

This tournament will be written by writers from Penn. The tournament will be edited by a team of editors consisting of Jaimie Carlson (Lit), Nitin Rao (History), Eric Mukherjee (Science), Aaron Rosenberg (Music/Other FA), Aseem Keyal (Painting), Jerry Vinokurov (Philosophy), NourEddine Hijazi (Belief), and Ankit Aggarwal (SS). Nitin Rao will be head-editing. There will be 15 packets of power-marked questions not longer than 8 lines (including bolding for power). The target difficulty is roughly the same as past Penn Bowls.

The distribution we are using is as follows:
4/4 Literature (1/1 American, 1/1 British, 1/1 European, 1/1 World & Other)
4/4 History (1/1 American, 2/2 European, 1/1 World)
4/4 Science (1/1 Biology, 1/1 Chemistry, 1/1 Physics, 1/1 Math and Other)
3/3 Arts
2/2 Belief (formerly 1/1 Religion, 1/1 Myth)
1/1 Philosophy
1/1 SS
1/1 Geography, CE, and Trash

Each packet will also have a tiebreaker tossup from literature, history, or science.

HOSTING

We are looking for mirrors in all regions. The mirror fee will be $40 per team. Mirrors of this tournament should aim to run on either October 19th or 26th.

At the main site, we will use the following fee structure:
Base fee: $120 per team
Working buzzer discount: $5 each
Approved moderator discount: $15 each
Travel discount: $10 (more than 200 miles one way according to Google maps)

If you have any questions, please contact [email protected].

METHOD OF PAYMENT (borrowed from Cody Voight)

All teams must pay by the day of the tournament. We prefer to accept payment in person right before the tournament starts, but we will accept checks by mail ahead of time if your procedures require it. Teams who do not pay by the day of the tournament will be charged a $25 penalty and will have two weeks to pay their total amount before we start mailing letters to your school administration about it.

We can accept cash, personal checks, or checks from school, school district, or quizbowl club funds. We have no ability to process purchase orders or credit cards, but we will accept Paypal and Venmo. Bringing forms of payment outside of the three listed will be considered nonpayment and subject you to the $25 late payment penalty.

All checks must be made out to either "Nitin Rao" or "Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania" (must be exact wording). If you bring a check not made out to either "Nitin Rao" or "Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania" and have no other method of paying for the tournament, you will be subject to the $25 late payment penalty. If you require a pre-tournament invoice or W9 in order to have a check cut, let us know early enough for your school to process the payment. We can generally send you an invoice the same day.

MIRRORS

Please contact [email protected] if you're interested in hosting a mirror or have any other inquiries.

Current mirrors:
Upper Midwest: Michigan, 10/19 (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=23238)
Lower Midwest: Truman, 10/26 (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=23178)
South Atlantic: Auburn, 10/26 (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=23275)
SoCal:
NorCal: Stanford, 10/19 (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=23211)
Northeast: Harvard, 10/19 (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=23184)
Canada: Queen's, 10/26
Florida: UCF, 10/26 (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=23313)
UK: Cambridge, 10/26
Minnesota: University of Minnesota, 10/19 (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=23271)
South: UT Austin, 10/19 (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=23188)
Lower Mid-Atlantic: UNC, 10/19 (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=23239)
Pacific Northwest: UW, 11/30
High School: New Trier HS, 12/14

Current field (TEAMS/BUZZERS/STAFFERS): 30/36
Princeton (2/1/0)
Delaware (1/2/0)
NYU (3/2/0)
Penn Manor (1/4/0)
Great Valley (1/0/0)
Rutgers (2/1/0)
Manheim Township (1/0/0)
Carnegie Mellon (3/3/0)
Maryland (2/0/1)
Penn State (3/1/0)
Columbia (3/2/0)
Cornell (2/0/0)
Yale (1/1/0)
Swarthmore (1/0/0)
UVA (1/3/0)
Pitt (2/2/0)
SHU (1/0/0)

[mtebbe]

With the addition of a new high school mirror at New Trier High School on December 14th, Penn Bowl will not be clear until significantly later than normal. We would still prefer all college mirrors to run on October 19th or October 26th for logistical reasons.

[kitakule]

Will there be an online mirror of this set?

[Victor Prieto]

Two questions: will there be steps taken to ensure the 9 round prelim situation that happened last year does not happen again? How is the set production progressing, since no progress reports have been released yet?

[mtebbe]

Will there be an online mirror of this set?

Like last year, Penn will not be organizing an online mirror. If someone else wants to TD, we're happy to have one!

Two questions: will there be steps taken to ensure the 9 round prelim situation that happened last year does not happen again? How is the set production progressing, since no progress reports have been released yet?

Our field is currently at 30 (which would mean 5 games before lunch and 5 after). I have a team on standby in case we have a bunch of last minute drops (as we did last year, which is why we ended up with 38 teams) and am only registering teams in groups of two, so we shouldn't have a problem.

The set is roughly 95% done and we are starting packetization this weekend.

[mtebbe]

Given that there are only five days left until the tournament, we have decided that any teams that drop after midnight tomorrow (10/15) without an approved emergency will be responsible for paying the entirety of their registration fees. If any teams are on the fence, please drop now.

[naan/steak-holding toll]

Wanted to thank the Penn team for running this tournament very well. We finished the finals at a very reasonable time and the games went very smoothly. Was an absolute pleasure.

[mtebbe]

Congratulations to Columbia A for defeating UMD A in a one-game final yesterday!

Thank you to everyone who participated yesterday, I think this tournament ended up going really well. Thank you in particular to all of the Penn and external staffers (JinAh, Jordan, Alex, Andrew, Pratik, and Aaron) without whom this tournament would not have gone nearly as smoothly.

All stats are posted, you can find them here: https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/5794/
Feel free to PM me if there are any mistakes.

The private discussion forum is also now live; please request to join from the usergroup tab if you want to provide feedback on the questions or see advanced stats.

[adosreme]

We've been trying to get in touch with you for the Canadian mirror to get an exception for a player who would otherwise have to play solo to join an open team instead. Can someone help us with this?

[mtebbe]

We've been trying to get in touch with you for the Canadian mirror to get an exception for a player who would otherwise have to play solo to join an open team instead. Can someone help us with this?

I apologize for my slow response, but I just replied to your email. Let me know if there's anything else I can help with!