The Quizbowl Resource Center

This is a preliminary announcement for Penn Bowl 2009, which we expect to hold on January 24, 2009 at the University of Pennsylania pending confirmation from Penn. For those who've never attended, this is a packet submission tournament with difficulty typically somewhere between the level of ACF Fall and Regs (closer to Regs). With our vast improvement in question quality and logistics in recent years, we hope that a larger crowd will choose to attend. After talking with Matt Weiner, he will likely act as head editor like last year, and I will act as his ever important science-editing lackey. Any further queries etc. can go in this thread or can be sent to padt-at-dolphin-dot-upenn-dot-edu. It is unlikely that much will change from last year in terms of fees, logistics, etc. so if you're interested in that info, it is here. A more official announcement will come as details are etched out.

Hey, here are the packet guidelines for Penn Bowl.

All the information on distribution and aesthetics from http://www.hsquizbowl.org/acf/acf.html will be copied wholesale for Penn Bowl. Use the length, style/formatting, and subdistribution guidelines from that page for your rounds. Follow them exactly--nothing would please me more than to give every team the $5 discount for perfect compliance with the formatting instructions.

For difficulty: The target difficulty is the ever-popular "regular." Something about 15-20% easier than the 2008 ACF Regionals or 2008 Penn Bowl is what we're shooting for, in order to see tossup conversion rates above 90% and a nice bell curve on bonus conversion, centered on 15 PPB for the median team. As a reminder, here are some ways to hit target difficulty:
*Write tossups that have giveaways. Use substantial leadin clues that discriminate among elite teams, but use middle clues that you expect about half the field to know; don't write five lines of superhard material followed by a buzzer race.
*The easy part of your bonus should be very easy; no harder than a tossup.
*You should never be surprised to see a decent (top half of the field) team get 20 on a bonus. Keep your middle bonus parts canonical and don't try to impress people by writing too hard here.
*Third bonus parts should be challenging, but should not be impossible. A team in the playoff bracket should get a few 30s every game. I'm perfectly fine with seeing the best 6-8 teams at the tournament having bonus conversions above 20.

Sometimes, a good way to control the difficulty on a middle or hard bonus part is to write it on an easier answer but use harder clues. I also encourage you to avoid writing every bonus with the easy, middle, and hard parts in that order; in fact, in my own packets, you will see that such bonuses are in the minority, because I like to be able to use the previously mentioned hard answer as a clue to make the easy answer even easier.

As specified on the ACF page, your team has to write a packet if you are playing any site of Penn Bowl and you have at least one team member who participated in a regular collegiate academic tournament prior to the fall 2007 semester as a college student. If your team is composed entirely of people who are in their first two years of college, or their first two years of quizbowl, or who only played Honda or College Bowl or NAQT high school questions or trash prior to fall 2007, or any combination of those things, then you do not have to write a packet. Optional packets may be submitted by such teams for discounts.

You should send your packet to me at [email protected]. In accordance with the 8-6-4-3-2 deadline system, the cutoff dates for Penn Bowl packets are at 11:59 PM Eastern on the following Sundays:

November 30: -$50 deadline for required packets
December 14 -$25 deadline for required packets, -$50 deadline for optional packets
December 28: No-penalty deadline for required packets, -$25 deadline for optional packets. No optional packets will be accepted after December 28.
January 4: +25 deadline for required packets.
January 11: +50 deadline for required packets. Last day to submit a packet and be guaranteed a spot in the field.

If you are a team who is required to write and you do not submit a packet by January 11, then one of these two things will happen to you:
1) You will not be permitted to play.
2) You will be charged an additional $10 for every day that the packet is late, and you will still have to write an acceptable round as soon as possible.

Whether to accept packets after January 11 is entirely at my discretion. If you are a team who sucks at writing and you think you're going to give me a round two days before the tournament, it is by no means unlikely that you will be turned away from playing. The final deadline is three months away, and even the 50-dollar discount is six weeks from now, so I hope everyone can get started on their packets pretty soon and not cause any issues.

This is the last Penn Bowl I will be editing, and it may be the last regular-difficulty collegiate event I work on for a long time, perhaps forever. I plan to put a tremendous amount of work into this tournament in order to make it a demonstration of the best question set I am capable of producing. Thus, I'm going to take a pretty hard line on packets submitted after the final deadline and on people doing things that make my task more difficult, such as flouting of the formatting instructions, or good writers not fixing terrible questions from their teammates before sending me the packet. I can't edit seven packets in three days to the standards I want, so if there's a lot of MIA rounds after the final deadline, I may prefer to just kick people out of the tournament.

With that ominous warning put out there, I want to put in a little pitch for this event. Last year, a total of 37 teams played Penn Bowl at three sites, and I think the substantial work that myself and last year's science editor, Billy Beyer, put into the tournament showed. Bringing Penn Bowl a little bit closer to its former prominence was one of my most rewarding experiences in quizbowl, and I think another set like this is something every team can enjoy. Please check out the 2007 and 2008 Penn Bowl sets on collegiate.quizbowlpackets.com to get a feel for what we're doing here. This is a tournament where length and difficulty are strictly controlled, but substantive academic content still shines through. I really want to make it an excellent example of what packet-submission ACF-style quizbowl can be and how every team can enjoy it, so let's see a big field and a lot of good, on-time packets this year.

Post here or e-mail me at [email protected] if you have any questions about the packet guidelines.

I'll track which packets I have received and which deadline they arrived on, in this post.

By November 30 (-$50):

VCU

By December 14 (-$25):

Princeton
Gupta/Arthur
MIT
~Williams

By December 28 (+0)

Delaware A
Brandeis
Carnegie Mellon

By January 4 (+25)

Missouri S&T
Ragab
Brown
Harvard (special fee arrangement)

By January 11 (+50)

Columbia A
Maryland A
Chicago A
Vanderbilt A

By January 12(+60)

Minnesota A

By January 13(+70)

Chicago B
Illinois A

$90 no-packet penalty

South Carolina

$120 no-packet penalty

Cornell
Alabama

List last updated on 1/19

So, there are going to be some changes to fee structure from last year just to simplify our invoice . If people signed up based off last year's fees and think it's going to be a hardship to come up with the following, let me know.

Fee structure:
1st Team: $110
Additional teams: $90 each
Functional buzzers: -$10 each
Competent moderators: -$20 each
Travel Discount (as determined by mapquest): -$15 per 200 miles
Missed last year's Penn Bowl: -$10

Min Fee: $50

Also, I'll post running field updates here to accompany Matt's packet updates. To register, you can post here if you like, but we should receive an e-mail from you at [email protected] so we have your contact info.

Field (as of 1/20):
Brandeis (1)
Brown (1)
Carnegie Mellon (1)
Chicago (2)
Columbia (3)
Daichi/Henry/Ike/Puma (1)
Delaware (1)
Harvard (1)
Hunter HS (1)
Maryland (2)
MIT (1)
Princeton (1)
State College HS (2)
Swarthmore (2)
VCU (1)
"Williams" (1)
Yetman/Hunter College (1)
Total: 23

Lapego1 wrote: Field (as of 12/15):
Columbia (2)
Princeton (1-2)
Yetman/Hunter College (1)

You can add VCU to this list, if you haven't done so already, as we will be in attendance. We will be bringing 1 team.

Chicago will be there with 4 teams.

Brandeis will bring one team.

Maryland will have one or two teams.

George Mason will send one team.

I should mention that Harvard (me, Ted, Dallas) is coming; our packet is in an amusing state of disarray but I'll jump off a cliff if it's not in by the fourth.

Brown will be there with one team. Packet forthcoming, sorry about the delay.

will read if needed.

I mentioned this in the trash topic already, but I should also be free to read for this.

We'll be there with 1 team, possibly two I guess but probably not.

fleurdelivre wrote:will read if needed.

Inter et Inter wrote:I mentioned this in the trash topic already, but I should also be free to read for this.

This would be great! Thanks! Unless you end up riding in with another team, could you e-mail me at [email protected] so I can give you directions, info, etc?

We will be bringing 2 teams.

The Laughing Man wrote:We will be bringing 2 teams.

awesome

Just curious... do your schools (the HS kids, that is) pay for these trips and competitions? Or do you each pay for them out of your pocket? This one has a hefty price tag compared to HS competitions.

Caesar Rodney HS wrote:Just curious... do your schools (the HS kids, that is) pay for these trips and competitions? Or do you each pay for them out of your pocket? This one has a hefty price tag compared to HS competitions.

I can't speak for State College or Hunter, but at South anything we go to, be it High School or college, as a team called South is payed mostly out of pocket, and also a little bit from the team funds.

Reminder that tomorrow is the last day to submit packets period. I know there are some teams on my field list that are expected to submit packets but haven't so please do so ASAP.

I'm offering myself up as a free agent for this. If you're interested, contact me over Facebook or send me an e-mail at [email protected]

A.B.C.D E.F. Godthaab wrote:I'm offering myself up as a free agent for this. If you're interested, contact me over Facebook or send me an e-mail at [email protected]

Just so you/your potential teammates are aware, teams who are composed of players from more than one school are ineligible for the top playoff bracket in this tournament. The "Williams" team is playing under that rule. If you want to join up with someone and go pseudo-exhibition in that fashion, that's fine, but you will need to play with only Charter people if you want to be eligible for the championship bracket.

OK, we now have enough packets to produce the 18 rounds that I'm aiming for, and the final deadline for submitting packets has passed. Rather than make people write last-minute packets that will probably be a poor use of time to edit, I will offer the following arrangement to all teams who were required to submit packets but have not yet done so:

*If your round is almost done, finish it tonight and send it to me. Your fee will be +$70.
*If I don't get a packet from you by midnight, then don't bother writing one. Your fee will be +$120.
*If you have an appreciable fraction of a packet done and it doesn't come together by the deadline, then consider submitting it to Terrapin, which has issued a call for freelance rounds at viewtopic.php?p=114628#p114628. I may be able to give you a slight reduction of your PB surcharge if you do this. I'll have more information on that shortly.

Might I ask what the projected schedule is for the main site? Are two house teams going to be created so that we do two 13-team brackets for a prelim round-robin then break up for further playoff rounds (eek), or is there going to be some scheduling wizardry whereby we have, like, 4 brackets of 6 playing mirror-site packets for the prelims, then re-bracket in some highly irregular way for the playoffs?

After all the last-minute drops and entrances last year, I'm inclined to wait until Friday to give a suggested format to Penn.

We are currently at 25 teams, as George Mason has dropped. A house team, or a mixed team (see below post) will take their place so that we can do a manageable 26-team schedule rather than a crazy 25-team one. Pending no more drops before Friday (always a risky proposition), the tournament format will be as follows:

*Teams have been divided into 2 brackets of 13. I have seeded the teams to make the brackets roughly equal in strength.

*There are, conveniently, exactly 13 packets written entirely or partially by teams playing at the Penn site. Thus, teams will play 12 games and have 1 bye within their prelim brackets, and said packets will be used on the appropriate bye.

*After round 13, the winners of each bracket will be determined using an ACF-format final; that is to say, you must clear the bracket by two games to win outright. There will be a weighted best-of-three semifinal of up to 2 games if someone is 1 game ahead. Three-way ties will be played off on two packets after seeding by PPG, and second-place ties of two or more teams at Y losses behind a first-place team at (Y-1) losses will see a playoff on full or half packets for entrance into the weighted best-of-three semifinal, etc etc etc. In other words, normal ACF tiebreakers will apply and everything will be played off rather than done on PPG since there are sufficient packets for it.

*Once the bracket winners have been determined, by the above semifinal procedure if necessary, then they will play an outright best-of-three final.

*The UG and D2 titles will be decided by a one-game final between the top-finishing such teams in each bracket; only outright ties for this status will be played off within the bracket. If a D2 team is the top UG team in one bracket only, then they will play two consecutive games, one for the UG title and the other for the D2 title. If both brackets' UG champions are D2 teams, then one game will determine both titles.

*Anyone who wishes to play more games in round 14 and beyond but is not involved in the finals series will be provided with a moderator and packets to play the rounds unofficially. However, as far as the official statistics and my wagging finger are concerned, the tournament ends after Round 13 for anyone not involved in a playoff for one of the championship titles, so you may leave and claim your buzzer at this time without being accused of leaving early. Individual awards will also be given out right after Round 13.

*Exhibition teams are not eligible for any titles. This includes the Williams team and the high school coalition team, and possibly Team 26 depending on who ends up playing for their spot. However, all results and statistics of games against these teams will count for other teams' placement.

The possibility of contracting the three-game finals series to a single-game will be kept in mind in case we run really over time or someone reads the wrong packet, but my hope is that, since this will only involve 2 teams and they will be the best teams in the tournament, they will not mind staying for the extra hour.

Also, if you have more than 4 players on your planned roster for Saturday, or if you are a person whose team is not coming to the tournament but wants to play Penn Bowl, or if you are a person who is no longer in school and wants to play Penn Bowl, then contact me and Mehdi about getting onto Team 26. Note that, if an additional real team registers at any time before Round 1, they will get that spot no matter what has been promised to you. Consider this a "standby" offer that is fairly likely to come through.

I believe that Ike will be joining Daichi, myself, and a possible Dan Puma. That should help fix the bracketing issue.

Not directly, but if it ends up as 24 teams I can probably do something with that as opposed to 25.

Matt Weiner wrote:Not directly, but if it ends up as 24 teams I can probably do something with that as opposed to 25.

Ike was registered as his own team. So that should cut the number by one.

Yeah, but since we have to use submitted packets, 2 brackets of 12 still takes 13 rounds to run and would require playoffs afterwards to get more than 11 games. So, I'd probably overhaul the format entirely rather than just cut the two brackets down, if the number stays at 24.

Any official word on what time to be there and what building to be at?

-Guy, Princeton

E-mail should go out later today. I'll post the text here for those of you whose e-mail I don't have. It'll be the same place as last year (Cohen Hall 17) for the opening meeting and games (Williams Hall). We'd like registration to run from 8:15-8:45am, followed by a very brief opening meeting and we'll get started as close to 9am as possible. I'd really appreciate it if everyone could be there on time because regardless of what the final format is, we'd like things to be done as early as possible since people are coming from longer distances.

Here is the exact text of the e-mail I sent out. I managed to find contact info for at least one member on every team, but if you want the directions/parking attachment I included in the e-mail, drop me an e-mail at [email protected]. Thanks!

Dear Penn Bowl participants,
Sorry for the delay but here is an update for Penn Bowl 2009 this Saturday. I was hoping to finalize the field and format before e-mailing an update, but seeing as that's probably not going to be resolved until tomorrow, I figured I'd go ahead and send this out. Below is the field update as of tonight; double-check if all your info is correct. The field is sort of in constant flux so we'll let you know what the format ends up being Saturday morning. We'd appreciate anyone that can bring extra buzzers; you will be given the discount and prevent the horror that is slap bowl. Also, if you have extra players that would like to come, we could likely use them for fill-in teams so everyone gets to play more games. Our current plan is, in addition to conferring titles to the overall winners, to acknowledge the top D2-only and undergraduate-only teams, info which I'll get from you at registration.

Registration will take place between 8:15am and 8:45am in Claudia Cohen Hall G17. Games will take place in the next-door Williams Hall. This is the same place last year's Penn Bowl and our high school tournament were held. We'll try to have signs posted in some visible locations directing you there. Please be prompt as we'd like to start rounds as soon after 9am as possible, and we'd like to get you out at a reasonable time. I cannot stress this enough. If you think you'll be delayed, please call me at 804-519-7687. Parking and directions to Cohen are attached. If you'd like an address to enter, you can use 249 South 36th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, but take a look at the parking info included. Note that really the only place where free parking is available on Saturdays is 40th street and beyond, whereas our games will be held closer to 36th street, so leave yourself time to find a spot and walk if you take this option.

I should also point out that we'll also be running a trash tournament on Sunday. You'll get 10 rounds of nothing but grade-A pop culture, so everyone is encouraged to join in. Our current field stands at 7 teams, but we'd ideally like to get to 10 or 12 for format's sake. Let me know either by e-mail or in person if interested in playing or joining a team with free agents.

Again, if there are any issues Saturday morning or earlier, please call me at 804-519-7687, especially if you are delayed or are having trouble finding the place. Otherwise, see you Saturday morning!

Best,
Mehdi Razvi

PS. In case you're wondering why you've received this: you're receiving this e-mail because you might be one of the few contacts I have for your team, so if you're not coming, please be sure this info gets to the right person/people. Much appreciated!

Field:
Brandeis (1 team, ? buzzers)
Brown (1 team, ? buzzers)
Carnegie Mellon (1 team, 2 buzzers)
Chicago (2 teams, ? buzzers)
Columbia (3 teams, ? buzzers)
Daichi/Henry/Ike/Puma (1 team, ? buzzers)
Delaware (1 team, ? buzzers)
Harvard (1 team, ? buzzers)
Hunter HS (1 teams, 2 buzzers)
Maryland (2 teams, 2 buzzers)
MIT (1 team, 1 buzzer)
Princeton (1 team, 2 buzzers)
State College HS (2 teams)
Swarthmore (2 team, ? buzzers)
VCU (1 team, ? buzzers)
"Williams" (1 team, ? buzzes)
Yetman/Hunter College (1 team, ? buzzers)
Total: 23 teams, 9 buzzers (+2 house)

Lapego1 wrote:Registration will take place between 8:15am and 8:45am in Claudia Cohen Hall G17. Games will take place in the next-door Williams Hall. This is the same place last year's Penn Bowl and our high school tournament were held. We'll try to have signs posted in some visible locations directing you there.

Map? I only vaguely remember last year...

fleurdelivre wrote:

Lapego1 wrote:Registration will take place between 8:15am and 8:45am in Claudia Cohen Hall G17. Games will take place in the next-door Williams Hall. This is the same place last year's Penn Bowl and our high school tournament were held. We'll try to have signs posted in some visible locations directing you there.

Map? I only vaguely remember last year...

Sent out an e-mail to volunteers with a map almost exactly when you posted. See you tomorrow!

Brown will bring our buzzer as well as Hunter High School's buzzer (I don't know if that's included in your total).

I heard by phone that Chicago A beat Brown in the finals.

Ultra-brief results: Chicago defeated Brown in a one-game, winner take all final that pitted the undefeated champions of both brackets. To get to that point, Chicago (11-0 in prelims) won an advantaged semifinal over Maryland A (10-1 in prelims), and Brown (11-0) defeated Harvard (10-1) in their advantaged semifinal. Maryland and Harvard decided to play a third-place game, which Harvard won.

Harvard A won the undergraduate championship by defeating State College HS A in a separate one-game playoff before the semifinals; State College A was awarded the D2 title outright. The top scorer was Jonathan Magin, playing solo.

Stats will be coming soon.

Stats through the 13-round prelims are here. I didn't get a chance to enter the final games, but I will do so some time today after Penn Bowl Trash.
Prelims

Thanks to penn for hosting; I really enjoyed this tournament.

One small thing: the stats for our game against State college B should be 435-90, not 345-90

EDIT: Also the Chicago B game was 365-270 or so, rather than 370-365

Lapego1 wrote:Stats through the 13-round prelims are here. I didn't get a chance to enter the final games, but I will do so some time today after Penn Bowl Trash.
Prelims

It's not a huge deal at all, but if you want to be completely accurate I played the last two games marked under 'Adam' for the School for Wives.

I'm a fan of Magin's team name. Great play. Better than School for Wives in my humble opinion.

When will the set be posted?

I fixed what was said above (Brice, yours only appears in the "combined"). Here's everything:
Prelims
Combined

Thanks to all who came and helped staff, especially Matt Weiner, Katy Peters, and Brice Russ, and to Jonathan for agreeing to play solo to fill out the field. I hope a good time was had by all and everyone will come back next year.

To nitpick, I powered ammonia in our round two game against Brown, so I didn't go 0/0/0.

Lapego1 wrote:I fixed what was said above (Bryce, yours only appears in the "combined"). Here's everything:
Prelims
Combined

Thanks to all who came and helped staff, especially Matt Weiner, Katy Peters, and Brice Russ, and to Jonathan for agreeing to play solo to fill out the field. I hope a good time was had by all and everyone will come back next year.

No worries. Thanks for giving me the chance to give my voice a break and play my first actual quizbowl in about six months.