The Quizbowl Resource Center

(Everything's in one long thread, which might hit two pages before all is said and done. The post you probably want to read is down here.)

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Thanks to everybody all around for their patience. We’re going to open the gates for entrants for a Shorter College NAQT CUT-Style invitational on November 3 and ACF Fall on November 4. The two tournaments are connected at the hip; we will provide a significant discount for teams that play both.

We’re genuinely excited to open up our campus for the Southeast version of ACF Fall on Sunday, November 4. This will be our first experience hosting a tournament of this magnitude (we’d be lying if we didn’t admit we’re looking at the other schools hosting and muttering to ourselves “dear God, what have we gotten ourselves into?â€

At long last, a field update from us at Shorter for ACF Fall. If we missed you, so sorry; please drop a note (to [email protected]) and rhetorically slap me upside the head. :)

Alabama (3)
Berry (1-2?)
Florida State (1-2?)
Furman
Louisiana - Lafayette
Mississippi State
South Carolina
UGa (6*)
UTC
Vanderbilt (2)

*Apparently. I'm still waiting for the e-mail telling me I've been punk'd.

Needless to say, if you have readers and you have buzzers, bring them. I'm pretty confident in having five or six rooms handled on reading, but as much as we can get we'll appreciate.

I'll be in contact with individual teams shortly with directions and fee information. If you've left a number of teams ambiguous, please get a hold of me soonest; although I do what I can, I'm no Charlie Steinhice in terms of schedule-juggling.

The plan is still to open up registration at 8:00 AM on November 4. As you arrive on campus, there will be Shorter people around campus to direct you to the Minor Fine Arts building; we'll have registration and opening meeting in the Chorale Room.

We look forward to seeing you on the 4th!

pearson

We really are planning on bringing 6 teams, assuming nobody quits between now and then.

And even if people quit, we've actually got backups for some of the teams...

Also, it's nice to see Furman and South Carolina back in the loop as well as a (relative) newcomer in MS State. We're looking forward to a solid tournament.

That is awesome.

MaS

You can definitely put FSU down for 2 teams. A lot of people are interested in going to Rome. I'm not planning to tell them it's not in Italy.

The Furman program is engulfed in drama. It looks we're going to be pulling out.

Public Service Announcement:

Remember to move your clocks back an hour on Saturday night. I'm quite thankful for this, so at least it'll still feel like Central time. Also, I hear we're up to 22 teams - do we have a final field update?

Full updates were sent out to individual teams last night, although the field list was compiled before Furman pulled out - however, a group "loosely connected" to Athens State (who will be hereafter referred to as RINGERZ ASU because time is getting so close and I'm slap-happy) (and yes, Josh Clanton is aware I'm calling his group that and has approved the designation) has dropped right into the field to take their place.

We're two groups of 11 teams. Here's the breakdown:

GROUP 1
Alabama A
Alabama C
Georgia B
Georgia D
Georgia F
FSU B
Vanderbilt A
Berry
South Carolina
UL-Lafayette
Oakwood

GROUP 2
Alabama B
Georgia A
Georgia C
Georgia E
FSU A
Vanderbilt B
Louisville
Mississippi State
UTC
Georgia Tech
RINGERZ ASU

And: yes, the dialing back of the time is going to SAVE OUR LIVES Saturday night. Nobody is going to need that hour more than your loyal hosts will. :)

See you...holy crap, see some of you in TWENTY FOUR HOURS. (Honestly? I can't wait.)

chuck

In brief:

Vanderbilt A was champion of ACF Fall Southeast, with a perfect 12-0 record.
Georgia A was second, Georgia B was third, FSU Garnet (A) was fourth.

Jacob Vannucci from UTC was top individual scorer, with the top ten as follows:
Matt Keller - Vanderbilt A
Paul Gauthier - Vanderbilt A
Jake Sundberg - UL-Lafayette
Amy Varallo- Georgia Tech
David Flowers - FSU Gold
Matt Alford - FSU Garnet
Billy Beyer - FSU Garnet
Alesis Turner - Oakwood
Joey Montoya - South Carolina

Further updates as I'm able to line up my ducks. Thanks to all TWENTY-ONE teams who turned up for a great tournament; thanks to all the tournament staff and help, including the amazing students of Shorter College who put this thing together.

"And that's it - I'm going back to bed."

chuck

Great tournament by the Shorter people- the logistics went incredibly smoothly for such a large field and I really liked the 7 team divisions, which allowed for teams in the afternoon/evening to compete against many teams of the same level. The readers were of varying speeds, but all were extremely professional and handled protests quite fairly. The free soft drinks/water was definitely a nice touch as well.

Major props also to Oakwood for attending what I believe is their first non-Honda All-Star Challenge tournament. Hope to see them elsewhere on the circuit soon.

Finally, Vandy A is a buzzsaw. They should be nationally competitive this year or at least a fine representative of the southeast.

I just want to make a point of applauding Shorter College for deciding to host both their originally planned NAQT event and ACF Fall after the board talked about how one would drive out the other in the local circuit. Instead of shutting down the idea of ACF, Shorter decided to host both tournaments and I think very successfully helped contribute something really solid to the general southeast. I think Shorter should be held up as a model for other teams to be open to more than the usual in a given region. Stories like this make me happy.

vig180 wrote:Great tournament by the Shorter people- the logistics went incredibly smoothly for such a large field and I really liked the 7 team divisions, which allowed for teams in the afternoon/evening to compete against many teams of the same level. The readers were of varying speeds, but all were extremely professional and handled protests quite fairly. The free soft drinks/water was definitely a nice touch as well.

Major props also to Oakwood for attending what I believe is their first non-Honda All-Star Challenge tournament. Hope to see them elsewhere on the circuit soon.

I agree with pretty much everything Chris said above. It seems like Chuck and the Shorter folks worked very hard to prepare for this weekend, and while I can't say anything for Saturday's event, ACF Fall was a lot of fun. A couple readers could've been faster, but they weren't terrible by any means. Hopefully the teams and people who aren't ACF regulars enjoyed the tournament as well and will come to more circuit events.

This is a placeholder for the formal announcement of results/stats/gratitude. I'll replace it later with a full accounting. And then I'll address some of the points raised above (beyond the standard THANK YOU SO MUCH WE LOVE YOU ALL).

But, what you want more than anything else: stats for the whole tournament and stats specific to the final round-robin, which is what the team places were based on. I'm still cleaning this up a bit for the final iteration, so the rest of the free world can understand exactly how we ran this tournament, but here you go.

chuck

[quote="Matt "Baby Seal Clubber" Keller"]I think it seems like a good idea to have them all play together, but on the other hand, not if it means that you'll also be fielding a juggernaut of experienced people that is crushing people by 500 points.[/quote]

You beat the second place team by only 420 points though, right?

Seriously though, I'm just messing with you.

wd4gdz wrote:[quote="Matt "Baby Seal Clubber" Keller"]I think it seems like a good idea to have them all play together, but on the other hand, not if it means that you'll also be fielding a juggernaut of experienced people that is crushing people by 500 points.

You beat the second place team by only 420 points though, right?

Seriously though, I'm just messing with you.[/quote]

Yeah yeah, I was wondering if someone would find that and quote it. The plan was for Jack and I to write one packet (which we did) and for Paul and a couple other people to write another one. Paul's help bailed though, and he couldn't finish it on his own. We have a solid group of freshmen who played together at the previous two tournaments as well who went along, so we decided to leave it to them whether they wanted to play together or to join up with either Paul or me/Jack, and they chose the former. My hesitancy in allowing this was eased quite a bit when I saw that Chris and Charles played together on Maryland. You guys (FSU), as usual, gave us a very close match though. I think timing had something to do with our margin of victory against UGA A, as they seemed a bit flustered before the match, and the round was chock full of stuff I knew very well, including books I've actually read, which isn't a terribly large list.

Just so you know. Alabama A beat FSU B in the last match in OT. It has us losing by 20. Not a big deal, but it is more depressing to see us with one win in the second round robin than with the actual number of 2.

I think timing had something to do with our margin of victory against UGA A, as they seemed a bit flustered before the match

It's no excuse, but that's pretty accurate. I was out of it coming into our match against Vandy A thanks to a stupid issue that came up in the match before. I let it get to me for a few rounds (specifically that one, my worst career game), which was even worse considering at any normal time that packet would've been ideal for me, but I got over my funk by the time we played FSU A. Usually we could count on a few good lit. buzzes as well, but that didn't work out in that match either.

Regardless, I'm sure we'll have a rematch soon in which we'll put up much more of a fight. And full credit to Vandy for a superbly played round/tournament.

SCANDAL!!! SCANDAL!!!

Kevin Christopher from Ringerz team is actually Casey Lowery from Brindlee Mountain High School!!!


SCANDAL!!! SCANDAL!!!


Some of you got owned by like my 3rd or 4th best player...


Disclaimer: This post is made in a tongue-in-cheek manner not meant to be inflammatory or rude. Even though some of you did, in fact, get owned by a team led by a high school player, it is understandable in that Brindlee Mountain is awesome and exponentially better at pyramidal ACF-style questions than at the kind of crap we have to deal with in Alabama.

A further note to Casey from his coach: If you can play this well in a freakin' college tournament, it would be nice if you...

CONTRIBUTED A LITTLE MORE TO THE DAMN TEAM THAT YOU ARE ACTUALLY A PART OF, YOU GIANT TOOL!!!!!

Thank you.

GiveMeBrindleeOrDeath wrote:SCANDAL!!! SCANDAL!!!

Kevin Christopher from Ringerz team is actually Casey Lowery from Brindlee Mountain High School!!!

SCANDAL!!! SCANDAL!!!

Some of you got owned by like my 3rd or 4th best player...

Disclaimer: This post is made in a tongue-in-cheek manner not meant to be inflammatory or rude. Even though some of you did, in fact, get owned by a team led by a high school player, it is understandable in that Brindlee Mountain is awesome and exponentially better at pyramidal ACF-style questions than at the kind of crap we have to deal with in Alabama.

A further note to Casey from his coach: If you can play this well in a freakin' college tournament, it would be nice if you...

CONTRIBUTED A LITTLE MORE TO THE DAMN TEAM THAT YOU ARE ACTUALLY A PART OF, YOU GIANT TOOL!!!!!

Thank you.

Well, this thread certainly turned epic pretty quick.

I still can't believe that happened for any number of reasons.

Deesy Does It wrote:I just want to make a point of applauding Shorter College for deciding to host both their originally planned NAQT event and ACF Fall after the board talked about how one would drive out the other in the local circuit. Instead of shutting down the idea of ACF, Shorter decided to host both tournaments and I think very successfully helped contribute something really solid to the general southeast. I think Shorter should be held up as a model for other teams to be open to more than the usual in a given region. Stories like this make me happy.

True, true. My only regret is that we couldn't field a more competitive team because two of our best players (and the two that work the best with my game given their broad knowledge of areas that I don't know crap about) couldn't make it to the tournament because the Shorter trip was, well...not so short for us. It was good to see that we were still fairly competitive given our lack of depth at the tournament. I'm almost positive that we would have made the top 3 quite easily if the tournament were held on the Saturday instead of Sunday, but whatever. We had lots of fun, except for the excruciatingly painful close defeats that we had throughout the opening rounds.

DarkMatter wrote:I'm almost positive that we would have made the top 3 quite easily if the tournament were held on the Saturday instead of Sunday

Whatever the opposite of QFT is

wd4gdz wrote:

DarkMatter wrote:I'm almost positive that we would have made the top 3 quite easily if the tournament were held on the Saturday instead of Sunday

Whatever the opposite of QFT is

Well, believe what you want -- that's up to you. I was just saying that it was unfortunate that we couldn't make it together as a team -- but quite obviously you don't know the makeup of my team and what we are capable of doing when we're playing together. Hopefully you and the rest of the quiz bowl world get a chance to see. This semester was one of pure frustration for us because we're in the middle of quiz bowl nowhere and it's hard to get my team together for long trips (and those are the only kind available to us). Sometimes these things just don't work out. Both of my other teammates had tests on Monday and couldn't come to the tournament for any reason whatsoever.

Also, don't base your opinion of us on one game, playing half our team (and a half-team that didn't work well together, at that) -- I was already dejected going into the match because we had been losing close games that would have been 150+ point victories under normal circumstances. I wish we would have given you guys a better game but I was completely out of it at the time -- and I'll apologize to you personally for our team not giving you guys a better match even under the circumstances. It was an absolutely abysmal performance.

DarkMatter wrote:Well, believe what you want -- that's up to you.

Your extras would have added roughly 150 points per to your score? Because that's what it would have taken for you to finish in the top three.

leftsaidfred wrote:

DarkMatter wrote:Well, believe what you want -- that's up to you.

Your extras would have added roughly 150 points per to your score? Because that's what it would have taken for you to finish in the top three.

Actually yeah, they would have. And these people I'm talking about aren't exactly what you would call "extras." They're actually the two most experienced players in our club with respect to myself. What some of you folks don't understand is that Sumedh is not our #2 player right now. He's not nearly as skilled as Scott and doesn't really work too well with me right now. My game doesn't work quite well unless Scott B. is playing alongside me so that's why we seemed to be fairly bad at the tournament. Do understand that he is a genius of the humanities, which Sumedh and I are not. German (our other Senior) and Scott would have honestly added about 4+ tossups per game to our average and probably about an additional 7-8 ppb. Then they get us more tossups which leads to the other teams getting my favorite bonuses, etc. Then we all play with more confidence, blah blah blah, the usual with any good team. Notice that our team was still ranked fairly high on total number of tossups through the prelims -- what killed us was the lack of bonus conversion because we lacked the depth to do anything about it on the run.

I do admit that not having Scott on the team kills any chances of us winning major competitions. We're probably the best undergraduate tandem that no one knows a damn thing about. In fact I was quite happy with how we played with only 2 of our regulars playing -- and Sumedh had taken a whole year off from the game. Neither one of us really pays that much attention to those things that Scott knows (cinema, literature, psychology, sociology, American history, etc.) and so we get lots and lots of 0's and 10's on bonuses when he's not there that would be 20's and 30's, generally.

I guess what I'm saying is that it's not a good idea to write my team off especially when you saw us functioning at about 40% if you even saw us at all. I'm the closest thing that we have to a dominant player, but in reality, you never know when I'm gonna suck. Our organization doesn't have very many players that are capable of performing well at major competitions, so it's hard for me to get our best team together for trips. But the guys did promise me that they'd return for next semester, so that's a major plus.

DarkMatter wrote:We're probably the best undergraduate tandem that no one knows a damn thing about.

If no one knows a damn thing about all these undergraduate duos, then how can you possibly compare yourself to them?

Kit Cloudkicker wrote:

DarkMatter wrote:We're probably the best undergraduate tandem that no one knows a damn thing about.

If no one knows a damn thing about all these undergraduate duos, then how can you possibly compare yourself to them?

qft. And see you at nationals.

Kit Cloudkicker wrote:

DarkMatter wrote:We're probably the best undergraduate tandem that no one knows a damn thing about.

If no one knows a damn thing about all these undergraduate duos, then how can you possibly compare yourself to them?

Well since all the good undergraduate duos are known he could be right in that he's part of the best unknown undergraduate duo.

DarkMatter, I don't doubt what you're saying about being a much better team with a full complement of your best players there, and it's unfortunate we didn't get to find out. But you can't blame anyone for taking issue with claiming you would have "made the top 3 quite easily" even with all your players there, given the overall strength of the field. I can attest that all the teams in the top bracket seemed to belong there.

(Actually, I see your claim was "if the tournament were on Saturday", so there might be something to that -- since FSU was hosting a HS tournament and Georgia might have trouble getting people to skip the football game -- but then, I assume that's not what you meant.)

Anyway, I hope we'll see y'all at full strength later in the year so we can see what you can do.

As for the tournament, most of it's been said, but I just wanted to reiterate that it's unbelievable to me that the Shorter people had never hosted a tournament before Saturday. ACF Fall ran as smoothly as I could've possibly asked, and the format (divisions followed by a reseeding phase) seems like the best possible option given the size of the field. (Even if we did get stuck in a prelim bracket with Vandy and Bama A...) It's too bad that not all the brackets got to play a 12th game -- I would have been interested to see how the Ga E vs. Ga F match went in a real tournament environment -- but all in all, I couldn't imagine things going much better. Here's hoping Shorter hosts more tournaments in the future.

ToStrikeInfinitely wrote:

Kit Cloudkicker wrote:

DarkMatter wrote:We're probably the best undergraduate tandem that no one knows a damn thing about.

If no one knows a damn thing about all these undergraduate duos, then how can you possibly compare yourself to them?

qft. And see you at nationals.

...or the MLK mirror that UF will (hopefully) have, or FSU's Penn Bowl mirror, or ACF Regionals at Vanderbilt, etc. I know your school's location is a relatively long drive from these places, but hopefully the Ragin' Cajuns can make it to some of these sure-to-be-awesome tournaments. I want to know more about the best UG duo that nobody knows about!

Ok, Ok, flame shield.

I know I might have been a little bit over the top. I was just a little frustrated over some losses over the weekend that would have been easy wins if we would have been able to have our whole team travel.

It's really frustrating being in the middle of quiz bowl nowhere, guys. What I guess I was trying to say is that if we were in the vicinity of any of the regions that you guys are fortunate enough to play in, then you'd know more about us because the travel would be much much easier on us. Instead what you get is a team that doesn't play as much as it should and when any of us do play, we're usually rather tired because of long trips that we make. What ensues afterwards is pure quiz bowl laziness. There is nothing resembling a quiz bowl circuit anywhere near where we are. I applaud Alabama for beginning to host more tournaments, but even so, they perhaps the closest school with an really active organization. I guess Florida State would be a close second in terms of distance, and we may migrate over there for the Penn Bowl Mirror (hopefully all of us). We don't have any schools within 5 hours of us that host tournaments regularly as most of you guys do.

I didn't mean for it to be offensive to anyone, I really didn't. I was just one that was frustrated that ACF Fall had to be on a Sunday. Also, we could have gone to Fall this weekend in Dallas, but that conflicts with our high school tournament. I'm really sorry if I offended anyone. I understand if you took offense.

Noah, my apologies. I probably should have said that we would have competed for a spot in the top 3. I guess I wasn't thinking straight when I wrote that message. I meant no disrespect whatsoever to any of your organizations. In fact, congratulations on finishing 2nd and 3rd, respectively. I admire your organization for being able to put up several high quality teams at competitions. I also admire that your organization can field 6 teams at such a competition. That's quite a feat to run a quiz bowl organization that large.

What I've said is a whole bunch of ifs, and really, unless they play it will remain a whole bunch of ifs. I hope they stay together for the whole Spring. They're really a good bunch.

I'd really like to see how my team matches up with some of the teams in the nation -- time to convince the university to give us some cash and start being more dedicated to quiz bowl myself.

Jake (I assume), we were pretty much just making fun of you. We all want to see how good you are just we do any other team, and as I have told you I want to try to make our tournaments here in Texas as accessible to you guys as possible. Hopefully we'll see you guys at Sectionals or before, and if you're as good as you say you have a good shot at making it to ICT.

Oh, I'm quite thankful that you guys make the tournaments as accessible as possible to us, Eric. Trust me, I am. The TX/LA region has sort of disintegrated in terms of how many teams are left, as you can certainly attest to. Three years ago we had our team, LSU, and even Tulane as somewhat active programs, and Texas certainly didn't lack in terms of numbers...you guys at UT, A&M, Baylor, Rice, UTD, and probably a few more that I'm forgetting. Most of these organizations aren't nearly as active as they used to be and some don't even play much at all. It is frustrating not to have competition close to home, but what you do, I most definitely appreciate. In fact, I appreciate everything you've done for the region as a player/editor/tournament organizer over the years. (Because you're the guy when I first started out that I always told myself, "Man, I wish I were as good as him.")

This whole "what if" thing has plagued me since my freshman year in high school. What if this team that I was on would have stayed together, what if that one did, what if the teammates were more dedicated, etc. I guess I was just having another one of those moments as if it might happen again. I don't want it to -- really, I don't. I'd like for my team to be at full strength at least once before I die/retire/win ACF Nationals solo at the age of 63 :)

I hate to change the subject from Lafayette, but I just wanted to post a few comments. I had the chance to read at the tournaments at Shorter this past weekend, and it was a positive experience. Perhaps I've been out of the loop too long to know for sure, but I thought the field was very good. Georgia and FSU seem to have very good programs going given the large number of quality teams and players they had. Alabama has the the makings of a good program, as does Mississippi State. UTC and Berry are much improved from when I last saw them. Also, it would be good to see Georgia Tech at full strength, because they had a solid 2 person team. I didn't get to read for Lafayette, but my South Carolina people said they had some good players. Anyway, I hope everyone in the region keeps up the good work. Oh, and Vandy's excellent.

I was also incredibly impressed with Taylor and Amy's performance when I looked at the stats. They've always been really fun to play against.

Thanks to South Carolina for the compliment, of course. I surely wish we wouldn't have been so dejected after our 2-4 beginning and would have given you guys a better game, but then again, they were a pretty damn good team too and surely didn't deserve to be in the bottom bracket. I had some strange physical ailments during the match. It wasn't mental fatigue or anything like that -- I was just physically fatigued for some reason. That had never happened to me in a tournament before. Thank goodness we had a bye that round because I was about to faint. I had to go find a place to take a 30-35 minute nap in the middle of the tournament.

Awesome tournament, once again. Hopefully this little "issue" that I brought up just goes away on it's own. Well, I gotta go finalize stuff with our high school tournament...darn.

I need to make a sig...for some reason I haven't done so... ^_^

--
Jake

Oh yes, and Vandy is totally awesome.

I just wanted to thanks Chuck and Shorter for hosting a good tournament and the editors for putting together another good ACF Fall. It continues to be perhaps my favorite tournament of the year. It was good to see such a large and diverse field, too. I wish we had gotten to play everyone who was there, but perhaps, in time, we will at other tournaments.

I'd like to say that the tournament was great, both in question quality and administration. I liked getting to play power matched rounds at the end, its alway more fun when the rounds are close, but I think it completely messed up the individual stats. Mind you, individual stats are already broken by the fact that good teams, like Georgia A, are distributed between a number of good players, but the power brackets went even further and handicaped the best players on good teams. I don't mean to minimize anyone's victory, but looking objectively, Matt and Billy should have been 1 and 2, and some of the players from schools at the bottom of the brackets shouldn't have placed at all when you factor in the fact that any player from from the top ranked teams could probable take them by his/her self. Of course, I shouldn't complain, Georgia Tech was boosted a little unfairly...

Paul is pretty good too!

I've always kind of felt individual stats ended up rewarding good players on not-as-good teams anyway, regardless of format -- like you said, a team with four good players probably wouldn't have anybody with great stats anyway due to specialization and having to play "against" at least three other good players every round. A team with one phenomenal player might light up the individual scoreboard, but only a very select few can compete when you consider team record, which I've always thought was much more important.

Also, since FSU was mentioned, I believe they split their hypothetical "best" team up between their A and B. Given that their B team beat our A team (and was one question away from beating our B team), and that their A team's only losses came to Vandy and our two teams... I wonder how good they will be later in the year as a unified group.

(Egads, all the discussion, I almost feel like this post is completely superfluous, but in the interest of completeness...)

Congratulations (and mad, mad respect) to Vanderbilt A (Matt Keller, Paul Gauthier, Jack Hartz) for their 12-0 run to win ACF Fall Southeast, held at Shorter College on November 4, 2007. Second place was awarded to Georgia A (Chris Chiego, Steven Etheridge, Jon Okon, and Nick Rolater), third to Georgia B (Noah Mink, Stephen Hanley, Jay Ivey, Cullen Timmons), and fourth to FSU Garnet (Billy Beyer, Matt Alford, Lea Bielland, and Laura Adams). Special commendation to Georgia Tech (Taylor Kulp and Amy Varallo), who missed the final round-robin but finished "best of the rest" with an 8-4 overall record.

Top individual scorer was Jacob Vannucci of UTC, who averaged 74.6 ppg. Top scorer in the championship flight was Matt Keller of Vanderbilt A, with 56.25 ppg - and right behind him was Paul Gauthier, also of Vanderbilt A, with 55.4; if the two of them hadn't been swapping off eight-to-ten tossup games, I could have seen either clearing 100 ppg. The rest of the top ten, in order, were:

Jake Sundberg, UL-Lafayette
Amy Varallo, Georgia Tech
Matt Alford, FSU Garnet
Billy Beyer, FSU Garnet
David Flowers, FSU Gold
Alesis Turner, Oakwood
Joey Montoya, South Carolina

Full stats - for the preliminary stage, the championship round-robin, and the overall standings - are available. We also have a summary of how we ran the tournament, in case anybody ever has to deal with 21 teams in their tournament and doesn't mind making an 11-hour day of it.

Thanks to our outside readers and staff - first, the incomparable Erskine Thompson, who is my "partner in crime" in local quiz bowl and who has never minded waking up way too early to help out. Thanks to Eric Douglass and Bryn Reincke from South Carolina, Rennae Elliot from Oakwood, Chela Canler from Alabama, and Josh Clanton from Clanton Quiz-Bowl Tech for their invaluable help, assistance and fellowship. Bonus credit to Taylor Kulp from Georgia Tech, who helped out with the reading on Saturday.

Thanks to the Shorter students who contributed both days - Morgan Elizabeth Collins, Heather Michot, Celestia Price, and Tiffany Lambert - for the love and the support they provide me, in word and in action. Special thanks to Stewart Orr, a local homeschooled student who threw in a key assist. Big ups to Chris Gilstrap, who no longer attends Shorter but is still Shorter Academic Bowl's First Man.

And, last but never least, thanks to the students who make up Shorter Academic Bowl, who put so much of their heart and soul into making this weekend work the way it did. Whitney Richert, Jill Davis, A.J. Hopkins, Ashleigh Watts, Clint Higginbotham, Mack Freeman, Catie Eisel, Krystin Fain - I love each and every one of you, and the lot of you astound and amaze me week in and week out.

We were deliriously talking to one another after everybody left on Sunday night - "You know what I think we just did? I think we hosted ACF Fall..." But I have to be honest. THOSE are the guys - not me - who hosted ACF Fall, and for such a young program, I really marvel at the quality of hosts they were. There's no way I could have expected as glitch-free of a tournament as we had, and since I was holed up in HQ most of the day, it came down to them. And they were amazing.

We'll throw open our doors again. Come back. We loved having you.

chuck

I just sent out the whole missive to all parties, and I just realized that I forgot to thank somebody very important, without whom this whole enterprise would never have materialized.

Eric Kwartler: You Are Da Man. Thanks for EVERY LAST BIT of help putting this thing together, way above and beyond the call. A lot of what looked like me being an expert on tournament-directing was you telling me what to expect beforehand, and you don't know how much I appreciate it (even if I screw up and don't say so in a gratitude-list; par for the course for me, really).

Thanks to everybody else from ACF for putting the faith in a bunch of novices; we hope we did the job right.

chuck

gtechnerd wrote: and some of the players from schools at the bottom of the brackets shouldn't have placed at all when you factor in the fact that any player from from the top ranked teams could probable take them by his/her self.

I can only assume this was directed my way. I am glad to be the standard-bearer for mediocre players who play on bad teams and wrack up individual stats. But seriously, I don't think anyone with a working knowledge of quizbowl, myself especially, is every going to equate PPG with being a productive quizbowl player. I'm sure most all of the people in the top ten (and beyond) who played on good teams are better quizbowl players than me. I wish there were a more fair and equitable way to determine production than PPG. If I can recall, I believe that there was a thread here not too long ago that concerned itself with finding a good formula to base quizbowl production on. Perhaps that is still being developed? Or perhaps we should stop handing out individual awards altogether?

I would gladly have given up top scorer to play in the top bracket, which my team missed out on due to poor bonus conversion, first to Miss. St. in our group and then to Alabama A overall. That said, looking at the top scorers from the original round robin and then from the rebracketing, it doesn't look like the Swiss pairings ended up having a huge impact on the top 10 scorers. I think team performance was a bigger factor. Having excellent overall teams, like Georgia A and B who ended up 2nd and 4th overall without a player averaging more than 32 PPG, is more desirable than putting up good individual stats.

I think the obvious solution here is just to take them for what they are, a fairly meaningless award that has nothing to do with how good a team is and simply tells us who answered the most tossups in a given game. They are kind of fun for some people and sometimes they are right, sometimes they aren't, nothing more. I don't think they should be taken that seriously.

barnacles wrote: I can only assume this was directed my way. I am glad to be the standard-bearer for mediocre players who play on bad teams and wrack up individual stats. But seriously, I don't think anyone with a working knowledge of quizbowl, myself especially, is every going to equate PPG with being a productive quizbowl player.

This age old argument probably belongs in the discussion forum anyway, but I would like to give some credit where credit is due. There's no shame in being one of the top scorers in this tournament. It was a good field with lots of good teams and players. As I was reading this weekend, I was struck by how few "bad" teams I saw. From what I could tell, this wasn't a great competition to come to if you were interested in racking up individual points against a bunch of buzzer rocks. Yeah, I think people understand that those with the top pspg aren't necesarily the 10 best players at the tournament, but it's nothing to be ashamed of, and it certainly gives one the designation of being a "productive quizbowl player".

As for not taking flights into account when determining the top 10 scorers, I don't think that's a big issue. The good players in the top flight should know that they're likely better than some of the top 10 and not worry that they didn't get a free book. And the ones that got free books can say "Oooh this is candy, I'm having Fuuuun!"

I don't think most people really care too much about individual standings or the prizes. Case in point: if anyone wants the awesome TI-83 Graphing Calculation Manual that I was awarded, please let me know.

ShorterPearson wrote:I just sent out the whole missive to all parties, and I just realized that I forgot to thank somebody very important, without whom this whole enterprise would never have materialized.

Eric Kwartler: You Are Da Man. Thanks for EVERY LAST BIT of help putting this thing together, way above and beyond the call. A lot of what looked like me being an expert on tournament-directing was you telling me what to expect beforehand, and you don't know how much I appreciate it (even if I screw up and don't say so in a gratitude-list; par for the course for me, really).

Thanks to everybody else from ACF for putting the faith in a bunch of novices; we hope we did the job right.

chuck

I appreciate the shout out, but while I provided some advice, it was Chuck and his group who did everything right, and that's a big achievement for a first-time TD. Congratulations, guys. I hope to work with you again in the future.

wd4gdz wrote:I don't think most people really care too much about individual standings or the prizes. Case in point: if anyone wants the awesome TI-83 Graphing Calculation Manual that I was awarded, please let me know.

Our driver was talking about how he went to the pawn shop last Friday to sell his TI-83 but the shop told him that they needed the manual in order to pawn it off...and then whadduya know, the exact manual that he needs...is in your possession. I cracked up for about 10 minutes when I saw it. If you'd like to send it, here's our club address:

PO Box 40483
Lafayette, LA 70504-0483

Gee, what an incredible coincidence.

--
As for the previous discussion about PPG and individual awards, who really cares about the individual awards when it comes down to it? What we'd all like is some combination of having fun and winning lots of games and hopefully winning tournaments, no? Of course! The top individual awards aren't necessarily awarded to the best players in the tournament in order of how good they are, but really, is there any way to determine the order of this? Just because a quarterback has a higher rating in a football game than his opponent doesn't mean much of anything, if you look at it, for example.

Does a player's PPG always go down if he plays on a team with all good players? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It depends on a few things, really. For example, my teammates and I all have a really nice general knowledge base, so surely when the questions are a tad easier we'll split the points to where everyone's PPG is "lower." On the other hand, in tournaments that are more difficult, the splitting of the points is different.
Interestingly enough, our knowledge doesn't overlap much. For example, I don't do too much reading in my leisure time, hence my PPG isn't "lowered" by the fact that my teammates who read much more than I do buzz in and get tossups. They all have different interests, too, so in a quizbowl sense, they don't really get "in the way" of any scoring that the others do.

PPG would be split if people do the same stuff. Otherwise, it's not. Sometimes the PPG that goes down can also be boosted back up by confidence. For example, take this situation: a player playing on a good team scores 45 points in one game that his team wins by 200 points -- the next game, he is still confident and in a really good mood. The next game, he also scores 40 points because he's still really confident. The same player playing on a team that isn't that good could have a really nice 60 point game and his team loses, so he feels all shitty and scores like 30 in the next game because he was slower on the buzzer because he was just in a shitty mood. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there are more factors to some players' PPG than who is playing on the team with them. There are plenty other situations than these, but you get the general point.

Also, personally I find that I get to pick and choose when I answer some tossups due to the fact that there are very few players that play questions in that field as well as they do other questions. It shocks me how few players are decent/good on math/physics questions in this region or in the SW region which we used to play in. This is really unfortunate. So generally, the amount of good players playing in a match doesn't really affect my on those types of questions. I guess we're a rare breed...whatever.

Truthfully, it is more likely for a player who specializes more in sciences to score more on humanities tossups than a player who specializes in humanities scoring on sciences tossups. The reason being? Well, lots of people love to read in their spare time, including science folk, so whomever read whatever from literature is likely to score on the tossup concerning the work. However, there are much less people in the humanities that are likely to know much about something such as Markovnikov's Rule or van Dyck's Theorem.

It's true. Not saying that it's impossible for the best of humanities players to be good on science too, but it's not as likely as the other way around. That's what I've gathered over the years. So their PPG in "tougher" competitions won't fluctuate that much with respect to the difficulty level.

Then of course everyone has their little niches.

So it is conceivable that a player can put up just about the same PPG with good teammates as he/she does without them. Surely some players' scoring averages will "suffer" by having better teammates, but it's not always drastic. It depends on the makeup of the team, really.

Peace out.

Anybody know how hard it is to run a full teaching load the week after TD'ing? Holee crap, this has been an insane week.

Now that I've effectively gotten to the weekend, have a few takes (related to the tournament itself...I've got a whole HOST of takes based on general observations set aside for another place and time).

In response to vig180:

Major props also to Oakwood for attending what I believe is their first non-Honda All-Star Challenge tournament. Hope to see them elsewhere on the circuit soon.

Oakwood plays the Alabama College Bowl League tournaments as much as they can, from what I understand, and when Charlie ran the scrimmage based on Trevor's Trivia they turned up for that as well. The problem is, they're an Adventist school. If a Saturday tournament happens, they're out. The only reason they came in for ACF Fall was because it was run on a Sunday.

I don't think there are too many schools that have that kind of issue on the circuit because of religious reasons (although I did lose a player from the early iteration of the Shorter team because he was SDA and he saw no way to get games on a regular basis). But for them, it's an issue.

And it sucks, because Rennae Elliott is an amazing person and I think the only quiz bowl team in the Southeast with better *people* on it is Shorter's. Then again, I'm biased.

But if we can find ways to do more Friday and Sunday stuff, we'd get them more involved.

vandyhawk:

A couple readers could've been faster, but they weren't terrible by any means.

I think, more than anything, we tired out. A couple of readers I totally expected to be among the fastest went slow, especially later in the day. I think it's understandable - we've never read for a 14-round tournament ANYWHERE, especially one we put on.

That said: There HAS to be a way to run a tournament like this with fewer rounds. (Matt did have a couple of good suggestions he made to me earlier in the day that I'm stewing on. I probably could have put together a second-stage schedule that involved the "reseeded" teams playing everybody EXCEPT the team they had already played in the group stage. That would have been much easier, though, if we went with just the top two from each group, and that would have taken us out of the seven-seven-seven setup. Josh Clanton and I talked tournament logistics over dinner on Saturday night; next time we do this, I might just let Clanton set up all the n+3 to n-3 schedules. We got a workable schedule after figuring out that Louisville was going north 24 hours ahead of time; I'm happiest about that, even if it played long.)

geekjohnson:

Just so you know. Alabama A beat FSU B in the last match in OT. It has us losing by 20. Not a big deal, but it is more depressing to see us with one win in the second round robin than with the actual number of 2.

I think that's fixed now. The scoresheet didn't reflect the OT, and it had both teams getting credit for answering Tossup 17 - which is a subtlety that, at 8:30 PM on Sunday night, neither me nor Ashleigh nor anybody else was getting. And SQBS was hating me. And, looking at the standings at the time, it didn't seem to me that it made any difference in the standings, so I just ran with the result I stuck in SQBS (even though it didn't match the scoresheet) and forgot about it.

Since James asked me about it, I did a little rooting around and discovered the error and (I think) made sense of the scoresheet, so I hope what's up there right now is correct. Even though - surprise, surprise, surprise! - since I was using bonus conversion as the tiebreaker, it DID wind up causing Alabama A and FSU Gold to switch places. If either team had finished "in the money", I would be mailing out gift books right now with "I'm sorry, so sorry" cards attached.

gtechnerd:

I liked getting to play power matched rounds at the end, its alway more fun when the rounds are close, but I think it completely messed up the individual stats. Mind you, individual stats are already broken by the fact that good teams, like Georgia A, are distributed between a number of good players, but the power brackets went even further and handicaped the best players on good teams. I don't mean to minimize anyone's victory, but looking objectively, Matt and Billy should have been 1 and 2, and some of the players from schools at the bottom of the brackets shouldn't have placed at all when you factor in the fact that any player from from the top ranked teams could probable take them by his/her self. Of course, I shouldn't complain, Georgia Tech was boosted a little unfairly...

I came out of this weekend coming into the belief that individual stats are broken, period. Mind you, I should have had this belief a long time ago, with evidence the fact that I'm consistently a top-ten trash player with essentially zero movies, comics, and video game knowledge (but buddy, don't mess with me on music). But that's another post.

Without some kind of uniformly agreeable tool for assessing individual play, I'm going to be biased towards the "lesser lights" in the pool. Sorry, I'm a small college prof; that's just the way I roll. If I felt like there were truly bad players who found their way into the mix, that would be one thing; but Jake Sundberg, Alesis Turner and Joey Montoya are really skilled. (So are Jacob Vannucci and Amy Varallo, by the way - Amy is only a FRESHMAN? We're going to hear about her, I'm DANG sure of this.) I couldn't bring myself to feel like anybody lower in the individuals were being THAT badly jobbed.

If you were lower in the individuals, and you would like to make that argument to me, though, I'll gladly feed you lunch while you argue. You gotta drive to Rome to do it, though. :)

Lastly, Kit Cloudkicker:

I appreciate the shout out, but while I provided some advice, it was Chuck and his group who did everything right, and that's a big achievement for a first-time TD. Congratulations, guys. I hope to work with you again in the future.

Look, hows about we be honest here? We all just rock the world. Every one of us. My guys here who read and ran around, all the folks who come in to help, the editors who put together a rock-solid tournament, all the teams who played...everybody. You are all awesome. You're incredible. Go you.

Seriously.

Me? I just know how to surround myself with amazing people. :)

chuck