The Quizbowl Resource Center

This is a more official announcement for JECHT (Jeremy Eaton's Consoles and Handhelds Tournament) which will be played presumably during the afternoon of Sunday, October 19th at the Minnesota Open.

Tournament Entry Fee: $5

The tournament will be a doubles game featuring 6 rounds of 20/20 questions each all based upon video games and video game related things. All questions will be written by yours truly with some cameo appearances by Andrew Lim, Brittany Clark and Chris Ray. Since a video game tournament of this magnitude has not (to my knowledge) been done before, I have no real plans for a concrete distribution. My current sporadic guidelines so far are:

2/2 RPGs
0/1 audio (Identify the series based on a music clip/quote/etc.)
3/3-4/4 Nintendo franchises
1/1 Sega

The rest of the questions will be an even balance between PC games, Sony, Microsoft and Third Party Franchises and Arcade games. I will also try to establish a more-or-less even balance between all video game generations from pre-8-bit to Next-Gen. However, the hardest part of having an even distribution in this sort of topic is that many games have been ported and re-made countless times so the idea of a concrete distribution is often blurred. Nonetheless, my goal is to not leave any major aspect of gaming out of this tournament, so I will work hard in achieving a similar layout for each round.

Please let me know if you are interested in playing! If you are not interested in playing, but wish to contribute a question or two on your favorite game, feel free to e-mail them to me. People that have expressed at least minor interest in participating in this event so far are:

Players:
Mike Bentley/Ike
Trygve Meade/Rob Carson
Auroni Gupta
Mike Sorice
Christian Carter
Medhi Razvi
Bryce Durgin
Shantanu Jha /David Seal
Quentin Roper / Trevor Davis
Nathan Bragg
Jack Brounstein
Jeff Amoros
'egn90'
Grinnell Team


Moderators:
Chris Ray
Charlies Dees
Jonathan Magin
Colin O'Donnell
Donald Tayor
Gautam Kandlikar
Matt Weiner?
Carsten Gehring

I'm so in on this, despite Mike Bentley = God of Video Games = I have no chance of winning. And you can bet that Jake Pardo (another ND guy) will play this. Probably.

Hey, I would probably suck a whole lot at this tournament because I don't like many video games but the Ocarina of Time and SNES Mario games, so I'd be more than happy to moderate at this instead.

I have every intention of playing this tournament.

I am definitely playing this.

Yes, I intend on playing this tournament. I'll be playing with Eric Mukherjee assuming he shows up.

I think the plan is that Rob Carson and I are going to team up for this.

I really hope that this is mirrored somewhere on the east coast.

hey Shantanu, do you want to play together for this?

Seeing as though I plan to staff all of MO except for the Trash tournament, I'll staff this thing.

So, since no one else from ND will be coming with, I'm putting myself out there as a free agent. My video game knowledge peaks with the Super Nintendo/Sega Genesis era, and I know very little before that, and I don't know much about current video games.

bdurgin AT alumni DOT culver DOT org if you wanna team up

I plan on playing this.

I'll staff this.

I'd like to see this mirrored on the east coast. It'd be fun to shut down the pretenders.

Oh hey, I'll staff.

To those looking for an east coast mirror, I'd be more than happy to run this tournament during the lunch or after another tournament in the Fall provided there is enough interest. If host are willing, I could possibly host this again during a TTGT11 mirror or maybe even TRASH regionals? If a mirror of JECHT does happen for whatever reason -- I would be willing send the questions to anyone who wants them (after the main event of course) so that they could at least be played during practices and whatnot. Not as exciting as a real competition, but its better than nothing.

So, in summary, if you're not able to make it out to Minnesota but still would be interested in playing JECHT, let me know (post here or e-mail me at [email protected]) and if interest is great enough I will inquire about mirroring it somewhere.

I'm in.

More assorted information:

First, JECHT will definitely be happening at least as a toss-up only tournament as all the tossups are now complete (save for a few freelance questions I'm waiting on) and bonuses are about 30% done. I should be able to crank out the rest in good quality by early October. Things are lookin' good.

Second, this tournament will be very difficult for the average quizbowler and I think that even hardcore gamers will find it to be a bit challenging. Since this is a purely video game tournament, my goal was to write about things that would have little to no chance of appearing in regular TRASH tournaments. This isn't to say that every answer will be totally obscure and from the outer edges of the video games 'canon' (like a number of the video game questions in Gunpei), but instead many of the harder questions take their answers from deeper into well-known games and series.

For example, instead of writing a tossup on the Mortal Kombat series or even popular characters like Scorpion or Sub-Zero, I might delve a bit deeper and ask about someone a little less notable to the general public such as Kung Lao or even a location such as Outworld.

Not wanting to scare people away, I will stress that most players should be able to answer about 75% of these questions by the giveaway and that bonuses should be able to be 10ed by most all teams. I just want to give people a general idea of the difficulty of this tournament.

Third, it will be awesome, so if you haven't signed up and want to play, do so. There's still plenty of time to register.

okay, I will be playing this with Evan Nagler.

looking forward to it!

Jeaton1 wrote:instead many of the harder questions take their answers from deeper into well-known games and series.

For example, instead of writing a tossup on the Mortal Kombat series or even popular characters like Scorpion or Sub-Zero, I might delve a bit deeper and ask about someone a little less notable to the general public such as Kung Lao or even a location such as Outworld.

This sounds absolutely amazing! Tossups on Outworld! Unfortunately, I don't think Brown will be making an appearance at MO, and I found out recently that I have to be on the east coast the thursday and friday before MO, so flying is out. I really hope that the MIT people are going to mirror this tournament, and I'm sure that there are plenty of players on the east coast interested in it.

Not that my performance at Gunpei was very inspiring, but I might try to make it to an East Coast mirror of this.

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:

Jeaton1 wrote:instead many of the harder questions take their answers from deeper into well-known games and series.

For example, instead of writing a tossup on the Mortal Kombat series or even popular characters like Scorpion or Sub-Zero, I might delve a bit deeper and ask about someone a little less notable to the general public such as Kung Lao or even a location such as Outworld.

This sounds absolutely amazing! Tossups on Outworld! Unfortunately, I don't think Brown will be making an appearance at MO. I really hope that the MIT people are going to mirror this tournament, and I'm sure that there are plenty of players on the east coast interested in it.

Thanks, jerk.

So if anyone wants to play with me in this tournament, let me know. Preference will be given to people who care about RPGs and Playstation-dominated games.

As long as I have or am on a team for the trash scrimmage, I would be happy to stick around to moderate and/or to score, for I plan to drive back to Chicago in my rental vehicle on that Monday (my birthday--making me far too old to be interested in playing video games).

Congratulations to Frankie Muniz for improving to 11th in Mazda/Cooper Tires Atlantic points with 2 races to go,
Rom Masrour
CPS/UIC

Bentley, I would be more than willing to join you, RPGs and Playstation stuff is up my alley.

Ike wrote:Bentley, I would be more than willing to join you, RPGs and Playstation stuff is up my alley.

Sure, we'll play together at this tournament.

I believe Shantanu and I will play together for this.

I'm playing this with Quentin.

I the interest of everybody catching their flights Sunday night, I think that it would be best that JECHT be a tossup only tournament. I predict the trash tournament will be over in the late afternoon, and I don't think six rounds of Tossup and Bonuses is the best thing for anybody who doesn't have a flight home later than 7pm (this includes me).

However, I want to hear your opinion on what should be done. Should JECHT remain a tradition mACF video games tournament or would it be better to have all tossups with the introduction of powers for those sweet 15s? I do have 100+ bonuses already written, though I might decide to delay these for a sequel to JECHT (TIDUS: Tournament Involving Digital UniverseS?) or convert them into a video game speed tournament in the not to distant future. As of now, JECHT will be tossup only unless there is significant interesting in playing the full shebang.

Thanks.

I would love to play TU/B, though obviously I have no such travel concerns. Powers too would be excellent, just so I can learn exactly how much I don't know.

My flight isn't until 9 I think so I'd prefer tossups and bonuses.

I'm not leaving until Monday, so I too could definitely do T/B. I like powers, so I'm all for them.

my own flight isn't till 11 next morning, so I'd love to see some T/B action. But, I won't be the least bit disappointed if you do choose to just do T with powers.

I think that I personally would prefer to have tossups with powers.

i think i am playing this but i might have to leave at some point since my flight is pretty early. Voting tossup only!

I will not be playing this... sorry

Another solution! Would anybody be willing to order pizza during lunch so that we may be able to play around or two of JECHT during that time. I'd really like to be able to use all these bonuses after spending much time on them -- so I figure this way, we'd be able to burn through some rounds to allow people who might have to leave early to play more of the tournament.

Yeah, we could do that. There are a number of pizza places nearby, so we could go all the way from awful (Domino's) to good (Papa John's) to great (Pizza Luce) depending on preference.

I vote Papa Johns if you order me a bunch of garlic sauce.

I'll vote for this "excellent" place Rob suggested, with Papa John's as a second

I should of course mention that Pizza Luce is a bit more expensive then the other two. Entirely worth it if you're willing to spend the extra, however.

chris and B have taught me that good food is always worth the extra money

After a couple months of work and sweat, I can finally announce that JECHT is complete! I cannot wait for this to go down as the best all video game tournament the quizbowl community has ever seen!

I will send out the set to the TDs who would like it when I have finished making a few nitpicky edits over the next day or two.

I have decided to stick it out and do both TUs (no powers, sorry) and bonuses.The format will depend on the number of teams in the field but will either be a single or double round robin with the number of wins (or PPG if needed) determining the winner. As there are no tie-breakers, the rare occasion of an exact tie will count as a win for both teams.

Furthermore, each team will have the opportunity to lame a single bonus per round!

Jeaton1 wrote:Furthermore, each team will have the opportunity to lame a single bonus per round!

I'm not playing, so this won't directly affect me, but will steals be allowed as well?

Ukonvasara wrote:I should of course mention that Pizza Luce is a bit more expensive then the other two. Entirely worth it if you're willing to spend the extra, however.

I know that QFTing is outlawed, but this could possibly be the truest statement Rob Carson has ever said, and I have never seen that man lie.

Actually scratch the laming idea -- I realized that would involve me writing more bonuses.

Instead replace the word 'lame' with 'screw' -- a mechanic that was used during Maryland's mirror of 2007's TTGT11. Essentially if the bonus is 'lamed', the other team take it at that moment. Any points that the newly designated team does not get are transferred to the team that originally received that bonus. For example, if team A gets a tossup on Banon and gets a bonus on minor characters from the Call of Duty series. They can choose not to answer that bonus and instead force the team B to answer it instead. If team B gets only one part out of the three, Team B will be rewarded with 10 points while Team A will have successfully screwed up 20 points for itself.

Don't you not earn points by answering portions of a screw bonus, only prevent the other team from scoring them?

Hey, Chris:

Jeaton1 wrote:If team B gets only one part out of the three, Team B will be rewarded with 10 points while Team A will have successfully screwed up 20 points for itself.

Right, I'm saying that I remember screws working slightly differently than that, with team B not eligible to gain points on team A's screwed bonus, only being able to prevent team A from earning any. That is, if team B swept the bonus, they wouldn't gain 30 points, team A would just earn zero. It seems like the Screw is a rather ill-advised tactic if team b can score up to 30 points on a tossup they did not convert. But, maybe I'm remembering it wrong, or maybe I'm still unable to understand the logic behind the original post and suck at anything involving numbers.

Yeah, I think Chris is right on this one. Screws can only give the screwing team points. The 'screwed' team must essentially prevent the screwing team from scoring points by correctly answering questions. Otherwise as Chris said, there is very little incentive to using the screw as in the way I had described it is more of a gamble rather than a possible advantage.

is it to late to sign up for this tourney.