Ragnarok I @ UA September 8th, 2007

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geekjohnson
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Ragnarok I @ UA September 8th, 2007

Post by geekjohnson »

Ok guys, sorry for all of the delay, but we have been trying to get all of the details settled.

Anyways, The Alabama Academic Quizbowl Team is proud announce (officially) that Ragnarok I will be held at the University of Alabama on Saturday, September 8th, 2007. The tournament will be using NAQT IS questions, hopefully the tournament shall be using the second set of the season, so some of the UA people who staff our earlier HS NAQT tourney can participate. Registration shall begin at 8:30 a.m., followed by the player meeting at 9:00 a.m.

The format of Ragnarok will be standard NAQT CUT style, so the following rules apply:


In order to try to match team strength to the question level, an interesting eligibility rule is applied for the tournament:

· Individuals ineligible to play in Division II at the SCTs may play only as part of a two-person team or as a solo team.

· Individuals who have answered an average of 2.5 tossups per game played or better in any past NAQT ICT in Division I may play only as a solo team.

(The statistic to determine eligibility is based only on tossups credited, regardless of interrupts. Thus a person playing 16 games in a past ICT in Division I must play solo if he or she correctly answered 40 or more tossups in that ICT. A person playing 15 games in a past ICT in Division I must play solo at CUT if he or she had 38 or more tossups to his or her credit.

· Undergraduates whose first intercollegiate academic quiz competition as part of a college team came during the current season may play on teams of up to four players.

· Undergraduates eligible for Division II play whose school did not earn an invitation to the NAQT ICT in either Division I or II in the past two years may play on teams of up to four players, whether they are in their first year of intercollegiate competition or not.

· Undergraduates not in their first year of intercollegiate academic competition, whose school did earn an invitation to the NAQT ICT in either division in the past two years, may not play on teams of more than two players.



No one here at UA has ever had any experience with the CUT format, but we thought it would make for interesting day to use it, as it seems like it might add some new paint to an old format. To register your team you must send your information to [email protected] or [email protected].


Fee schedule:

Base fee: $100
Buzzer discount: -$5 each (allowed up to 2)
Travel discount: -$10 for atleast 200 miles traveled
Minimum fee: $80

We, at the University of Alabama, look forward to seeing all of the interested colleges in September. Hopefully it will be a competitive day with numerous teams from different areas. Have a great summer!
Last edited by geekjohnson on Sun Sep 02, 2007 10:57 pm, edited 6 times in total.
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The Ununtiable Twine
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Post by The Ununtiable Twine »

Well it depends on how many freshmen we (Louisiana) can get to join the team next year. Tuscaloosa is a bit closer to us than some of our other destinations in the past year or so, and if we have a little bit of funding at the beginning of the fall. I know I like to play in any tournaments, regardless of difficulty level, so if we can get some of our newcomers to go to your tournament that would be nice. Of course, last year, we got a grand total of 1, count 'em, 1 freshman, to join our club. I think we'll be getting a few next year, and if we do, we'll surely consider your tournament. Umm...I think I would prefer a cut-style tournament because it's a good way for the newcomers to start while letting me make another solo appearance :)

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Post by Jeremy Gibbs-Marangoni Effect »

Harding might be interested in coming; we'll have a fair share of freshmen and sophomores that need breaking in.
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Post by jhn31 »

MSU would definitely be interested in coming...after all, Tuscaloosa is only a little more than an hour today.

September 1 would be my suggestion.
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Post by NoahMinkCHS »

UGA might be interested, but unfortunately every weekend in September is either a home football game or the Georgia at Alabama game (which I assume isn't a good week for you to host :wink: ). Still, we might be able to round up some people to go (especially since freshmen don't always get tickets). We went to Tuscaloosa last year for CBI and it was a good trip, so I'll highly recommend it to our new(ish) people.
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Post by geekjohnson »

Well, it seems that we'll be running a CUT format without a doubt. I'll try and get a date out there, but Sept. 1st isn't feasible, since we have a football game that weekend, even if it is against Western Carolina it'll still be a nightmare to have a tourney that day. I'll post updates here, and please, feel free to keep talking about suggestions and interest.
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Post by jhn31 »

how about a Sunday, or Labor Day/Columbus Day? That way no one would have a football conflict
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Post by geekjohnson »

Ok, it looks like we are shooting for an early September date. We are just waiting on NAQT to confirm when they will have another packet ready for us after our high-school tourney.
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Post by geekjohnson »

I'm sorry for no new information on this tourney. I have been trying to get info. from NAQT about their second set of questions being used at this tournament, retitled "Ragnarok I," but I have not received any replies, although that can be attributed to HSNCT, though I have been tying for about 2 months. For now...it is scheduled, as I HAD to get rooms reserved otherwise my admin. would eat my my testes, for Saturday September 8th, 2007. Any questions just send an email to [email protected]
Last edited by geekjohnson on Wed Jun 13, 2007 8:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

geekjohnson wrote:I HAD to get rooms reserved otherwise my admin. would eat my my testes
That's one crazy admin. Where did you ever come up with that horrendous image that I have in my head now?
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Post by Ditzy Blonde »

Hey, James! I don't mean to be getting in your business with a college tournament...but that Saturday is the 8th, not the 9th! That's Scottsboro's HS tournament...thus, my knowing the date...as well as...Alabama plays AWAY...Vandy in Nashville....Matt and I would love to help you out, but we can't that weekend....ROLL TIDE>>>>>>
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Post by geekjohnson »

Thank you very much, I've been so busy that I am surprised I remembered the month. Yeah, we picked the date to not conflict with the games. I hope your tournament runs great, thanks for the everything!
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Post by geekjohnson »

bump. all of the tournament info. is now up.
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Post by vandyhawk »

Ditzy Blonde wrote: GO DORES!!!!!!
Fixed your quote for you.
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Post by Matthew D »

Geez, you really know how to make my life fun, Vandyhawk :lol: :lol:
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Post by MiltonPlayer47 »

I am transferring to UGA in the Fall and am interested in going. When is the deadline to register?
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Post by geekjohnson »

The day before the tournament.
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Post by fancynancy »

I'd like to get a team started at Samford this fall, so hopefully I'll be there :-).
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Post by geekjohnson »

Ok guys. Here is a field update thus far.

Montevallo (1 team)
Northeast CC (1 team)
Shorter (1 team)
Alabama (6 teams)
Louisiana-Lafayette (1 team)
UTC (1 team)
Georgia Tech (1 team)
Florida State (2 teams)

Keep in mind that we have about 5-6 universities on the prob. status, b/c they need to wait until they see how their freshman crop is.

*field updated*
Last edited by geekjohnson on Thu Sep 06, 2007 9:06 pm, edited 5 times in total.
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Post by geekjohnson »

updated field bump, all other interested teams let me know!
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Post by The Ununtiable Twine »

Our freshman crop is 2 so far. We should be ready to go with 2 teams if I can convince some of the others to come. If we have a group of 2 then we'll go with a team of 2; if we have a group of 3 then I will flip a coin to see who my teammate is for each round; if we have a group of 4 then we will send 2 teams, one solo and one of three; likewise for a group of 5; a group of 6 will be a team of 2 and a team of 4; and a group of 1 will be a no-show because I can't drive, and biking to Tuscaloosa is not an option :) But I already have two commitments so I don't know why I mentioned the group of 2 option :( I know I'm a weirdo...I may even dress nicely for the tournament just to see if wearing nice clothes to a tourney would actually boost my morale...haha. And no, I'm not sending 3 teams because we're too broke to pay for 3 teams and 2 hotel rooms :)

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Post by geekjohnson »

Ok guys, any other teams interested in attending the tournament Saturday needs to let UA know ASAP.
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Post by vandyhawk »

Our first meeting with freshmen is tomorrow. At this point, it doesn't look like anyone with a car is wanting to go, but we'll see after tomorrow.
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The Ununtiable Twine
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Post by The Ununtiable Twine »

That's quite a few teams we have there -- which leads me to ask...are we playing a full round-robin or will the teams be split into divisions? Just curious.
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Post by geekjohnson »

Right now it appears as if the tournament will be broken into brackets and then rebracketed into power brackets, although I am unsure as I am not TDing this event, and she will decide that soon.
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Post by geekjohnson »

Quick Results:

1st: Alabama E (Jonathan Thompson)
2nd: FSU B (Billy Beyer)
3rd: Alabama C

We had a major problem yesterday with stats, as we were trying out a new system, and things did not go perfectly. We are working on that and will try and have stats out soon.
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Post by Matthew D »

Hey James... what system were you trying out?
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Post by geekjohnson »

we were using a spread-sheet system, instead of paper copies, for round scores, which WERE supposed to be saved to a network drive, which would allow for us to compile all of the stats without going back and forth between rooms and such. The university, while the they gave us our own network drive, forgot to give us access to save to the drive, thus negating the intended plan of compiling them without traveling. So we had to go in the rooms and put everything on jump-drives. To our dismay one of the computers had a problem saving in the beginning of the tournament, thus negating 5 rounds of stats for one room. So we had a very long day and night in regards to stats. It should be mentioned that one of the main reasons for this was that players would see the scores in match, on a projector in each room, which worked fairly well from my experience.
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Post by Matthew D »

That sounded like a good idea.. I hope that you guys get that up and running for the next tournament..
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Post by ShorterPearson »

By the way, I'm personally going to take the blame for the stats not saving in that room; I saw the stats from Shorter's last match there before lunch, and I should have noticed that they were saving to a temporary drive, but I was not counting on over-security-laden computers resetting EVERYTHING after x minutes of inactivity. Which they did.

I'm 50/50 on the spreadsheet system. If you have competent computer geeks in every room, and especially if you have your network drive system worked out and tested well - which was the real problem early on - then yeah, everybody sees the scores as the match goes, and it's awesome. But any tournament is only as strong as your weakest reading/scorekeeping link, and that weak link can REALLY screw things over if things don't go just so.

(And God help me, there's just something satisfying in the paper scoresheet, and working up printers in every room or one good network printer to print out your record probably would take more geek-fu than any of us have got.)

It was still a good day, because I felt like I was surrounded by kindred spirits the whole day long. I LOVE working with the Alabama guys - it's patently obvious that they love the game, and when they get the kinks out, they're gonna run some AWESOME tournaments. Thanks for letting us hang out.
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Post by ezubaric »

ShorterPearson wrote:I'm 50/50 on the spreadsheet system.
I would like to see Stats99 ported to Google spreadsheets. That way you can see who made what changes, and it's okay if your connection breaks, as it's always saved.

Maybe I can convice Princeton to try it out for a HS tournament (where the alternative is to have runners going from room to room).

http://www.google.com/google-d-s/tour1.html
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Post by geekjohnson »

Ok, after much dismay here are the stats for Ragnarok I. Keep in mind that we were unable to recover the 4 rounds lost because a problem with the location of a save.

Ragnarok

If there are any problems let us know at [email protected]
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