The Quizbowl Resource Center

ICT Warm-Up
Saturday, April 5th, 2008
University of Maryland

ANNOUNCEMENT:

The Maryland Academic Quiz Team is pleased to announce that it will be hosting the ICT Warm-Up on Saturday, April 5th, 2008 at our College Park campus. This is a tournament being written by Matt Weiner with help from Jerry Vinokurov that will be played using NAQT style rules and questions. This means that packets will be timed and that the distribution will be roughly similar to what you can expect for Division I at the ICT. Also, there is no packet submission required or expected for this tournament.

PRICING:

+$100 – Base Fee per team.
-$10 – Discount for 2nd team.
-$20 – Discount for 3rd and additional teams.
-$5 – Buzzer discount per school.
-$20 – Staff discount (either moderating or scorekeeping) per school.
-$10 – Clock discount per school (i.e. a clock you would see at a time NAQT match).
-$15 – Travel discount per team for traveling over 200 miles one way to the tournament.

Minimum Fee per Team: $50

ELIGIBILITY:

This is an open event. Anyone is welcome to play in this tournament, regardless of collegiate affiliation. This means that the tournament is open to college players, high school players, coaches and players not affiliated with any institution of learning. I do ask that if you are forming teams from people at different schools, please contact me first before you do so. While the questions will certainly be harder than the HSNCT, this tournament is probably also a good warm up for competitive high school teams who will get a chance to practice for that tournament by playing tough competition on question sets more difficult than the typical IS set. It is possible that we might run a separate Division II field if there are enough teams interested, but the questions will not be different like at the ICT. Regardless of whether we run a Division II field or not, we will award prizes the Division II winner.

REGISTRATION:

To register for this tournament, please contact tournament director Mike Bentley at [email protected]. Please indicate how many teams you are bringing and any discounts you think you qualify for.

If you are interested in helping staff this tournament, please let me know. Since this is a timed tournament, we would like to have scorekeepers in each room.

There is a slight possibility that registration will be limited by how many staff we have, so it’s in your best interest to register early.

The actual registration details for the day of the tournament will be posted as the tournament draws closer.

Hope to see everyone in April,
Mike Bentley
Tournament Director

See below for an updated field list.

There's a fairly decent chance that CMU will be sending a team.

Bentley Like Beckham wrote:Obviously we'd like to see many more teams sign up for this tournament. Please let me know if you're interested (or if you already registered and I forgot to put you on this list).

Princeton will almost certainly come.

Is there currently any plans for a (Midwestern) mirror of this event?

walter12 wrote:Is there currently any plans for a (Midwestern) mirror of this event?

I have received no formal bids from other regions, but am still taking/soliciting them. If you think you know who can put something together, feel free to talk to them.

Pending logistics of plane tickets, MIT is probably coming with one team.

UNC is interested in coming as well.

Penn was planning on being there with at least one team. If we can get enough people it may be two teams.

If anyone in the DC area wants to help moderate or scorekeep, please let me know (e-mail me at [email protected]). Since this is a timed event, we're going to need a lot of staff. You can get a free lunch out of it.

Is there any idea how long this would run into the evening? In other words, is it safe to buy late-evening plane tickets, or would we have to stay over until Sunday?

At the moment I don't know how many rounds we'll be running, but I can't imagine there being more than 16 rounds in any case. Because these matches are timed, they shouldn't take any more than 30 minutes when you combine reading, half, and changing rooms. Assuming we start by 9:30, 16 matches will take us to 5:30. Add a 1 hour lunch, and allow 30 minutes for rebracketing and awards, the tournament should be over no later than 7 (hopefully). It will take you about an hour to get to an airport, so any tickets after 9 should defintely be okay, while any before 8 is pretty risky.

I will be providing 18 rounds to the hosts, so they can run a schedule of up to 14 rounds plus tiebreakers and finals. They will of course be timed NAQT-style rounds, so logically the longest a tournament that starts at 9 AM should run is 7 PM even if there's a whole lot of tiebreakers, a long lunch, and so forth. Maryland has always been very good about running tournaments efficiently. With all that said, the unexpected is always a possibility, and (having done it before to no great success) I personally would not want to race through DC traffic on Saturday night to try to catch a plane, so your stress levels may be better served by booking for Sunday.

You would have better luck in terms of traffic going in and out of BWI, as we did for TIT. Of course, you'd need to rent a car, but the flights to BWI are quite cheap on AirTran. If you have any questions about car rental and travel in and out of BWI I can email you with the details of what we did.

Space geostrategy wrote:You would have better luck in terms of traffic going in and out of BWI, as we did for TIT. Of course, you'd need to rent a car, but the flights to BWI are quite cheap on AirTran. If you have any questions about car rental and travel in and out of BWI I can email you with the details of what we did.

No need to rent a car to go between BWI and UMD. Just take the green line to its end point and hop on a bus to BWI. It's quite cheap and runs pretty often.

vandyhawk wrote:

Space geostrategy wrote:You would have better luck in terms of traffic going in and out of BWI, as we did for TIT. Of course, you'd need to rent a car, but the flights to BWI are quite cheap on AirTran. If you have any questions about car rental and travel in and out of BWI I can email you with the details of what we did.

No need to rent a car to go between BWI and UMD. Just take the green line to its end point and hop on a bus to BWI. It's quite cheap and runs pretty often.

More details on that: The Metrobus B30 will take you between Greenbelt Metro Station and BWI for not a lot of money (Fare: $3.00). It runs 7 days a week, and the link to the PDF for timetables will be at the bottom of the page.

Another option running only on weekdays (so for those arriving the Friday before the tourney): The Penn Line of Maryland Commuter train (called MARC) runs from Baltimore, to Union Station (With stops in between, including BWI). Note, that this does cost a little more money than the B30.

All the best, however you choose...
~T~

And will Vandy be bringing a team to College Park?

ChopinManiac wrote:And will Vandy be bringing a team to College Park?

Unfortunately, April 5 was the only day we could host our HS tournament, and we settled on it a while ago. I don't really want to think what would happen if the top four of us ditched that.

Any recommendations for a cheap hotel accessible to the campus--ideally along the green line as we'd be coming in to Chinatown anyway? I'm working on figuring out whether renting a car and driving in Saturday or riding the Chinatown bus up Friday night would be cheaper.

Milkfuls wrote:Any recommendations for a cheap hotel accessible to the campus--ideally along the green line as we'd be coming in to Chinatown anyway? I'm working on figuring out whether renting a car and driving in Saturday or riding the Chinatown bus up Friday night would be cheaper.

I heartily endorse the Chinatown bus for all your travel needs.

Milkfuls wrote:Any recommendations for a cheap hotel accessible to the campus--ideally along the green line as we'd be coming in to Chinatown anyway? I'm working on figuring out whether renting a car and driving in Saturday or riding the Chinatown bus up Friday night would be cheaper.

We've stayed at the Quality Inn a couple times for various national tournaments. It's walkable to the Metro and campus and isn't too costly.

An update on the clock situation: Since it is unlikely that we'll be able to find enough clocks for this tournament, we're just going to do the time on the computers reading the questions. This means that we'll be doing the NAQT "can't see the clock rule", namely that once the buzzer sounds, the entire tossup being read will be completed (and a bonus read if that tossup is converted).

If you're concerned about knowing what the time is, you can always call timeout and ask for the time from the moderator. You can also bring a watch (or buy one for < $10 at Walmart or something) so you can keep time on your own.

A rumored team of Zeke and Leo

ImmaculateDeception wrote:Fucking awesome.

Bentley Like Beckham wrote:Since it is unlikely that we'll be able to find enough clocks for this tournament...

$5 digital egg timers. You can find them in dozens of electronic stores, kitchen stores, etc.

It looks like we won't be able to come due to financial concerns (our high school tournament flopped because of snow, wiping out a lot of our money for the term...). Sorry.

Hey if teams could let me know soon exactly how many teams they're bringing that would be much appreciated.

Here is the update if people didn't receive it via e-mail:



Hey everyone,

The ICT Warm-Up at Maryland will be happening this Saturday, April 5th. In case you missed the announcement, we will be using ICT rules and the questions will be similar in difficulty to the DI ICT. This means that matches will be timed in 9 minute halves, and we will also be using NAQT answer timing rules (2 seconds to answer a tossup, 2 seconds after a tossup before it goes dead and 5 seconds to answer bonuses).

Registration will be taking place from 8:30 to 9:00 AM on Saturday morning in 0105 Jimenez. We will be providing a light breakfast of juice and donuts, although these are on a first come, first serve basis. We hope to get games started by 9:15 AM.

In terms of parking, you will want to park in Lot 1 or Lot 7. To get there, enter the Maryland Campus from the main entrance on Route 1 (this is Campus Drive). Go straight through the “M” traffic circle and up the hill. You will see the Student Union on your right, and Jimenez will be on your left across from the Student Union. Keep gong on Campus Drive, veering right when the road forks. You will then reach a very large parking lot. Check the signs to make sure that you park in Lot 1 or Lot 7 (or any other lot that says free on weekends) or else you will probably get a ticket. Please see the campus map at http://www.parking.umd.edu/themap/ for more information.

We will be providing lunch options on the schedule.

If you need an invoice in advance, please let me know. Please make checks out to “Maryland Academic Quiz Team”.

The current field looks like this (updated 4/3):
CMU (1)
Princeton (1)
Brick's Team (1)
UNC (1)
Penn (1)
Rutgers Newark (1)
UMBC (2)
UMBC/Others hybrid (1)
Swarthmore (2)
William and Mary (1)
"Bong Hits 4 Mukherjesus" - Will Butler, Mehdi Razvi, Evan, and maybe Leo or some high school player (1)
Ted Goia, Eric Mukherjee, Shantanu, Adam Marshall (1)
Potential HS Team with Feldman, Diachi, Dan Puma if NAQT States doesn't happen (1)
Maryland (1-2 depending on field size and moderator availability)

Right now we have somewhere on the order of 16 teams. We will probably be splitting everyone up into two brackets of around 8 teams. We will then rebracket into some playoff structure. We're looking to play between 14 and 16 rounds in this tournament, depending on how the schedules work out.

I hope to see everyone on Saturday,
Mike Bentley
President, Maryland Academic Quiz Team

Will Zeke and Leo be making an appearance? Also, there will be a bastard team of myself, Ted, Dan, and Shantanu, I believe (we don't have a name yet, I think).

Our finalized team will actually consist of Eric, Shantanu, Adam Marshall, and myself.

CMU will in fact be bringing one team (and one buzzer).

Pilgrim wrote:CMU will in fact be bringing one team (and one buzzer).

Is Dwight coming to moderate?

He is not.

Bentley Like Beckham wrote:

Pilgrim wrote:CMU will in fact be bringing one team (and one buzzer).

Is Dwight coming to moderate?

No - he's going to be busy editing for the actual ICT.

Ok, it looks like we'll have somewhere around 14 teams, so unless things change a lot we'll be doing a full round robin and then something like 3 playoff rounds for the top teams (and all other teams depending on interest).

Our usual team of oldsters will be short-handed this weekend so we're open to taking in free agents. There's two of us right now so we can take in two more. You can e-mail me before Saturday at brick at silverscreentest dot com.

Bentley Like Beckham wrote:If anyone in the DC area wants to help moderate or scorekeep, please let me know (e-mail me at [email protected]). Since this is a timed event, we're going to need a lot of staff. You can get a free lunch out of it.

Since the Blake event has been canceled, count me in to moderate. Presuming I need to show up in Jiminez around 8:30 or so.

Also, if anyone has additional space, my original housing plans fell through. I sleep pretty much anywhere and am quite talented at nesting with spare hotel bedding, as former Vandy teammates will attest. If you can offer something for either Friday or Saturday nights, please let me know at kathryn dot e dot peters at gmail.

update: Maryland went undefeated to win the event, the Mukherjee/Gioia/Jha/Marshall team was second.

The First Annual General Butt Naked Memorial Triple-Packet Showdown occurred between two teams of luminaries afterwards in order to read through the unused rounds, and saw Team Mukherjee thrillingly defeat Team Magin 955 to 940 on the very last tossup of the day.

go team mukherjee

Hope you guys caught the mistake I emailed about in packet 14, or at least that it didn't affect any games.

Matt Weiner wrote:The First Annual General Buck Naked Memorial Triple-Packet Showdown occurred between two teams of luminaries afterwards in order to read through the unused rounds, and saw Team Mukherjee thrillingly defeat Team Magin 955 to 940 on the very last tossup of the day.

I seem to remember that "Team Magin" (a pretty inaccurate name, by the way) won on the last tossup, although it wasn't on the clock.

Anyways, the tournament was very enjoyable, and I want to thank Matt and Jerry for writing such enjoyable packets.

magin wrote:

Matt Weiner wrote:The First Annual General Buck Naked Memorial Triple-Packet Showdown occurred between two teams of luminaries afterwards in order to read through the unused rounds, and saw Team Mukherjee thrillingly defeat Team Magin 955 to 940 on the very last tossup of the day.

I seem to remember that "Team Magin" (a pretty inaccurate name, by the way) won on the last tossup, although it wasn't on the clock.

Anyways, the tournament was very enjoyable, and I want to thank Matt and Jerry for writing such enjoyable packets.

Yeah, Team Magin won the ACF Championship while Team Mukherjee won the NAQT championship.

Thanks to everyone who came out to the ICT Warm-Up at Maryland. I hope everyone had a good time and benefited from playing on some nationals level questions before the ICT and ACF Nationals.

Congratulations to the Maryland House team which went undefeated and Team Ted Goia which took second place. Team Feldman also won the top Division II Team award. Full stats for the tournament can be found here: http://www.studentorg.umd.edu/maqt/2008 ... dings.html

Thanks to all of the outside moderators who helped make this tournament possible, including John Gilbert, Katy Peters, Andrew Lim and Chris Chrzanowski, as well as to all of the Maryland members who showed up to moderate. I apologize for there being a few issues with some moderators not getting through as many questions as desired in the later rounds (especially in the lower brakcet), we had some people who had to leave after lunch so we had to use some inexperienced moderators. I hope it didn't affect anyone's tournament in a significant way.

Matt will be posting the questions soon I think and I'll be sending them out to all of the teams regardless in case people don't check this message board.