2020-21 Groger Ranks Player Poll: RESULTS POSTED

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2020-21 Groger Ranks Player Poll: RESULTS POSTED

Post by Berniecrat »

As always to cap off the season, we will be running a player poll for members of the high school quizbowl community to celebrate each other's hard work and recognize individuals whose performances were impressive that season. This year we will be running polls to recognize the top overall players, top history players, top science players, top literature players, top fine arts players, top freshmen, and top sophomores. People can pick which ballots they feel qualified to respond to and fill out those ballots specifically rather than having to fill out all of them.

For the overall ballot, respondents will rank their top 30 individuals. For rest of the ballots, respondents will rank their top 10 individuals. Each ballot will require justifications and as with our other polls this year, no ballots will be made anonymous. If there is a reason you believe your ballot should be made anonymous, email us at [email protected] so we can work out a solution.

When opening the poll, respondents will see a landing screen where they see all the polls available to them. Click the poll you want to fill out and you will be directed to the appropriate ballot. After completing each ballot, you will be redirected back to the landing screen for a chance to finish an additional ballot. After you have filled out all the responses you wish to complete in that sitting, click the submit ballot option on the landing screen. You can always go back and edit your responses to either change your ballot or fill out additional ballots. If for any reason you wish for one of your ballots to be removed completely, email us at [email protected]

For ballots, fill out players with their first and last names correctly spelled. Avoid putting unnecessary spaces before and after their names (for example instead of putting "John Smith " put "John Smith" to avoid the extra space. For special cases where there are multiple players in the nation with the same first and last name, add their affiliation at the end. For example, if you were to rank both Amogh Kulkarni from Arcadia and Amogh Kulkarni from Wayzata you would enter them as "Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia)" and "Amogh Kulkarni (Wayzata)"

Any tournament this year can be considered for the basis of the rankings, although we would recommend putting emphasis on tournaments on harder sets or stronger fields (with nationals performances weighted strongly.) As with past polls, we would like for majority of the discussion regarding the polls and ballots to take place over the forums where possible, since other places such as Discord don't always allow for longform thoughts and allow for messages to be easily buried. "Shill" posts from proud teammates are always appreciated :)

During these discussions, however, negativity is strongly discouraged. Do not try to attack the skill of other players, even if you really want to praise a friend or teammate of yours. It is possible to praise one player without putting down another. Speaking from personal experience, it can be really awful already being insecure about your skills and seeing people publicly say you don't deserve to be mentioned in these things at all! Let's keep this poll fun and friendly.

The poll will be open until July 24, 2021 11:59 PM CDT. The link to ballots can be found here: https://forms.gle/ASNm6v6P8ZDXqZAt8

Happy voting and congratulations everyone for making the most of a season in difficult circumstances!
Last edited by Berniecrat on Mon Jul 26, 2021 9:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 2020-21 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by shefna21 »

Hello! I guess I'll start this discussion off by shamelessly shilling my teammate.

As typically the 3rd scorer on Belmont A, it's possible that Cindy Gao is flying under a lot of people's radar. However, I think you'd certainly be remiss not to rank her among the top couple sophomores in the country, and although I'm not particularly familiar with how strong the competition is I'd guess she's likely one of the top 10 literature players as well.

Although she's on a team with another supplemental lit player (and one who shares most of the same lit interests), Cindy regularly puts up very impressive numbers. Her tendency to play extremely conservatively perhaps obscures how scarily good she is, but even with quite low risk-tolerance she gets early buzzes on hard tournaments (she went 7/17/0 in 9 rounds of WORKSHOP, and although you can't see it from the statline her 23/10 PACE performance came with 0 incorrect buzzes either day). Without being shadowed by the rest of Belmont A, she went 22/13/0 on CATT literature, and 28/46/2 overall. She's been starting to practice playing aggressively with next year's A team, and it's very impressive to see how capable she is of leading a team without me and Seiyoung when she's willing to take more risks (although she does definitely share our inability to play NAQT).

I'm not the most plugged-in to the national quizbowl circuit so I really don't know where this information would put her rankings wise, but I wanted to put it out there in case she's going unnoticed here. Thanks for taking note!
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Re: 2020-21 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by eygotem »

Here's a list of some players from Missouri to consider:

Joel Miles (Overall + Literature + Fine Arts) - The overwhelming top scorer on the Scalene Triangle team that won ONCT undefeated. Also top scorer on Missouri A at NASAT, which finished 8th. He's extremely deep in philosophy, literature, and fine arts (I've seen him regularly get VFA over Gabe Forrest), to the extent that his team could secure 11 tossups against teams with multiple top specialists. In terms of being able to win, he's definitely up there among the best individuals.

Gabe Forrest (Overall + Fine Arts) - One of the best visual arts players in the nation - he wrote two open-level GORKYs, and in general has been insane when I've seen him play, including at NASAT. (Albeit, his skill at music isn't at the same level of insanity). Also very good at literature, and was one of the few players I've seen who's gone head to head with Joel Miles. Gabe led his CHC team to great heights this season (though they weren't able to attend nationals) despite a major lack of teammate support, a testament to his skill.

Louis Li (Overall + History) - An immensely strong history player, often topping the category stats at tournaments with them. He also covers subjects like RMPSS and literature quite well (though probably not as well as Joel or Gabe). Louis was top scorer by a large margin on the Ladue team that got 4th at ONCT, and from personal experience he provides most of our team's firepower outside of science. He's certainly not someone to overlook for either t10 history or t30 overall.

Eric Yin (Science) - I wouldn't say I'm, like, the best in the nation at science, but there's a good case to be made that I'm in the top 10. I do depend heavily on my teammates for math and CS (which had a noticeable impact on Missouri A at NASAT), but this is arguably made up for with my depth in earth sci and astronomy. From my experience, Ladue's sci coverage (mostly from me, though Jason and Yuvan helped quite a bit) was instrumental to our high ONCT finish.

Frederick Rivas-Giorgi (Overall) - Widely recognized as a top player in Missouri, but not as high-profile on the national stage, Freddie was the overwhelming top scorer on the St. Joseph Central team that got T-49th at HSNCT. He's strongest at history (though not top-10 tier), but can generalize pretty well. He and Owen Farra led Missouri B in a strong performance at NASAT, beating out such teams as Maryland Gold (twice!). He's someone to consider when rounding out your top 30.

Owen Farra (Sophomore) - Last season's top freshman is (unsurprisingly) still very good. Despite his STL Patriots team not playing much online, Owen has done very well in the few tournaments he has played. Even without Sam Lindsey, Owen put up great stats against top teams at LIST, and he led Missouri B in scoring at NASAT (despite having spotty internet!). He's a great all-around player - definitely in the t10 sophomores.

Max Yang (Sophomore) - Perhaps a hot take, but Max has proven himself a very strong player this season; despite playing on a stacked Ladue A, he's put up high stats at high difficulties and gotten lots of early buzzes. Not only is Max insane at geography - he also has deep knowledge in parts of fine arts, history, RMPSS, and general knowledge. I'd imagine he'd score points in a broader share of the distro if his teammates weren't deep specialists as well. He's another sophomore to consider for your t10.
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Re: 2020-21 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by buffaloz1331 »

In case you need names to think about and fill out your ballots, here are some names:

Gus Carvell, RM. He might not make your overall (though there is certainly an argument for him), but Gus should without question make your fine arts ballots. At the DMV mirror of STASH, which was in December (!!), Gus handily led the field in FA points and powers, going 14/7/5 over 36 fine arts questions. For comparison, Gokulan Anand at the same mirror went 9/5/3, getting 14 of 30 FA tossups heard. He has since improved, moving from the third scorer on a scary RM A team to second scorer for that team (4th at PACE), surpassing a very good player in Abhinav Karthikeyan. I haven't heard Gus get mentioned much but he is really insane and terrifying to play against—all in all a fine fine arts player worthy of your consideration. At least one of his teammates, the aforementioned Abhinav and also Justin Posner, should also feature on your overall ballots.

Leela Mehta-Harwitz, Blair. Leela came back down to earth somewhat after winning NHBB in December with Albert and putting on an insane show on STASH, but still continued to perform very well in the late season and during nationals, where Blair got T-12 at HSNCT and 21st at PACE. Worth consideration for a slot somewhere in the 20-30 overall range. Leela's teammate, Chris Tong is really quite good as well, for overall and science.

Arjun Nageswaran, Stevenson. Arjun is quiet and may fly under the radar here, but he definitely shouldn't. Make no mistake, Arjun is definitely a top 10 player, if not higher. At PACE, Arjun went 40/60, carrying most of the load for a Stevenson that finished 6th! Arjun has been consistently impressive throughout his career and this year is no exception. He was also one of three (essentially) ~30ppg lead scorers on the winning Illinois NASAT team. Arjun is also nuts at history and is pretty deep on fine arts (especially auditory), so make of that what you will. He also in all likelihood won't like this shill post and try to downplay it. Don't listen to him, Arjun should be in your top 10.

William Groger, Miami Valley. Another member of the "used to play in the shadow of one of the top players in the country, now has attempted to take on that mantle" club, William is deserving of your consideration and definitely has earned a spot in the top 20, probably higher. William has consistently been a or THE top scorer at pretty much every high school tournament he played this season, including nationals, where he was the top scorer at HSNCT and second scorer (to Aadi Karthik). William's relative lack of support compared to other very good players may have held him back somewhat from placing higher come nats time, but don't forget about this guy.

Aizaaz Faiz, Manheim Township. AZ is pretty darn good at lit. Certainly should be in the conversation/in consideration for your lit ballots.

Ean Casey, Norfolk Academic Guild. Could definitely belong in the 15-30 range of your overall ballots. Ean is a solid player and merits consideration in this poll.

Tasis Gemmill-Nexon, GDS. My teammate and also a terrific player. It's really a shame that there's no RMPSS poll, because Tasis would definitely merit a high ranking on it. They are ridiculously deep in the "belief" (R/M) category, and have tons of real knowledge in areas of "thought" (P/SS). Tasis is also very good at history, particularly ancient history, and even more particularly non-European ancient history. They are also developing as a literature player, and if they continue next year, could be an elite player. Tasis is still really good this year, and you should consider ranking them in your 20-30 slots.

-Edited-
Stevie Miller, Winston Churchill, should not go unnoticed. He had the second-best stats on history at our STASH mirror (to the absolutely insane Albert Ho, who must already most definitely be at the very least top 3 on your history ballots and perhaps on your overalls). He's an incredible history player who has definitely earned consideration for that subject poll.

There may be more people who come to my mind in the coming days. I will update this post, or not, as necessary.
Last edited by buffaloz1331 on Mon Jul 12, 2021 4:04 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 2020-21 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by thecowsrule »

To add to the discussion, I want to talk about everyone on SCP B. Our team is very specialized so none of us should really be considered for the overall player poll, but because we spike hard in each of our categories, I think we all deserve consideration for the category polls. To add some empirical evidence to my discussion, I will be referencing all of the Hard+ sets we played this year that had category stats, which were Southern Prison Bowl (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... 1017414122), STASH Southeast (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... =125323782), and the National WORKSHOP Supersite (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... 2067688339). (Unfortunately we did not make it off the PACE waitlist so I don't have stats from there, but it is worth noting that Soham, Joel and I are way better on mACF than NAQT.)

All of the stats I reference are just for that player's main category (i.e. history) and not overall.

Biniam Alaro is our history player and is probably the most underrated player on our team because he doesn't do NHBB like most other history players and he isn't active online. However, from both personal experience playing with him and category stats, Biniam is an insane history player, in part because of all of the history books that he reads. As the stats indicate, he is very well-rounded in all of the sub-categories, although he does have somewhat of a bias towards modern history. At the three Hard+ sets we played this year, Biniam led the field in history powers, going 19/6/6 at Prison Bowl, 16/9/4 at STASH, and an insane 7/18/6 at Workshop in a stacked history field (he scored 90 more points than the next history player!!!, including many people who you are probably ranking). In addition, Biniam is also an insane NAQT player, leading our T-8 HSNCT team in powers and points per game by a long shot with 37 powers and 47 ppg (https://www.naqt.com/stats/tournament/t ... _id=316892).

Soham Mehra is our literature player and like Biniam, he is extremely well-rounded, putting up great stats in each sub-category. Much of Soham's knowledge comes from carding/packet studying, but I also know that he's read a lot of plays which is probably his best area. At Prison Bowl Soham went 20/10/2, at STASH he went 8/14/5, and at WORKSHOP he went 1/22/4. Soham is an extremely dependable scorer and has finished top-2 lit at every tournament we played among many other strong literature players. Soham also had a great performance at NASAT with 30 ppg mostly on lit (which helped Florida place 9th without our science player).

Joel Valan is our science player and like Biniam and Soham, he consistently has great performances in his category. Joel's best sub-categories are definitely chemistry and physics, especially chemistry since he does Chem Olympiad, but he is still really good at the other science areas. Joel went 17/5/3 at Prison Bowl, 10/14/8 at STASH, and 3/16/3 at WORKSHOP. Joel is a very dependable science scorer and consistently puts up solid performances against other great science players.

I, Aaron Dantzler, am our fine arts player. My best sub-category is definitely AFA because of cello/orchestra/AP Music Theory and History classes, and I enjoy listening to classical music in general. Out of all of the sub-categories, we generally consider AFA to be our team's strongest. However, I also have strong knowledge bases in VFA and OFA because I've taken AP Art History + studying. Like Biniam, I led the field in powers in my category at all of the Hard+ sets we played this year, and led in fine arts scoring at all tournaments this year except for WORKSHOP where I was second. I went 17/5/1 in at Prison Bowl (including 10/0/0 in music alone), 15/5/4 at STASH, and 4/10/1 at WORKSHOP. I also had a strong performance at NASAT with 42 ppg mainly just on FA and PSS (https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/6 ... dividuals/).

Personally, I think that all 4 of us are top 10 in our categories (we're markedly weaker at RMPSS) and at the very least deserve consideration in your category polls.
Last edited by thecowsrule on Sat Jul 10, 2021 4:48 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: 2020-21 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by benchapman »

I don't normally post, but I'm going to shill for some of my teammates and other Northeast people.

First, my teammates:

Andrew Zeng is incredibly good. He's able to consistently power lit and history, despite being on a team with Cerulean and Pedro for history, and also gets FA (moreso VFA, because I'm worse at that), some science, and philosophy a lot. He's also really clutch, as shown by his two tossup 20 powers in PACE superplayoffs.

Pedro Juan Orduz is one of the best history specialists in the country, despite being shadowed really hard. He also is very good at "Other" (SS/Geo/CE) and film. He had the most powers on the PACE runner-up team, which I think has to count for something.

Cerulean Ozarow is a really strong generalist, in that he can power pretty much any category (except maybe sports). This kind of deep knowledge is really useful especially on higher-difficulty sets/nats when it comes to hard parts/power clues. He's able to buzz outside the canon a lot, because he (and both of my other teammates as well) have a ton of real knowledge.

Jacob Hardin-Bernhardt and Ian Lu are both really good sophomores. They each led our B team in scoring 19th and 18th at nats, despite not having the other on the team at the time. They're both really good at history, but can buzz across the distribution.

Other Northeast people:

Karsten Rynearson is obviously really good. He can buzz in pretty much any category (though is especially strong at lit), even though he can neg quite a bit. He also wins a lot of buzzer races (to be clear, I don't mean this in the sense of "he gets questions just because he's fast on the buzzer". Most of the time, the person who wins the buzzer race is the person who was closest to getting there based on the previous clues).

Max Brodsky is totally lockdown on FA, and is also a really good lit player. You should all put him in your FA ballots.

Ben Hu is incredibly good at science, and you shouldn't let some of Millburn's recent results distract from that. As a pure science specialist, I would put him in the top 3 in the country at the very least.

All of Belmont are really good and impressed me when I played them, but I want to big up Nathan Sheffield in particular. He's very good at science, but is able to buzz in almost any category. You shouldn't focus on Belmont's performance at HSNCT when ranking their players; they were the toughest team we played this year in the Northeast and one of the best teams we played at nationals.

Josh Yi from EB is a very strong generalist and sci player. He does neg a bit, but gets a lot of questions to make up for it.

Finally, it's not a Northeast player, but Justin Chen is almost certainly the #1 lit player in the country. He got ridiculous buzzes whenever we played against him, and has very good neg discipline also.
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Re: 2020-21 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by CPiGuy »

I am here to shill some players.

Something Arthur didn't mention: Tasis Gemmill-Nexon put up in excess of 90PPG on SMH, a nontrivially hard college set, at the ONCT. You should vote for them -- it's apparent from this performance that their lower scoring at most tournaments this season is largely because Arthur is insane.

Speaking of which: I think your top three should be Arthur Delot-Vilain, Aadi Karthik, and Joel Miles in some order. All of these players are incredibly good and have demonstrated this with outstanding performances at major tournaments -- Arthur won IPNCT in commanding fashion, Aadi dragged Georgia NASAT to the final, and Joel won ONCT nearly solo without taking any losses. It's really hard for me to see an argument to put other players above these three, except maybe Ned Tagtmeier, who's super good and put up fifty (!!!) powers on SMH. Ned also played on a St. Mark's team with three freshmen at a regular difficulty college tournament in the fall and, uh, won that tournament. I'm probably voting Ned fourth, personally.

Aidan Dartley is mad good. Vote for him very highly. His stats on SMH speak for themselves. Connor Blake also had ridiculous power numbers on SMH, suggesting you should rank him highly both overall and as a science specialist.

Charles Young and Rohan Ganeshan should be on top of your freshman poll. They are both absurd generalists. Charles has less category depth (except in VFA, which they are absurd at), but they have a really incredible ability to get buzzes in any category by "figuring it out". Charles's fraud skills are on par with much more experienced and older players and are a major factor in Barrington's success as a team.

Aditya Shivaswamy from St. Mark's is like, really really good at fine arts. He's also just good in general. Vote for him in the freshman poll.

Other freshmen who are good include Soren Gjesfjeld, who didn't play that many tournaments this year but invariably put up big numbers when he did; Cole Hartung, who's very good at history especially; Anurag Sodhi, who put up serious points on noted good team Centennial A; Sahas Goli, who had a 40% power rate at HSNCT and was second scorer on noted good team MSJ; and Rohan Kher, who was on Barrington B this year because Liam Starnes is an even more elite history player but is very good, to the tune of >50ppg on PACE NSC.

Jacob Hardin-Bernhardt has continued to be very good and is one of the best sophomores; he doesn't put up world-beating numbers but he also generally plays on very strong Hunter teams which are well-saturated with history and geography players. See also Lukas Koutsoukos, who made HSNCT playoffs essentially solo.

[Editing this post to add that I completely missed Ian Lu when looking through the NSC stats and yeah good lord vote him highly too.]

Arthur Gayden and Geetan Madala are really good at quizbowl and should be on your top sophomores list. Other sophomores you should consider are Jeremiah Rayban of Wilmington Charter, Andrew Minagar of Caddo Magnet, and Neel Moudgal of Saline (MI).
Last edited by CPiGuy on Sat Jul 10, 2021 10:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 2020-21 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by Vembanad »

I doubt I’ll make a player poll myself due to the abundance of strong players this year and the lack of a clear hierarchy, but Amogh Kulkarni of Arcadia, Aadi Karthik, and Arthur Delot-Vilain should all be in consideration for Player of the Year. Arjun Nageswaran, Amogh Kulkarni of Wayzata, Albert Ho, and Andrew Zeng (among others) could all make arguments for being on the National A Team as well.

I won’t go too in-depth on Hunter or Northeast players as Ben has already discussed them quite ably, but I want to reiterate that Jacob Hardin-Bernhardt and Ian Lu deserve spots in your top 5 sophomores. Jacob was one of only two sophomores (Geetan Madala being the other one) to score the majority of points on a top-30 team at HSNCT and was consistently the lead scorer on a top 40 Hunter B team (and outscored me once while we played together on A team!). Ian is perhaps less likely to be ranked due to having a smaller online presence and playing fewer tournaments (his only NAQT tournament this year consisted of only 3 games and came while he was sick with a cold, so it’s probably not very representative), but his amazing performance at PACE -- 20 powers in prelims (enough to tie for 10th among all players) as the only underclassman to lead a top bracket team -- should speak for itself.

As for the Northeast, to add on to the players Ben mentioned (who are certainly all deserving of ranking), Rosa Xia of Livingston did not play either nationals and I’m not sure if she would rank in the top 10 nationally, but along with Andrew Zeng she’s probably the best lit player in the Tri-State region (her 33/10/0 statline on almost entirely lit and myth at RAFT II is one of the scariest I can think of, though it comes from an easier set). At SCALE, her team was essentially tied with Justin Chen and Will Orr at the half, and she may be the top HS poetry player in the country. Ridgewood is the only team from the the Tri-State region to have beaten Hunter multiple times this year (and also was one of the best t-19 HSNCT teams), thanks to the efforts of Aum Mundhe (who is very good at history and has of late become unstoppable at AFA and VFA) and Aiden Dartley (another extremely strong, possibly top-10 history player who has become very good at lit and has the very frightening potential to buzz on anything; he notched 2 powers per game on STASH). There are many very strong sophomores in the region, but I’d definitely recommend ranking Tanuj Chandekar, who along with Cooper Roh is quite possibly a top-10 history player in the country (I know that I’m saying this about a lot of people, my Hunter A teammates included in particular, but the Northeast tends to be very strong on History and relatively weaker on other categories). As Nathan mentioned, Cindy Gao should be considered for top-10 sophomore as well on the strength of her literature specialism alone.
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Re: 2020-21 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by Gemomania »

I'll talk about some players in the NorCal circuit who should receive your consideration.

Keshav Kumar and Richard Lin have received discussion so far but I'll reiterate that they deserve to be on your top sophomores list. Keshav has had one of the biggest improvements I've seen from from his freshman to sophomore year, turning Guilder into a t50 team, and Richard is able to keep B*llarmine competitive while being a hyper-specialist from what I've seen — he also deserves to be in the literature ballot discussion.

However, someone I haven't seen mentioned as much is Pareekshith Krishna, the leading scorer for the, as Conor said, good MSJ team who upset (though maybe it shouldn't be as surprising as it seems) teams like DCDS and Beavercreek. Though he has some strong teammates who may shadow his individual prowess, Pareekshith should also receive some consideration for the sophomore lists.

Karan Gurazada is very good at the game of quizbowl. Enough said. Put him on your overall player ballots and take notice of his science and fine arts specialism. Rohan Shelke is also very good at science and was able to lead Mira Loma deep into the HSNCT playoffs despite them leading the field in negs per game.

Though the lists will be tight and not everyone who deserves to be on them can/will make them, please do look take a look at these players. Happy voting
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Re: 2020-21 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by nickdai »

I think I’ll take this time to shill the SoCal players that will be on my poll.

From my team, Westview, the player that I think should definitely be voted for is Andrew Jia. Andrew’s science is better than any other of our big 4 category. For reference he went 4/0/0 in just science against Karan Gurazada at HSNCT, and Karan has been widely considered one of the best science players. I’d actually nominate Daniel Shaw, Gary Lin and me, Nicholas Dai, if there was a current events poll, and I’d rank myself at the top of the RMPSS poll, but unfortunately there is none. I did see talk on Discord about possibly putting me on the literature poll, but I want to make it clear. I am not a literature player. I just have occasional deep pockets of literature, but generally I am a pure generalist with RMPSS specialism. Vote me in the religion poll if there was one. I wouldn’t put myself in the generalist poll either. I’m probably top 30 at either college regs or HS regs, but I’m nowhere close to that at HS nats difficulty, which is what the poll is based on. Gary and Daniel serve as honorable mentions in my history ballot, but the history player pool is too stacked for them to break top 10.

From Arcadia, I would also like to shill Amogh Kulkarni. In my personal opinion, he is the best player in the country. It is just that his teammate Ryan Sun is also insanely insanely good (like top 5-10 good) so the power count is a bit lower. I would also vote for Amogh in all of the big 4 polls except for fine arts, and Ryan in all of them except for science. These two are insanely good. They just shadow each other very hard.

Lastly, I would also vote for Josh Xu in my history ballot. His HSNCT stats were very clean (27 power in 13 games), and I remember he went 34/0/1 in 44 history tossups at LONE STAR. He is very good.

Edit: I ended up not voting for Josh purely because of how stacked the history player pool is. In any other year, this man would be on my ballot. Ended up only voting for Andrew Jia, Amogh Kulkarni, and Ryan Sun. Wish there was an RMPSS and “other” poll.

A few other notable SoCal players would be Joshua You, an honorable mention in my science ballot, and Conner Feng, an honorable mention in my freshmen ballot. Andrew Park is decent at history too, just not enough to break top 10. Chris Jung would be an honorable mention too in my sophomore ballot.

Edit 2: I’m so stupid I forgot to submit my ballot in the end
Last edited by nickdai on Tue Aug 03, 2021 3:52 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 2020-21 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by Snom »

One player that hasn't been mentioned above but really deserves a place on your ballot is Anish Kodali from Great Valley. (I'm sure many of you were already ranking him)

Great Valley might not have played quite as much out of state, but they went completely undefeated in the PA circuit this season (a modern-era first) with Anish as their primary scorer. You can check Anish's results at CATT Open, STASH, and Prison Bowl League for reference. While GV might not have racked up many impressive victories, Anish regularly put up 60+ppg games against teams like RM, GDS, and High Tech. After a slightly disappointing HSNCT run, GV defeated Solon A and came within a tossup of St. Mark's at PACE with two of their regular players out and Anish handling even more of the scoring (3/4 against St. Mark's, 4/4 against Solon).

Arthur mentioned that AZ Faiz is really good at lit (and you should trust him more than me). Anish is also really good at lit, and if you don't rank him overall he's definitely in contention for top 10 lit.
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Re: 2020-21 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by William McCurley »

I am not familiar enough with the big names and players in quiz bowl (just from the tournaments I played this year, I think Ned Tagtmeier, Arthur Delot-Vilain, and Karsten Rynearson are brilliant and should absolutely be in the top 5), but I would like to do some self-advocacy.

In the past year, I led Baker High School’s quiz bowl team to place in the top five in four American Quiz Bowl League Discord tournaments (5th in October Southeast Division, 4th in November Eastern Division, 1st in February Eastern Division, and 1st in April Eastern Division). I understand not all of these tournaments were the most stacked and competitive, but I think Baker’s consistent high placings in these tournaments which included teams from across the east and which include a variety in question difficulty speak to our team’s competence. These performances consequently speak to my own competence as captain of the team and scorer of over 90% of the points. I even solo’d half of the February tournament. Individually, I was in the top two individual scorers in all of these tournaments. Later in the year, I had an excellent performance at the NAQT IPNCT, placing 13th overall against some of the best players in the country, followed by good but relatively underwhelming performances at the ASCA Varsity State Championship and HSNCT. Even despite my many obnoxious negs in the latter two tournaments, I managed to be MVP at ASCA and second highest scorer at HSNCT.

I ask to forgive my lack of humility in this post. I am a natural introvert and I usually feel uncomfortable posting like this on public forums, but I thought my performance in tournaments this year was flying somewhat under the radar. I may not be a well-established name in the community yet, but I think I am worthy of contention for top 20 or top 25. I would also argue I am in top 10 or even top 5 in science and perhaps even top 10 in fine arts (this admittedly may be a stretch).
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Re: 2020-21 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by bkmcavoybickford »

All right, I'll post everything I know about NC people worth putting on the polls, although I'm not sure if I want to fill out the poll.

Rasheeq Azad (North Carolina School of Science and Math) is the only NC player who really should be ranked in a subject poll. He's far and away the top science player in NC. He averaged almost 2 powers per game at PACE while playing on a pretty good team where everyone can to some extent cover science (they are called Science and Math after all). Most of his buzzes tend to be extremely early in questions and are often from real knowledge, which means he seems to scale up well although I'm not sure his tournament record is large enough to say, since his only nationals (or any quiz bowl tournament appearances, for that matter) were this year. In my opinion, Rasheeq's a top 5 science player.

Other people: I don't want to talk about myself too much but I should probably be in individual polls, although lower down. Aditya Sharma (Raleigh Charter) is a strong sophomore science/FA/basically everything player who could maybe be in consideration for a sophomore ballot? I'm not sure how stacked that is and Raleigh Charter's high degree of overlap (and kicking out someone for cheating) make their stats a little unsure. If there were a current events/geography poll, Samanyu Dixit (NCSSM also) should definitely be on it, but that doesn't exist this year.
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Re: 2020-21 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by dpeelen »

While we are ruthlessly shilling players, I figure I might as well put a good word in for a couple people.

As a PA player, I think it's clear I'm going to mention Anish Kodali and Az Faiz. Albert & Arthur already said good things about either or both of them, all of which I agree with. Both of them are really complete literature players who in almost every encounter playing with or against them they have absolutely locked down the aforementioned category. Although PA is a rather insular state, their few encounters with big out-of-state teams have been impressive and not to be slept on.

As for Sophomores this year, I don't have the greatest idea as to who is in this running but there are definitely a few names that run through my head. I say these names in no specific order, I just intend to throw some names out. I tried to not repeat names, so if there's people I didn't include, it's likely because somebody already mentioned or said more about them earlier.

Lukas Koutsoukous - Always a menace, Lukas did solo Hunter B at one point and is a very strong generalist
Aalok Bhattarcharya - Aalok didn't play as much this year as others but he did put near-equal scoring as Lukas at a Northeast tournament at the start of the year, which shouldn't be ignored. I did scrimmage him once, and I can say so myself he is a strong generalist.
Keshav Kumar - Keshav came into the spotlight this year after leading his team to beat Stanford Online. I'm not sure what his main categories are, but seeing him make it to the semi-finals at IPNCT was an incredible showing of his abilities
Arhur Gayden & Costas Pavlou - Both of them lead DCDS B this year to really good results. Costas should definitely be in consideration for the history category and Arthur likewise for fine arts.

That's all that comes to my head for now, I will likely update this if I realize other strong players are worth mentioning.
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Re: 2020-21 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by nyzhang »

Since he has declined to shill himself, I'm here to remind you all that Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford should totally be in your overall poll. At PACE, he put up 40 powers and was 8th in prelim and 4th in individual scoring, while leading East Chapel Hill to a top 30 finish. He also scales very well, as shown by his NASAT performance, where he led led North Carolina to its highest finish ever, while also placing 2nd in individual scoring. Benjamin can buzz all over the distribution, but is incredibly deep in RMPSS and history, and is also probably the best current events player in the country. Rank him where you want, but I personally can't see him being any lower than #10.

Also Benjamin mentioned this so I won't post a paragraph on it, but Rasheeq Azad is such an insane science player and should be in your top 5. It's crazy how good he is for his first year of quiz bowl, and he scales a scary amount.
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Re: 2020-21 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by geetan_madala »

I guess I'll shill some players in the TX circuit.

Ned Tagtmeier was the undisputed best player in the state this year. He led St. Mark's to a 3rd place finish at PACE and a dub at SSNCT. He is definitely a top 3 literature player and should be ranked top 5 overall.
Ned's teammates, Aayush Goodapaty and Aditya Shivaswamy are great players in their own right. Aayush should be ranked top 10 in the history poll and Aditya should be top 10 for the freshman and FA poll.
Another top player this year in the state was Gokulan Anand, Greenhill's literature/vfa player. Gokulan had a phenomenal NASAT performance where he swept many strong lit players and I don't think he dropped an entire VFA tossup the entire tournament. He should definitely be in your literature and overall poll, and maybe fa (although he only does vfa).
Cole Hartung has emerged as one of the best history players in the country as well as one of the best freshman. He had an insane workshop performance where he had over 1 p/g and performed great at all the nationals. He should be top 3 in your sophmore poll for sure.
There's a case for Cole's teammate, Connor Blake as the best science player in the country. Connor was the top science scorer at IPNCT and destroyed the notoriously difficult science on STASH (more than 25 powers soley in sci). Connor should definitely be on your overall ballot and top 3 on your science ballot.
Vedul Palavajjhala is a RMPSS-based generalist on Kinkaid who has put up great performances this year including 6 p/g on DART. He should be in consideration for your overall ballot.
the TAG Duo which consists of sci/fa player Ketan Pamurthy and lit/rmpss player Jisoo Yoo, should both be ranked in the overall polls as well as in their subjects.
Andrew Minagar of Caddo Magnet which is a school in LA but they play TQBA tourneys, is a great generalist and thrives on NAQT content as shown with his HSNCT performance where he got 2 p/g. He should be ranked in your sophomore poll.
Last edited by geetan_madala on Mon Jul 12, 2021 12:48 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: 2020-21 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by Halinaxus »

It's Minnesota shill time!

It's well-known already, but Amogh Kulkarni of Wayzata High School is pretty insane. In addition to his runner-up finish at IPNCT, he put up over 4 powers per game on STASH, 3 at HSNCT, and over 2.5 at PACE while leading Wayzata to a pair of top-12 national finishes. He was also the leading scorer on Minnesota's 5th place NASAT team. In my opinion, Amogh belongs in the top 10 for the generalist poll and also merits serious consideration in the history poll (he's also nuts at RMPSS but sadly that isn't an option here).

In addition, I'd like to put Owen Riley on everyone's radar. Although his power numbers aren't elite, he combines impressive generalism (one of his teammates is elite at RMPSS but other than that Owen basically scores all of Northfield's points) with an aggressive play style (when not negstorming he's notched wins over Ladue, East Brunswick, and all of the top MN teams except Wayzata A). He was also the fifth overall scorer at ONCT and 11th at PACE. In my opinion, Owen merits consideration near the back of the top 30 generalists.*

Edit: I wasn't aware of this when I wrote this post, but it has since come to my attention that Owen placed 4th (!!!) in the varsity National History Bee, finishing higher than Liam Starnes and Eshaan Vakil, among other great players. History is an absolutely stacked subject this year, but after hearing about this I think Owen is absolutely deserving of a place on the history ballot.

Shardul Rao may have fallen a bit from his 2020 peak, but he's still a supremely scary player in nearly every category. Sadly, he was unable to play nationals as a junior or senior, but his most recent performance, 5.78 powers/game and 121 PPG on LONE STAR, speaks for itself.

Minnesota also has a few specialists to consider in the subject rankings. Bryanna and Cece Shao are both elite literature players, although playing in such a strong Wayzata program tends to dilute their stats quite a bit, and Maxwell Ye is an amazing science player who went a ridiculous 57/13/3 over his last three tournaments while playing with Shardul.

Happy voting everyone!

*This probably shouldn't impact your vote, but Owen played his first quiz bowl tournament in February 2020 and had to create the Northfield program entirely by himself by poaching players from their school-sponsored Knowledge Bowl team, which I think makes his performance this year all the more impressive.
Last edited by Halinaxus on Mon Jul 17, 2023 11:35 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: 2020-21 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by Serpentine284 »

These are some players who I think have gone under the radar so far in discussions about the polls. To clarify, the subjects in the parentheses are subjects on the poll I believe these players merit consideration in, not necessarily a reflection of where I will be ranking them. Without further ado:

Amogh Kulkarni from Arcadia (Overall, History, Literature, Science, Fine Arts):

I never thought I'd see the day when Amogh may actually be underranked on these ballots, but with all the hype surrounding players like Aadi and Joel (who are 100% very good players), I think it's worth revisiting his case. People seem to forget that he had the most p/g at HSNCT with 4.6 p/g and second most at PACE with 4 p/g. Mind you, this is also while he was on the same team as Ryan, who does the exact same categories as him and put up 30 powers at both HSNCT and PACE himself. Amogh is also criminally underrated at literature. While there are some slight holes that Ryan helps to fill, Amogh's literature knowledge rivals Justin Chen's at times. Overall, he is, in my mind, still the clear cut number one player this year.

Ryan Sun from Arcadia (Overall, History, Literature, Fine Arts):

Ryan is, without a doubt, the best second scorer out there. Ryan has incredibly deep knowledge in history, poetry, American literature, math, and VFA. As the complement to Arcadia Amogh's generalism, Ryan has become an incredible generalist in his own right, as proven at MCMT where he wasn't shadowed by Amogh. I can say with full confidence that if Amogh didn't go to Arcadia, Ryan would still be able to carry Arcadia to a high place finishing at both nationals.

Justin Posner from Richard Montgomery (Overall, History, Literature):

Justin might be one of the single least talked about top players in the nation. He doesn't have a big online or community presence in Quiz Bowl, but his statistics are incredible. He was the top scorer (by far) on the Richard Montgomery team that placed 4th in the nation at PACE NSC this year, with a 45/26 statline. That's incredible. As a person who's had the opportunity to play with him on several occasions, Justin has deep history, literature, and RMP knowledge that no one can beat him to. He should definitely be in your top 10 overall and top 10 history ballots.

Elliot Lee from Thomas Jefferson (History):

At History Bowl nationals, Elliot beat Beavercreek and Stevenson in the playoffs, and came 20 points away from beating a full Hunter A with only one other history player on his team. He also got 1 p/g on IKEA and 1.2 p/g at LIT against college opponents. As far as I know of, he only does history as well, so those powers most likely came solely from that category. On mACF regs+ sets, he gets around 2.5-3 p/g. While this may seem normal, it is incredibly consistent for someone who only does one category. This is also done in the DMV circuit, with some of the top history players. I would argue that Elliot is a top 3 history player in the nation.

Pratyush Jaishanker from Thomas Jefferson (Overall, Science):

With the emergence of a lot of incredibly good science players this year, I think people have been forgetting how dominant Prat has been on science this year. He consistently puts up incredible power numbers (beating Connor in p/g at HSNCT, who I think is one of the biggest contenders for the top science player), and he does it while playing on TJ A, meaning he's been playing the top teams in the nation. I think he's also very underrated at current events and is honestly pretty decent at history too. Worth considering for the overall ballot as well.

Bryanna Shao from Wayzata (Literature):

Bryanna has some of the most cracked buzzes I have ever seen. Her brain is like a steel trap where information just gets permanently stored. While Bryanna's stats don't necessarily seem out of this world (they are very solid regardless), I think this owes more to a little bit of inconsistency and also me sometimes beating her on literature buzzer races. But I wouldn't discount performances where she 4-0'd Arcadia on literature and 3-1'd DCDS. When she hits the right packet, her literature ability is second to none.
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Re: 2020-21 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by josephqb »

As a New Jersey person, here are some(definitely not all) of the New Jersey players that warrant a vote and general recognition for their stellar seasons.

Aiden Dartley from Ridgewood (Humanities generalist, specifically history and literature)

Aiden has improved so quickly that many people may not fully recognize how good he is. Just for reference, Aiden put up a statline of 3 powers and 17 tossups at Clarke Fall, a tournament in November of 2020. In April of 2021, Aiden put up a statline of 66/54/15 at EB Pre-Nats on DART(a harder set). As someone who has played Aiden at almost every step of this quizbowl season, he more than warrants a spot on the player poll, the history poll, and also the literature poll. It's rare that a player will improve so quickly.

Aum Mundhe from Ridgewood (Everything, specifically History and Fine Arts)

Because of Aiden's ridiculous statlines and improvement, his equally terrifying teammate Aum doesn't always get the true recognition he deserves. Aum has spent much of the quizbowl season adding a new subject to his arsenal, fine arts. Combined with his deep history knowledge(Ridgewood was 7th at NHBB nats) and underrated ability in every other subject, he is among the best the northeast has to offer.

Josh Yi from East Brunswick (History, science, literature)

I unfortunately didn't get the chance to play against Josh this season, but from pking and spectating a few of his scrims, I am more than ready to shill him for the player poll. Josh has developed extremely deep knowledge in history, led East Brunswick in both literature and science at nationals, and was 6th in powers at HSNCT(prelims).

Allen Wang from JP Stevens (N/A)

Allen Wang is certainly the most interesting and surprising player on this list, but I'll shill him anyways. Allen definitely doesn't put up extraordinary statlines on regs or below, but the harder the difficulty is, he gets better. He also specializes in no specific category(I guess history would come closest to his concentration) and ranks highly in all of them when analyzing category stats.

Max Brodsky from High Tech (Literature, Fine Arts)

I haven't played High Tech this year, but Max Brodsky belongs at the top of your fine arts poll. He locks it against some of the best fine arts players in the country.

Ben Hu from Millburn (Science, some history)

Ben is really really really good at science, and extremely underrated at history. He's put up some really impressive statlines without being shadowed this year. Don't let any of Millburn's struggles this year distract from how good he is. I would say he is top 3-6 science in the country.

Rosa Xia from Livingston (Literature)

Rosa is the best literature player in the northeast, and possibly the best poetry player in the country. Although Livingston didn't attend any nats this year, I would seriously consider her for the literature poll.

Other players that I didn't write an entire profile on(because I'm lazy) that deserve recognition are Deepak Gopalakrishnan, who is a very close second scorer on t-30 team High Tech, and Tanuj Chandekhar, who is often not recognized for how good he is at history because in New Jersey, everyone is a history player. He should also be considered for your sophomore poll.
Last edited by josephqb on Mon Jul 12, 2021 7:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 2020-21 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by realkk »

I'd like to shill for some Norcal players, since I feel that some good players in the circuit are being left out of the discussion surrounding this poll.

Richard Lin (Sophomore, Literature)
Richard is an excellent lit player who should definitely be t5 in your literature poll, and potentially in your sophomore poll as well. He's shown the ability to scale up very well, putting up over a power a game and leading Bellarmine to a 13th place finish at ONCT. He also put up over 2 powers a game and came 6th in overall scoring on STASH, a nats level set.

Karan Guzarada (Senior, Sci/FA)
Karan is an excellent science player, and should be in the t5 of your science poll. He should also probably be in your overall poll as well, given his stats. At NASAT, Karan put up over 30 ppg on a team that included Amogh and Ryan, who are both excellent generalists. He also put up over 3 powers per game on STASH.

Rohan Shelke (Senior, Science/Geo)
Rohan is a player who has definitely flown under the radar, but should be in your science poll, given his ability to scale up well. Rohan was the leading scorer on California B at NASAT, consistently converting science tossups and 30ing bonuses, and put up 1 power/game on WORKSHOP. He also put up about 2 powers a game on both STASH and SATURNALIA, especially impressive given that his teammates are also strong science players.

Pareekshith Krishna (Sophomore)
Pareekshith is a very good player who had an especially impressive performance on SATURNALIA, putting up 3 powers/game. He warrants a spot in your sophomore poll.

Sahas Goli (Freshman)
Sahas usually played on MSJ's B team, but did lead MSJ in powers at HSNCT, a very impressive feat for any freshman, and should be in your t10 freshman poll.
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Re: 2020-21 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by dl2025 »

I'm here to shill a few DCDS players, all of whom should garner quite a bit more recognition for their capabilities.

Zaid Siddiqui (Overall, Literature, Science)

Zaid has a bulletproof case for a T-10 ranking in literature, and a very strong one for a T-5 ranking. In scrims, he has consistently matched/beaten players who are regarded as consensus T-3 players. He regularly beats other top literature teams, including against a T-5 Greenhill team at HSNCT twice and getting 3/4 literature tossups in the final of ONCT. Furthermore, he powered a lot of literature tossups at WORKSHOP, and that was even though he missed the two packets that contained almost all of his niche content due to a conflict. Even then, he's better at literature than the stats say, because he gets minor shadow from Maria, Adam, and myself sometimes - I'd estimate the three of us combine to average something around one literature power a game (up to nationals difficulty), many of which are simply buzzer races that Zaid also would have gotten had we not been there. He's also a top-notch science player, almost certainly T-20, probably T-10, but I confess I don't know that much about other science players. Furthermore, he powers a very high percentage of myth questions, from regs up to nationals. All of this was most obviously on display when Zaid led the entire Delta Burke HS Open Mirror field (which included many of HSQB's best players) with over 4 powers/game and 68 ppg. Overall, he should be considered a near-lock for a T-10 spot.

Adam Sun (Overall, FA)
Adam is a T-5 FA player. In my view, he's the single-best AFA player in the country (powering well over half the AFA tossups at PACE, if I recall correctly), and he's elite at VFA content as well. He's also a very solid science player who gets shadowed heavily by Zaid. He also gets many other buzzes on content outside of his specialized categories and is an underrated generalist, though he gets shadowed by the rest of the team. He's probably the best third scorer in the country and should be ranked T-30.

Arthur Gayden (Sophomore)
Arthur is quickly becoming an elite-level generalist. He is strong in history (excellent at US history, very good at world history, and underrated in European/Ancient history), but the stats don't often reflect that because he gets shadowed by a T-10 history player (more on that later). Arthur is also an excellent FA player, with very good VFA knowledge and lockdown OFA ability. He's also becoming solid at literature, and he's rapidly become a good biology player. Furthermore, Arthur is probably a T-10 geography player as well as an excellent CE player. Overall, Arthur deserves some consideration for T-30 individuals, and I think he should be ranked as a T-2 sophomore.

Costas Pavlou (Sophomore, History)
Costas is a T-10 history player, and he's shown his tremendously deep real knowledge over and over again this year by consistently beating top history teams. I'm firmly convinced that he's the best European/Ancient history player in all of high school quiz bowl; to give some context for that, we've had scrims on European history where he's beaten me, a history player and top scorer on a 3rd place HSNCT team, by scores looking like 200-20. He's also a very good world history player who gets slightly shadowed by Arthur. Costas's only real history weakness is that he doesn't do US history, which he doesn't need to because Arthur does. Nonetheless, Costas is still a T-10 history player, and he's got deep pockets of literature/VFA knowledge to boot. With Arthur, I view him as one of the top 2 sophomores who should also be considered for T-30 individuals overall.

Aeres Zhou (Sophomore)
Aeres's stats are not quite as stellar as his other two teammates', but he is a deeply impressive myth specialist who's also able to generalize significantly into history, literature, fine arts, and physics. He does get shadowed very hard, but he's still a very strong third scorer on DCDS B who posts ppg numbers within 5 points of Arthur and Costas and over 40 ppg at PACE. I can't see how he's not a T-10 sophomore at minimum.

Lastly, while some of my other teammates might not be in contention for any of the listed spots, I'd still like to shout them out. If there was a geography category, I'm sure Ajay Sumanth would be in contention for a high ranking, and if there was a ranking for R/M or Ancient history, Maria Cheriyan (a very solid and underrated generalist who averaged 1 p/g at PACE but is held back by slow WiFi and a lot of shadow), would also warrant serious consideration.
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Re: 2020-21 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by Jasconius »

It has come to my attention that there are some people who are not voting Arthur Delot-Vilain at the top of their poll. I'm here to tell them why they are wrong.

I think the lack of tournaments Arthur has played and the lack of people to hype him up on Discord servers has made people forget how good Arthur is at quizbowl. Arthur has been better than me at quizbowl since last summer -- I am pretty sure I will be outscored by both Arthur and Abhinav Karthikeyan on our DII team next year. Arthur went on an insane study binge last summer that paid off in the harder tournaments GDS played over the year. Notice how the top GDS Groger score is on LIT, by far the hardest set a championship-contending team put up a top Groger score on. With Arthur's ability to play the figure-it-out quizbowl that PACE leans towards sometimes, I don't think the top spot on the player poll would have been a contest had GDS chosen to play nationals.

Arthur has always been able to scale better than me -- my strength has always been being able to buzz a few seconds before the clue everybody knows. What people who were not seeing Arthur buzz missed was that, when I say Arthur has become better than me, I mean he has become better than me at that. He now combines this incredible ability to scale and get buzzes at any point in the question regardless of difficulty, particularly in history (where he has a lot of real knowledge) and fine arts (where he has zero) with the intelligence to beat you to every question you do not get a good buzz on. The closest comparisons to Arthur's quizbowl style are Jakob Myers, Eric Xu, and Matt Jackson. He is that good and should be ranked accordingly.

But the most important reason Arthur should be ranked #1 in your poll has to do with the team he is playing on. Looking at the second scorers on teams with first scorers in contention for #1, there's something that Aayush Goodapaty, Alan Xie (or Abby Cohen), Bryanna Shao, Ryan Sun, and other people I'm surely forgetting all have in common (besides being really good at quizbowl). They all have specialties. When you can count on Aayush to get a couple history tossups a game, a player like Ned can focus on getting lit tossups. Tegan can lean into being a history player. Amogh Kulkarni doesn't have to get literature. GDS's second scorer, Tasis Gemmill-Nexon should be on your overall poll, but Arthur shadows them so completely that they will probably get overlooked. Tasis will get every question that Arthur does not get a good buzz on. When you have two players like that on a team, the shadow effect nearly guarantees that at least one of them will be underranked, which explains how Arthur only finished 28th on the player poll last year. The numbers Arthur is putting up with a second scorer more likely to drag his PPG down than any other second scorer on a comparable team is astonishing.

As to Tasis, besides locking down a category (myth) in a way that nobody else in high school can do, and being a spectacular RMPSS player, they are just a little bit worse than Arthur in every category. That means being one of the better history players in the country, especially in world history, and able to take tossups in any category off even the best specialists. Unfortunately, the kind of player that Arthur is means that being a little bit worse than Arthur means you get almost no tossups when playing with Arthur. It's exactly what happened last year with Arthur playing with me, and then Arthur stopped playing with me and started putting up the numbers he does. See ONCT for Tasis doing exactly the same thing.

My junior year, I was ranked 15th on the player poll. Tasis is about as good as I was junior year and should be ranked similarly.
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Re: 2020-21 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by ClevelandCavaliers »

As a foreword to the suggestions I am about to provide, I will include a disclaimer that, having played more teams from my region (the Northeast) than any other, my analyses of each player to come, grouped by category, will naturally be biased when it comes to players from my region. These biases can work in favor of those players (when they consistently dominate), or against those players (when their shortcomings come to light after many competitive matches). I have also provided links to stats I believe encapsulate each player's peak ability the best; do check these stats out when coming up with rankings. The order in which I list players in each category certainly does not necessarily reflect my view on relative strength. Without further ado:

Overall
Aadi Karthik PACE NASAT
Aadi is one of the only high school quizbowl players this year who has put up extraordinary stats on a wide variety of difficulties and set distributions. Aside from the performances I have linked above, he has consistently put up great stats through this year's regional tournaments; despite facing incredibly capable opposition at Wolverine Fall (RAFT II), for instance, he nonetheless powered more than half of the questions he heard. It seems what really sets him apart from many other competitors is his incredible consistency and wide swaths of knowledge across categories; he is able to turn any team he plays on into a nationals contender. For this reason especially, Aadi should, I believe, be in consideration to be voted top player of the year.

Nathan Sheffield PACE BHSAT
Nathan is regularly underranked among members of the high school quizbowl community, primarily because he does not maintain a steady Discord presence within it (as is the case with many other underranked players). His stats speak for themselves; he has consistently dominated the New England circuit, particularly through his deep knowledge of literature and science. Under his leadership, his team (Belmont A) got 5th place at PACE, and finished with the joint-highest power count at WORKSHOP. His consistency throughout the year should put him in serious contention for a top 10 spot.

Andrew Zeng HSNCT IS-201
As a history-focused generalist, I generally performed well across a variety of difficulties throughout the year.

Rohan Ganeshan HSNCT NASAT
Despite playing a limited number of tournaments this year, Rohan has made the most of his opportunities. He was the leading scorer on both the Buffalo Grove team that got 5th at HSNCT and the Illinois team that won NASAT. Many middle school players have had a hard time adjusting to the high school scene; this certainly is not the case for Rohan, who dominated his respective circuit this year just as much as he dominated his rivals in middle school. His consistency and ability to lead his team to crunch-time wins should justify his placement within the top 10 this year.

Pedro Juan Orduz PACE WORKSHOP
Pedro is one of the best history specialists in the country, and the gap between him and his contemporaries widens considerably the harder the questions get. He has an enormous stash of real knowledge, which he seems to be able to call on at will. While he primarily scores his points in history (and continues, as he was voted last year, to be the best current events player in the country), Pedro has powered literature against the best literature players in the country (Ned, Justin, etc). Statistically, Pedro is consistently able to scale up to a frightening degree; he had the highest power count on his team (Hunter A) at PACE, and the joint-highest at WORKSHOP. For his performances this year and his general skill, especially at higher levels, Pedro deserves placement within the top 20, at least.

Cerulean Ozarow PACE IS-195
Cerulean has perhaps the most unique knowledge base of any top-level quiz bowl player, and he used that knowledge base to play an integral part in Hunter A's development this year. He led the team through many important games, while his statistics at IS-195 (including beating a full strength Solon A team by mustering a 6/2/0 statline) show that he is an excellent generalist on his own. While he was shadowed on Hunter A for much of the year (after all, he specialized in history on a team that was stacked in the category), his ability as a team player and the uniqueness of his knowledge base should warrant a ranking of top 25 at the least, if not higher.

Category rankings are always harder to put together than overall rankings because tournaments often lack category stats, and thus lack ways to understand the category makeup of a given player's knowledge base (history perhaps has less of this problem because of the existence of NHBB). With that in mind, I will do my best to highlight which players' performances this year have been deserving of a top spot.

History
Andrew Zeng Nationals (World Hist) Nationals (US Hist)
Again, I will keep any remarks about my own performances concise; aside from winning both History Bees last nationals, I was the leading scorer on the team that won Bowl nationals last May. I have a decent blend of "real" and "stock" knowledge that allows me to scale pretty well across difficulties.

Pedro Juan Orduz Nationals (World Hist) FRENCH II
Much of what category rankings depends on is what difficulty you are ranking players at. At any set at level 8 and above, Pedro's history knowledge is unparalleled among the high school circuit; he remembers so many dates, events, and random facts from various books on 20th-century history that his nearest high school competition at an open-level set is a mile away. At FRENCH II, an open-level history set, Pedro put up a statline of 11/11/1 in top bracket, for example. What really differentiates him is his common-sense approach to question answering; he doesn't overthink things, and thus is able to get loads of questions that aren't in his specialties within history.

Jack McGlinn Nationals (World Hist) C Set (World Hist)
Before I talk about Jack, I should certainly mention Cooper, whose performances in history this year both in NHBB and in quiz bowl certainly merit a top five ranking within the subject. He has only gotten better from leading his team to second place in 2019, and is one of the most formidable players to play against in the subject. Jack, himself a history specialist, has often been shadowed by Cooper, but he is an excellent history player in his own right. Aside from his performances in stacked Junior Varsity fields at NHBB competitions, he posted a 2 power per game statline on Prison Bowl, with the vast majority of those powers coming in history. He should certainly be in consideration for a top ten spot.

Tanuj Chandekar Nationals (US Hist) A Set (US Hist)
Tanuj has not been mentioned often in terms of the best history players in the nation, but he has put up great individual finishes at NHBB, while leading his East Brunswick team to a 4th place finish at the last National History Bowl. Speaking from personal experience, Tanuj has a lot of history knowledge, and is able to translate that knowledge into question gets and wins, particularly in US History. His performances this year should put him in contention for a top ten spot as well.

Joshua Yi WORKSHOP ONCT
Comparisons for Joshua in this case are slightly harder because he did not play any in NHBB this season. Nonetheless, he has put up great category stats at the many quiz bowl tournaments he played in, and is perhaps the best military history player in the country. His performances this year should also put him in consideration for a top ten spot.

Other Categories
Justin Chen, Literature
Justin is almost definitely the best literature player in the country, as can be seen by his 55 powers at PACE.

Ned Tagtmeier, Literature
From statistics and tournament performances, Ned likely comes a solid second in the literature conversation; he led his team to many top finishes at national competitions, and despite being a generalist, in dominating his opponents he primarily utilized his deep knowledge of literature.

Cerulean Ozarow, Literature
Cerulean has perhaps the most unique literature knowledge of any player, due to the fact that most of his knowledge is real, and comes not from QuizDB but from reading and Wikipedia browsing. If one was to construct a literature A team to bring into contest with college-level players, Cerulean should no doubt be part of that team; his presence in this poll, then, would be no different.

William Orr, Literature
William is almost exclusively a literature specialist, and an excellent one at that. Despite being heavily shadowed by Justin at SCALE, William put up 4 powers per game; at Buzzword, he consistently gets many best buzzes in literature.

Connor Blake, Science
Connor was the best individual science player at both IPNCT and ONCT, and his power numbers throughout the year do nothing to contradict the assumption that his consistency continued in the other tournaments he played.

Shruti Siva, Science
As a science specialist, Shruti led the WORKSHOP field in powers for much of the tournament, and was the top scorer on 5th place Greenhill A at HSNCT. She seems to have a lot of "real" science knowledge, and her tendency to go on streaks of first-lining science questions seems to be the greatest single reason for Greenhill's incredible HSNCT performance.

Benjamin Chapman, Science
Without Benjamin, Hunter A's PPB would likely have been significantly (3-5) points lower. A great science player on a national scale in his own right, Benjamin was undoubtedly the best science player on the team, and got many crucial buzzes to keep the team alive at both national competitions.

Max Brodsky, Fine Arts
In head-to-head matchups, Max has almost without exception dominated all of his rivals in all facets of fine arts. Having played many of the players in the national conversation myself, I can say with some confidence that Max is, indeed, the best fine arts player in the country.

Aum Mundhe, Fine Arts
Another player who is often left out of the national conversation because he does not have a consistent Discord presence, Aum is nevertheless an excellent fine arts player; likely the second-best in the Northeast region behind Max. He put together the best visual fine arts stats on a stacked QuBIT field, and, for his statistical performances this year, certainly deserves to rank within the top ten in fine arts.

This concludes my limited analysis of the national scene this year; I tried my best to mainly point out players who both
(1) had great seasons, and
(2) could be overlooked because of any number of factors
I naturally have excluded many players (most of them unintentionally) that are worthy of consideration, but I trust that conversations both within Discord and on this forums thread can fill in the gaps. My post is only meant to play a small part in building a comprehensive view of the national circuit (if such a view can exist), so certainly do not take my analyses here as final. My purpose in writing this post lies solely in contributing to a general discourse that I view as crucial in forming as unbiased an opinion of player performances this year as is possible, in any prospective voter.

Thank you for reading, and have a great summer!
Andrew Zeng
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Re: 2020-21 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by angrybird »

I’d like to add on to Daniel Liu’s post by shilling Daniel Liu himself.

Daniel Liu (Overall, History)

Daniel should without a doubt be in your top 20 players in the overall player poll. Daniel is a history based generalist. Not only top 10 at history, Daniel is probably the best or second best current events player in the country (3rd best current events player at IPNCT). Further, Daniel regularly powers literature, despite playing next to me. He’s also really good in P/SS and generalizes in fine arts. His elite history based generalism was clearly shown when he was the top scorer on DCDS A at HSNCT and PACE where he led us to 3rd and 11th place finishes respectively (he did this despite playing next to many strong teammates, about which he wrote of in his shill post above).

Daniel put up an extraordinarily high amount of power and points per game at almost every tournament we played this year (he had 100 ppg at IS195, more than 70 ppg at every HS regs set we played at, and around 40-50 ppg at all the HS hard sets/PACE/HSNCT we played at this year). When looking at Daniel’s stats over the season, it is important to keep in mind that the majority of his points and powers came from history when playing on DCDS A. The fact that he did this well despite answering mainly history demonstrates his incredible depth in history.

His tremendous history skill and generalism capabilities were highlighted countless times at both nationals, where he put some crazy good statlines against top teams (a select few I included below):
[HSNCT: 3/3/0 against Wayzata A; 4/2/1 against Greenhill in the t8 and the t5 place games;
PACE: 3/2 against Greenhill, 3/2 against Arcadia in super playoffs]

In short, he is without doubt a top 20 player and should not be omitted from anyone’s list.
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Re: 2020-21 Groger Ranks Player Poll: RESULTS POSTED

Post by Berniecrat »

Here are your results! https://grogerranks.com/2021/07/27/2020 ... l-results/

Thank you everyone who participated in the poll, and in general everyone in the community for your continued support of Groger Ranks for the last three seasons.

Hope everyone enjoys their summer, and we’ll be back with more rankings next season!
Arjun Nageswaran
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Re: 2020-21 Groger Ranks Player Poll: RESULTS POSTED

Post by Rainmaker204 »

I'm a coach, not a player, but I'm going to say this a year later:

As a coach of an Arkansas team that is dominant on the southern scene but just starting out on the national scene, I find it absolutely despicable that our best player, Shawn Cafferty-Lueck, did not receive a single vote for this.

He was a top player nationally last year, making it to the semifinals of your IPNCT, and being the #4 overall scorer at last year's NHSCT. And yet, for your elitist group, since we aren't from the "typical" area of competition, he didn't receive a single vote in your top players' poll.

As a coach of a team that has been southern dominant for many, many years but yet to take the plunge onto the national stage, I was so excited to start competing in national level events with the strongest Senior class we have ever seen at Russellville, AR. Especially with Shawn, an amazing player that really deserved his due on the national scale.

And yet, when entering tournament after tournament, I was greeted with nothing but animosity from the powerhouse teams. Shawn was a special player, and along with that came certain autism issues. No matter, every tournament we entered in the fall, it became apparent right away we weren't welcome. After all, we were just a silly team from Arkansas, who cares if we get treated right nor not.

Shawn, despite keeping us afloat and winning several matches for us, hated every second of playing in your tournaments, and all the animosity he received for being a good player from Arkansas, not a traditional quiz bowl area.

It all culminated with our team defeating Belmont from Massachusetts, a team ranked in Groger's top 20 in advance of the HSNCT. We win, and all I hear is a bunch of f-bombs from our competition, including the statement "how the :capybara: did we lose to an Arkansas team", and many more derogatory comments from Belmont about how our team had no business ever beating them. It was disgraceful.

And now, you finish this off by not giving the #4 scorer at HSNCT, and semifinalist at IPNCT, a single vote, because he's not from the areas you typically see good players from. It is disgraceful, elitist, and totally off-putting for a team wanting to move to the national scene.

This elitism from your teams is embarrassing, and if you are serious about national outreach, needs to be addressed IMMEDIATELY.
Johnny Barham
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Re: 2020-21 Groger Ranks Player Poll: RESULTS POSTED

Post by Saratoga »

If that kind of behavior is happening at an event, that is something that is completely unacceptable. Did you consider reporting this to the tournament or to the coach of the teams that were saying those things?
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Re: 2020-21 Groger Ranks Player Poll: RESULTS POSTED

Post by Ben Dillon »

(Ellipses added)
Rainmaker204 wrote: Sat May 21, 2022 8:10 pm I'm a coach, not a player, but I'm going to say this a year later:
...
And yet, when entering tournament after tournament, I was greeted with nothing but animosity from the powerhouse teams. Shawn was a special player, and along with that came certain autism issues. No matter, every tournament we entered in the fall, it became apparent right away we weren't welcome. After all, we were just a silly team from Arkansas, who cares if we get treated right nor not.
...
It all culminated with our team defeating Belmont from Massachusetts, a team ranked in Groger's top 20 in advance of the HSNCT. We win, and all I hear is a bunch of f-bombs from our competition, including the statement "how the :capybara: did we lose to an Arkansas team", and many more derogatory comments from Belmont about how our team had no business ever beating them. It was disgraceful.
...
This elitism from your teams is embarrassing, and if you are serious about national outreach, needs to be addressed IMMEDIATELY.
I am bothered by this post, perhaps way more than I should be, and also perhaps not as much as I should be. I certainly wouldn't have tolerated this sort of behavior from my team. I'd like to assume Belmont's coach wasn't in the room.

But the point it raises shouldn't be ignored: Why are we ranking players using a poll? Only teams that have a national reach will have players who gained enou notice to be nominated. Maybe it makes sense at the beginning of the year when only certain players are known and it doesn't mean much, or at the very end, when most players will have had the chance of seeing others in action at national tournaments and/or it can be based on actual stats. Additionally, aren't the voters self-selected, which would make the results less than valid?

I don't have a problem with the Groger ranking of teams, because it attempts to follow a standard metric, but there's not really a similar metric for individuals being used here.
Ben Dillon, Saint Joseph HS

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six impossible things before breakfast!"
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Re: 2020-21 Groger Ranks Player Poll: RESULTS POSTED

Post by liamstarnes27 »

I think the problem with the player poll is that a lot of people value PACE NSC stats more highly than NAQT stats. This is in large part because most voters consider themselves to be better at NSC than at HSNCT or IPNCT, making NSC performance "more accurate." Last year, I put up 47.57 PPG as the second scorer on the HSNCT championship team, made the semifinals of IPNCT (finishing 10 points behind Shawn Cafferty-Lueck in the semifinal match), and was the leading scorer with 32 PPG on the Illinois B NASAT team that tied for 10th. Despite this, I also did not receive a single vote in the main poll and only got 1 10th-place vote in the history poll, in large part because of my relatively poor performance at PACE NSC. As far as I know, Shawn Cafferty-Lueck did not play PACE NSC which could explain why he did not receive any votes.

Honestly, I think that outside of determining the top 5-10 players, the individual poll doesn't matter much, and it will probably stay that way unless the number of poll voters vastly increases or somebody comes up with a formula to more accurately measure individual strength.
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Re: 2020-21 Groger Ranks Player Poll: RESULTS POSTED

Post by The Favourite »

Coach here, not a player anymore.

In addition to what has been stated above, I think for most voters, whether they are players or coaches or whatever other capacity, being a solo player and carrying to a .500 record at a national tournament is commendable, but not "Best of the best" worthy. Oftentimes, the solo scorers who make these lists are on teams making deep runs into the playoffs, not upsetting a traditional power one time. This isn't to say that your student wasn't deserving, but a second scorer on a champion is often viewed as far more deserving (nods to Liam). As for the IPNCT aspect... Most no one counts IPNCT as a real national tournament since it is open to anyone and for the most part, the players that we consider great aren't really playing it. For me, when I look at stats for that tournament, it shows the shadow effect that the top players in the nation have on their teammates.

The player poll system is flawed, just like any other poll. Look at it as a fun way to say "Hey, I really enjoy following/playing with or against/respect the players I voted for." Getting votes, even one, as a small circuit player in a national poll is still pretty impressive to me, a coach and former player in a similar small circuit.
Tracey Hickman
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Re: 2020-21 Groger Ranks Player Poll: RESULTS POSTED

Post by L.H.O.O.Q. »

Rainmaker204 wrote: Sat May 21, 2022 8:10 pm As a coach of an Arkansas team that is dominant on the southern scene but just starting out on the national scene, I find it absolutely despicable that our best player, Shawn Cafferty-Lueck, did not receive a single vote for this.

He was a top player nationally last year, making it to the semifinals of your IPNCT, and being the #4 overall scorer at last year's NHSCT. And yet, for your elitist group, since we aren't from the "typical" area of competition, he didn't receive a single vote in your top players' poll.

...

And now, you finish this off by not giving the #4 scorer at HSNCT, and semifinalist at IPNCT, a single vote, because he's not from the areas you typically see good players from. It is disgraceful, elitist, and totally off-putting for a team wanting to move to the national scene.
Sheesh, man. I'm sorry about the awful experiences your team has had at tournaments, but I don't think Shawn went unranked purely because of the elitism you've observed.

You have to consider that the vast majority of the people who will vote in this poll are people who are not just fond of quizbowl, but entrenched in the quizbowl community, often through their own local quizbowl communities. The biggest quizbowl hubs are New England, the Midwest, Texas, and California. The overwhelming majority of the voters will be from these areas, and they will have experience playing against other players from those areas. They will be more likely to rank players highly due to a pattern of impressive buzzes they've seen in person against someone they've played multiple times, versus someone they've only seen once or twice and who largely exists to them as numbers on a page.

The quizbowl community is famously insular. This is an issue that needs constant work in the form of outreach. Shawn put up staggering numbers at every tournament I've looked at, but I'm willing to bet that a large number of voters for this poll genuinely did not think about him because they didn't know Russellville was a great team with a strong generalist on it. That's not northern elitism - it's just selection bias.
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