The Quizbowl Resource Center

1. Minnesota B (Hart/Carson/Spencer)
2. Minnesota A (Byrne+3)
3. Chicago A (Shantanu, Marnold, et al.)
4. Missouri (DEES+1)
5. Lawrence (Peterson+0)
6. Indiana (Carlo/Nick, John Brown, et al.)

cornfused wrote:1. Minnesota B (Hart/Carson/Spencer)
2. Minnesota A (Byrne+3)
3. Chicago A (Shantanu, Marnold, et al.)
4. Missouri (DEES+1)
5. Lawrence (Peterson+0)
6. Indiana (Carlo/Nick, John Brown, et al.)
7-22. Other people (I don't remember)
23. DePauw A
24. DePauw B

What has this accomplished other than being a blatant insult towards the DePauw program?

Stats

Thanks to Donald, Jonah, the whole UIUC ABT, and Brown U for a very enjoyable tournament. One room was poorly staffed for the first few rounds, leading to the tournament falling an hour behind, but that was the biggest problem. Everybody treated us well.

We're pretty much a one-man team this year, and that was especially true yesterday since some of our better supporting players couldn't make it, leaving Ben to play with teammates who should be playing high school Frosh/Soph tournaments and him being able to post some awesome individual stats. All of us enjoyed the experience, and there is no doubt that this was a positive experience for us and Auburn.

Were the scoresheets from the finals and the play-in entered? If not, could they be?

cornfused wrote:EDITED because I didn't mean it to be THAT offensive... but I do honestly believe that anyone should be able to do better than 2 PPB on this set..

Yeah, you're still coming off as an ass with regards to this.

FredMorlan wrote:

cornfused wrote:EDITED because I didn't mean it to be THAT offensive... but I do honestly believe that anyone should be able to do better than 2 PPB on this set..

Yeah, you're still are an ass with regards to this.

So, like, the way you apologize for something is "I'm sorry I was a turd," not "I did not intend for people to be offended by my completely valid rip on a quizbowl program, lol what's with those guys for having a low BC--here it is if you missed it!"

I agree with Andy. I can tell you that yesterday at Brown RPI had about 2 ppb in on one round (although in general we were around 13-15ppb...bonus consistency was a bit of an issue). I don't appreciate insulting teams who's only crime is lack of experience/practice instead of encouraging them to continue attending tournaments.

I'm sure Donald will want to post later, but on behalf of our club, I really want to thank everyone who came to Champaign and played yesterday. We sincerely appreciate you making the trip and we hope you enjoyed yourselves. I'd like to especially thank the teams and coaches from New Trier and Auburn High School from coming, in what I hope will initiate a new trend of Illinois high schools attending accessible and well-written collegiate tournaments.

I guess in an attempt to divert us from quibbling about Greg Peterson's poor posting decisions, I would like to write up my reaction to the tournament.
This was an event that really made me happy for the future and also just for deciding to be a part of the quizbowl circuit. The Illinois team has to be given a ton of respect for helping my teammate and I find people to stay with to save money since we aren't University sponsored right now, and I think it's just so awesome that the circuit has so many people willing to help others out like that. Almost everyone I ran into at the tournament was having a good time. The coolest part was how positively Auburn and New Trier were reacting to the college circuit and the questions. I think there is a really bright future for those teams with such an awesome attitude, and as more HS teams decide to try out college quizbowl and find out its such a cool place the future of the game will be really great. I think both the coaches and the students of these programs need to be given a standing ovation, especially for doing a really good competitive job and beating many college teams. In general, I think it is so awesome that so many teams from all over the midwest showed up. I think there is a really viable circuit growing here besides just Chicago and Illinois, and I'm glad to be a part of the Missouri area renaissance. Wash U B now is a pretty solid team that I was impressed by, as well as Truman State. I didn't see any other Missouri teams, but the stats look about equally good. As for the tournament direction, I do kind of wish we had gotten out of Urbana an hour or 2 earlier but I'm not going to complain really since Jeet was sick. The one thing I do wish was that lunch was held a game or two later because at least to me, the closer lunch is to halfway through the tournament the longer my energy keeps up, and I would hazard a guess that others feel the same. But that really was not too much of a problem compared to things that can go wrong with tournaments. I both ran into lots of people who I am already friends with and haven't seen in a while and people who are new to the circuit and seem like pretty fun people, and I hope to see both of those people more over the next few years. As for the questions, my only comments to the editors is that there were a ton of repeats that need to be looked for before next weekend. There were some bonuses out of line, but those were less noticeable I think. Also, I was not a fan of packet 8. However, my teammate and I both came out of the tournament both generally pleased with our overall experience, and we are excited for more quizbowl now, which is something I'm really damned happy about. Thank you everyone for making this such a cool time for our new Mizzou team.

Now that I have access to internet, I'll make my "official" follow-up post.

First off, I would like to thank everyone who helped with this:
The teams that came out. Without you, there would be no tournament. Also, to my knowledge, not a single team skipped out, even though the tournament ran about two hours later than I'd hoped. Y'all kick ass.
A special thanks to New Trier and Auburn, who decided to spend a day running with the big boys, and from what I saw, handled themselves very well.
My teammates (minus one who shall remain nameless) for putting up with my antics during the tournament and doing a damn good job of making sure this tournament went relatively well.
Jonah Greenthal, who manned the staff room like a champ and made a kick-ass schedule, complete with maps of the floors we used.
Matt Laird and Mike Laudermith, who came down on relatively short notice to volunteer as moderators.
David Reinstein, who took the initiative during lunch and volunteered to read the rest of the tournament instead of coach.
Mike Sorice, who volunteered to house a Missouri player for the night, driving to pick up the staff's lunch, and for inventing a form of quizbowl enjoyed by many, including most of the Minnesota contingent, Tryg, and myself.

If I left anyone off, I apologize, no harm was intended.

For the recap: the prelims were run as 3 brackets of 8, re-bracketed into 4 brackets of 6. Ties were broken by PPG for determining seeding for the playoffs. After the playoffs, there was a 3-way tie between Minnesota A, Chicago A, and Minnesota B, and two packets remaining. Minnesota A was given the top seed based on PPG, so Minnesota B played Chicago A for the right to face Minnesota A in the final. Minnesota B defeated Chicago A 315-290 and went on to defeat Minnesota A 390-225 to win the tournament.

Statistics, including everything except the final rounds, are posted.

dtaylor4 wrote:Mike Sorice, [...] for inventing a form of quizbowl enjoyed by many, including most of the Minnesota contingent, Tryg, and myself.

I wish to hear the details of this new form of quozbowel [sic].

szp #qwuiozbowel?

Hilarius Bookbinder wrote:I wish to hear the details of this new form of quozbowel [sic].

Disclaimer: if you are underage, do it at your own peril.

First played during the weekend of MLK 2008 in a hotel room obtained on behalf of current and former members of the Academic Buzzer Team, drunken trash is fairly straightforward. After obtaining a trash (not TRASH) packet, and ensuring participants have a drink, the moderator reads through only tossups. If a player gets the tossup, everyone else takes one drink. If it is a power, everyone takes two (during play last night, it was upped to three.) A neg, and the negger takes three (when powers were upped to three, negs were upped to four.)

If the set does not have powers (i.e. 2007 Chris McCray, the set used last night), then the moderator chooses an arbitrary standard (i.e. 3-4 full lines of the tossup.)

Reaction against my post seems pretty a) strong and b) unanimous, so I've removed it. I'm sorry for being an elitist asshole.

cornfused wrote:Reaction against my post seems pretty a) strong and b) unanimous, so I've removed it. I'm sorry for being an elitist asshole.

1) That's not what editing is for. 2) This will be the last meta-posting discussion in this thread.

ppb

noob help: what does that stand for

Points per bonus. The theory behind it is that the deepest teams will have the best conversion because they get more hard parts.

dtaylor4 wrote:

Hilarius Bookbinder wrote:I wish to hear the details of this new form of quozbowel [sic].

Disclaimer: if you are underage, do it at your own peril.

First played during the weekend of MLK 2008 in a hotel room obtained on behalf of current and former members of the Academic Buzzer Team, drunken trash is fairly straightforward. After obtaining a trash (not TRASH) packet, and ensuring participants have a drink, the moderator reads through only tossups. If a player gets the tossup, everyone else takes one drink. If it is a power, everyone takes two (during play last night, it was upped to three.) A neg, and the negger takes three (when powers were upped to three, negs were upped to four.)

If the set does not have powers (i.e. 2007 Chris McCray, the set used last night), then the moderator chooses an arbitrary standard (i.e. 3-4 full lines of the tossup.)

This sounds a lot like the WUAT drinking game only we use old NAQT packets.

You know if such a drinking game existed and were played by minors.

Which never ever has happened.

Thanks to the ABT, they put on a good show. As others said, I wish we could have gotten out of town earlier, but I understand many times tournaments run late due to unforeseen and/or uncontrollable events, so it's no biggie.

My only gripe with the questions was that some bonuses were a little out there I thought, and there were a fair amount of repeats.

Trevkeeper wrote:My only gripe with the questions was that some bonuses were a little out there I thought, and there were a fair amount of repeats.

I'm curious as to what you mean by "out there." If you have specifics you would like to mention, contact me privately.

This tournament was very enjoyable, well-run, and well-written, and it was great to see the huge turnout from younger players and high school kids. The future of quizbowl just gets brighter and brighter.

theMoMA wrote:Were the scoresheets from the finals and the play-in entered? If not, could they be?

I reiterate my call for the final two games to be entered into the stats, if possible.

I'll echo Jerry's call above; if you have comments about specific questions, you're more than welcome to contact me at infinitestryker[Removethistextrighthere]0 at gmail dot com

theMoMA wrote:

theMoMA wrote:Were the scoresheets from the finals and the play-in entered? If not, could they be?

I reiterate my call for the final two games to be entered into the stats, if possible.

I'll see if I can get them from Donald.

Actual tourney comments: this seemed easier than EFT 2 (which seemed easier than EFT 1,) but I've also been getting drastically better at quizbowl, so that could be related.

There was one round with three common link questions, and that seemed a bit much. One of these led Indiana to neg (well, -0) with a synonym of the correct answer after the giveaway. Being able to neg with a word that means the exact same as the correct answer is something that arises as a result of common-link, I suppose, but my main complaint with the comm on link was that too much of it was fill-in-the-blank bowl. That is, instead of being a common link myth question about zebras, these common link tossups would generally be social sciences or philosophy and consist basically of clues like "Joe Schmo wrote about zebra farming in a work entitled Gnus, the Subconscious, and THIS."

My main problem is that players (notably, me - I saw Shantanu get one off of actual knowledge) can buzz and correctly fill in the blank about works they know nothing about.


Also, it seemed that some of the bonuses were very 30/0... that is, a moderate level of knowledge got one an easy thirty, anything less resulted in a zero. I found one example... ...I can't find a second example. So, um, forget it.
But bonuses seemed pretty variable.



Overall, a great tournament: well-written by Brown, well-suited to the difficulty of the field (top teams destroyed the bonuses, bottom teams didn't, people in the middle ranged all the way in between, and the field averaged a stunningly accurate 14.875 PPB as a whole. That's 30 bonus PARTS over the whole tournament separating the average from 15 PPB.) Excepting the brief delay after/during round 4, it was smoothly run - thanks to the ABT and to everyone who played, especially New Trier and Auburn.

EDITed: Fred removed three too-specific question information sections, so I fixed the grammar up around those spots.

Hey,

This set isn't cleared for specific discussion.

Sorry, didn't know that that was too specific.

In any case, I would think that the previous posts would suggest that anything more specific than "there were repeats" and the like would entail emailing a writer over it or just waiting until next week.

grapesmoker wrote:

Trevkeeper wrote:My only gripe with the questions was that some bonuses were a little out there I thought, and there were a fair amount of repeats.

I'm curious as to what you mean by "out there." If you have specifics you would like to mention, contact me privately.

I really can't remember any specifics. I think it mostly had to do with some harder lit and social science bonuses.

And honestly, it may be more of the fact that this was only my third college level or higher tournament (MCMNT 2008 and CO 2008), so the canon is far greater than what I am used to. For instance, there was way more of an emphasis on A CERTAIN SUBJECT. I'm used to a couple questions from that area a tournament, not one a round or so.

Argh stop talking about questions dude.

The two final games are now included in the posted stats.

jonah wrote:The two final games are now included in the posted stats.

Thanks, Jonah.

Here's the stats with PATH added. Not surprisingly, the people best helped by PATH are Shantanu's teammates, Bernadette, and Brendan Byrne's #2. Most hurt appears to be DePauw A, various B/C teamers, and Michael Jiang of Auburn.

One quirk I noticed: Missouri S&T went 6-6 for the tournament while negging SIX TIMES over twelve games. That's a 113-6 line... when S&T went 9-3 against Ohio State A, that was half of their negs for the tournament. That might be some of the most cautious/smart play I've ever seen.

What does PATH stand for?

It's Points per Adjusted Tossups Heard. A full explanation can be found here:

http://www.doc-ent.com/qbwiki/index.php?title=PATH

Frankly, I think it's a load of boloney, but hey whatever lets stat gurus feel even more superior...

allythin wrote:Frankly, I think it's a load of boloney, but hey whatever lets stat gurus feel even more superior...

Yeah, why don't we just have a bunch of computers go play the games?! You youngsters with your PPB and your PATH and your WIMP and your DORK...

Ukonvasara wrote:

allythin wrote:Frankly, I think it's a load of boloney, but hey whatever lets stat gurus feel even more superior...

Yeah, why don't we just have a bunch of computers go play the games?! You youngsters with your PPB and your PATH and your WIMP and your DORK...

Goddamn VORPies.

Pilgrim wrote:

Ukonvasara wrote:

allythin wrote:Frankly, I think it's a load of boloney, but hey whatever lets stat gurus feel even more superior...

Yeah, why don't we just have a bunch of computers go play the games?! You youngsters with your PPB and your PATH and your WIMP and your DORK...

Goddamn VORPies.

They don't even want the games to play; they just want their computer in their mother's basement to simulate the results and compare their results with other PATHers. They truly don't recognize the grit and will to win in some players, nor the clutch ability (or lack thereof!) in others.

PatFreeburn wrote:They don't even want the games to play; they just want their computer in their mother's basement to simulate the results and compare their results with other PATHers. They truly don't recognize the grit and will to win in some players, nor the clutch ability (or lack thereof!) in others.

gautam kandlikar has calm eyes

Matt Weiner wrote:

PatFreeburn wrote:They don't even want the games to play; they just want their computer in their mother's basement to simulate the results and compare their results with other PATHers. They truly don't recognize the grit and will to win in some players, nor the clutch ability (or lack thereof!) in others.

gautam kandlikar has calm eyes

Rob Carson is just havin' fun out there.

Matt Weiner wrote:

PatFreeburn wrote:They don't even want the games to play; they just want their computer in their mother's basement to simulate the results and compare their results with other PATHers. They truly don't recognize the grit and will to win in some players, nor the clutch ability (or lack thereof!) in others.

gautam kandlikar has calm eyes

dreamy ones too. even when he gone i feel safe and comfortable

everyday847 wrote:

Matt Weiner wrote:

PatFreeburn wrote:They don't even want the games to play; they just want their computer in their mother's basement to simulate the results and compare their results with other PATHers. They truly don't recognize the grit and will to win in some players, nor the clutch ability (or lack thereof!) in others.

gautam kandlikar has calm eyes

Rob Carson is just havin' fun out there.

Andrew Hart has the eyes of a goat.

Frater Taciturnus wrote:

everyday847 wrote:

Matt Weiner wrote:

PatFreeburn wrote:They don't even want the games to play; they just want their computer in their mother's basement to simulate the results and compare their results with other PATHers. They truly don't recognize the grit and will to win in some players, nor the clutch ability (or lack thereof!) in others.

gautam kandlikar has calm eyes

Rob Carson is just havin' fun out there.

Andrew Hart has the eyes of a goat.

it's been one week since Bernadette Spencer looked at me