2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll: RESULTS POSTED

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2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll: RESULTS POSTED

Post by Berniecrat »

Like last year we are running another player poll for the high school quizbowl season. This poll is harder to run once again because of nationals and the fact that it would be very hard to be able to deem a player's particular specialty or skill in a category from stats alone. We have decided to run the poll without any category awards. There are 3 polls: top individuals overall, top freshmen, and top sophomores. You can fill as many of the 3 as you feel comfortable (i.e. if you only know about top sophomores and nothing else you don't have to fill out top freshmen)

The poll can be found here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIp ... sp=sf_link

As with the Postseason Poll we would ask that people post in this thread to talk about candidates they feel deserving of recognition in these polls in addition to whatever discussion they may have privately or on the discords, just as a matter of having it centralized in one location. The poll closes July 5, 2020 at 11:59 PM Central.

Happy voting!
Last edited by Berniecrat on Mon Jul 06, 2020 1:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by karstenontheshore »

hi i guess i'll start with some shilling.
from PA, Vincent is someone you should consider in your t20 ballot. he was insane at science and put up excellent numbers throughout the year.
ned tagtmeier is my cousin, but is also an excellent literature-based generalist. his stats are very strong and he is someone who could be in your t20.
northeast things: basil sousounis is very good at what he does, peep his HFT stats for more. cerulean and pedro are people you could consider for t20 slots as well, pedro is insanely good at history and ce and cerulean is amazing across the board. cooper is very good and is someone you should consider for sophomore ballot. dean ah now is amazing at history and generalism and it is one of my biggest regrets that i didn't get to play him this year once, he should be t5 overall.
i will shill for myself and say i think i should be your top sophomore vote and potentially somewhere close to the top of your overall ballot solely off of stats and who i was playing with. i put up the most powers of any hser on every set i played this year other than an A set in September, all while playing next to three excellent players. i'm especially proud of my EFT stats (https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/5 ... ail/#p2_16) and my WAIT stats
(https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/6 ... ail/#p2_10).
other people you should vote for for overall:avinash, matt siff, john john groger, karan guruzada, dylan bowman, ethan ashbrook, and many more. thanks!
Last edited by karstenontheshore on Mon Jun 15, 2020 11:04 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by CPiGuy »

I will also join in the shilling for various players I have observed to be good. (You should probably trust the opinions of other people more than me on non-michigan folks.)

Owen Farra is the best freshman this year. This should not be a controversial opinion.

Other freshmen who are good enough to be considered for your top 5 are Aadit Juneja and Rishabh Wuppalapati from Stevenson (Rishabh put up ~35 PPG on Penn Bowl!), Lukas Koutsoukos from Wilton, and Jacob Hardin-Bernhardt and Ian Lu from Hunter.

Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford is scary good and scales up super well; he should be in your top 5 sophomores for sure.

Robert Dedvukaj from DCC is probably gonna get overlooked by some people because DCC isn't super plugged in to the wider community but Robert is one of the best players in DCC's recent history and absolutely merits a (fairly high, IMO) ranking in your overall poll. Daniel Liu from Detroit Country Day is also really good, although not as good as Robert. I don't know enough about HSQB to know if there are 29 players better than him, but he's good.
Last edited by CPiGuy on Mon Jun 15, 2020 11:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by king_crimson »

dmv kids who are good.

matt siff is #1.
abhinav scary naqt player and very good lit player. rank him overall.
justin posner is also super good. the amount of points he puts out with abhinav on his team is pretty ridiculous. he also eats books so he'll get good fast. rank him too overall.
katherine is very very good at sci. she's also good at poetry and has deep pockets of knowledge. rank her for overall.
chris tong is also very very good at sci and geo. at penn bowl he powered virginia over four virginians. he's a great auditory player and decent history player too. rank him overall.
arthur from gds gets shadowed hard by matt but still puts super sweet stats. he's scary yo. vote him in your overall poll.
william orr (worr) is a really really really good literature player and a very good fa player. he's def a t5 soph and should be somewhere in your overall poll.
william wang is still good as he's really experienced and has a ton of knowledge thru osmosis. he merits consideration for your overall poll.
pratyush jaishanker despite his discord presence is a really good player. he's quite good at naqt and knows a lot of random stuff. vote him for top sophs.
cavan put a lot of powers on 190 (like 50 or something). he's rapidly improving and you should definitely vote him in your freshman poll.
elliott lee put 24 powers in 190 on a strong team. very solid freshman generalist and also wears a cool fedora. vote him somewhere in your freshman poll.

take in mind that the dmv circuit is so stacked that many power numbers here are negatively inflated. the competitiveness of the circuit itself makes it kind of difficult to properly vote players based off stats alone which is why i am shilling them.
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by etotheipi »

Someone who doesn't get nearly enough attention (overlooked region, not online, etc) is Sanjeev Uppaluri from Cambridge. He's basically solo in all the tournaments he plays, and he's definitely t4 in Georgia (worse than us, Hooch, Eastside). Notably, while playing six of the eight best teams in Georgia on LOGIC (excluding himself and Eastside) he put up 7 powers per game, and won second to Hooch A at the most recent Georgia tournament (albeit one where Lambert was in a different division due to my lack of attendance), putting up >4 powers per game on sct dii (this is Cambridge team stats, not sure if he was playing solo, crooked GATA won't take individual stats, but he's definitely atleast 95%of these powers judging by other tournaments with far more reasonable policies on individual stats). Also absolutely blew Lambert, noted postseason ranked team, out 500-100 or something in November on WAIT.

tl;dr Sanjeev definitely merits consideration for t30 nationwide.
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by whatamidoinghere »

Here are some people who I believe merit good-to-great placement in your overall player poll.

The Uni Lab Trio (Dylan Bowman, Ethan Ashbrook, Jonathan Lau): All are very excellent quizbowl players and the fact that they knocked it out of the park at the Illinois NAQT states (on SCT, where they managed >6 powers/game) merits extreme consideration for all three of them.

Jason Hong: Saratoga's history-based generalist, Jason Hong has shown a consistent ability to scale up and do excellently at hard questions (he got 11 powers at Penn Bowl, which is one of the highest HS powers/game on that set). In addition, he's a very strong study fiend and has shown excellency as a high power low neg player at such tournaments as Cal Cup 2 (run on LOGIC) and Cal Cup 3 (run on HFT).

Karan Gurazada: Karan is also one of the NorCal fiends who merits consideration. He has shown time and again from WORKSHOP to EFT to HFT that he's a very strong player on harder questions and is able to show strength against tough teams (SOHS beat Berkeley A at WORKSHOP, for example).

Ned Tagtmeier: Nedward is a very strong literature/RMPSS player and showed his skills at tournaments such as WAIT Online, BLAST Online, and various local Texas tournaments which I am too lazy to find the stats for.

Shardul Rao: Shardul is an excellent player from his performances at WAIT, EFT, and Prison Bowl. Even if we disregard the online results he's shown to be an excellent fine arts and history based generalist.
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by whatamidoinghere »

whatamidoinghere wrote: Mon Jun 15, 2020 11:24 pm Here are some people who I believe merit good-to-great placement in your overall player poll.

The Uni Lab Trio (Dylan Bowman, Ethan Ashbrook, Jonathan Lau): All are very excellent quizbowl players and the fact that they knocked it out of the park at the Illinois NAQT states (on SCT, where they managed >6 powers/game) merits extreme consideration for all three of them.

Jason Hong: Saratoga's history-based generalist, Jason Hong has shown a consistent ability to scale up and do excellently at hard questions (he got 11 powers at Penn Bowl, which is one of the highest HS powers/game on that set). In addition, he's a very strong study fiend and has shown excellency as a high power low neg player at such tournaments as Cal Cup 2 (run on LOGIC) and Cal Cup 3 (run on HFT).

Karan Gurazada: Karan is also one of the NorCal fiends who merits consideration. He has shown time and again from WORKSHOP to EFT to HFT that he's a very strong player on harder questions and is able to show strength against tough teams (SOHS beat Berkeley A at WORKSHOP, for example).

Ned Tagtmeier: Nedward is a very strong literature/RMPSS player and showed his skills at tournaments such as WAIT Online, BLAST Online, and various local Texas tournaments which I am too lazy to find the stats for.

Shardul Rao: Shardul is an excellent player from his performances at WAIT, EFT, and Prison Bowl. Even if we disregard the online results he's shown to be an excellent fine arts and history based generalist.
I forgot to mention that I would pick 5 of the below to be my top 5:
Me, Matthew Siff, Dean Ah Now, John John Groger, Jason Hong, Karan Gurazada, Karsten Rynearson, Shahar Schwartz
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by thederpyaxolotl »

I'm going to shill some of my fellow northeasterners who I believe are somewhat underrated and who warrant consideration.
Jackson Lee from EB -- really underrated sci player, and has been able to take most sci in a game off of Ben Hu, who is already one of the top sci specialists in the country. He's also pretty damn good at rmpss, and can buzz across most cats (https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/5 ... JacksonLee) -- Not sure if he's T30, but he at least warrants consideration.

From Hitek, Deepak definitely warrants top 30 as a top-tier generalist, and Max is definitely one of the top sophomores as an FA specialist.

Andrew Zeng, Ian Lu, and Jacob Hardin-Bernhardt from Hunter all deserve top sophomore / freshman votes -- they've put up incredible stats (Jacob went 20/0/8 on Calisto, while playing with Rachel, Asher and Ben, while Andrew led his team in scoring on RAFT, BLAST, and HFT, and Ian was a higher scorer overall than Andrew at HFT).
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by nickdai »

I feel inclined to shill a few SoCal players, so here it is:

Shahar Schwartz from Westview is without a doubt the best SoCal player. He does literature, science, fine arts, trash and myth. He is one of the highest powering players in the nation (and one of the highest negging), but he should probably be in your top 5 - top 10. We stan Shahar, he's actually so good at Quizbowl. The pool seems very stacked, so I don't know if Westview's Rohan Venkateswaran can be fitted in, but he is a very solid player. His stats are always skewed by the fact that he is 100% shadowed by Shahar (except on religion and Indian myth), but his stats when he plays without Shahar have been phenomenal (4.2 powers a game on IS 188 was insane). The running joke in Westview is that even though Shahar supposedly shadows Rohan, Rohan is also the one player who is able to beat Shahar when they aren't playing together.

Out of the powerhouse team from Canyon Crest Academy, I would recommend all four of them if the poll included category polls. However, since we are limited to only three polls, I would recommend both Raymond Song and Wesley Zhang. Raymond Song is a fine arts and literature specialist, while Wesley Zhang is the best history player in SoCal and decently good at science too (especially playing next to Jonathan Hsieh, whom I personally consider to be the fifth best high school science player in the nation). In fact, on BLAST, Wesley Zhang solo defeated a near full Westview A while only having just one new player as a teammate.

Del Norte's Kyle Ke and Joshua You should also be up for consideration. Kyle Ke is the best fine arts player in SoCal, and is probably in the top 5 of the nation. He does generalize to science and literature as well. Joshua You started off as a science and history specialist, but in recent months has taken up literature too, making him a very strong player.

Santa Monica's Josh Xu is probably a purely NAQT player. His housewrite performance has not been up to par with the other top players of the nation, but his geography, rmpss and history lock allows him to dominate NAQT tournaments. His insane 5.6 powers a game on IS 190 was truly impressive.

Arcadia's Amogh Kulkarni and Ryan Sun should be in consideration for both the top player poll and the sophomore poll. While both of them are history and literature specialists, they have been very dominant in the circuit. If online tournaments were counted, Amogh Kulkarni would probably be considered the second best or maybe even best sophomore in the nation, while still having the in person stats to back up his performance. Ryan Sun is very good too, but since there are only 5 slots for the sophomore poll, I'm not sure if he is good enough to be ranked.

Speaking of online tournaments, if they were to be counted, Nathaniel Kang from Saint Margaret's Episcopal School should be considered at the top of the sophomore poll given his absolutely insane MWT online performance. His in person tournaments were somewhat reasonable to an extent as well.

Regarding freshmen in SoCal, I think it goes without saying that Pramod Shastry and Richard Lin from Westview are the two best (yes, Westview bias, I understand). However, these two have been the most dominant freshmen in the circuit. Pramod Shastry put up 17 powers in 8 rounds of SSNCT, including going 4/2/1 against a near full Canyon Crest A. Richard Lin is not as high of a powering player, but he puts up very solid generalism and neg control, which allowed him to have the fourth highest individual PPG on IS 192 (right behind Josh Xu, Shahar Schwartz, and Amogh Kulkarni). I'm not sure how good the freshmen poll around the nation is, but these two are definitely the best in our circuit.

(Edited to add more evidence)
Last edited by nickdai on Tue Jun 16, 2020 12:39 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by ClevelandCavaliers »

Greetings. Here are some players you should vote for; I am definitely forgetting many extremely deserving names here. These are all my own opinion, and none of the opinions henceforth expressed are by any means definitive. Without further ado:

Freshman Poll
Owen Farra of St. Louis Patriots should be your first choice, as he had a truly stellar season. Last year, he was already one of the top middle school players, but what I presume to be a ton of studying over the summer definitely paid dividends.
Jacob Hardin-Bernhardt and Ian Lu of Hunter are both top five freshmen who by virtue of often buzzing in the same categories are often underrated. Their combined 123.50 PPG at RAFT (https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/6 ... l/#HunterB) can attest to that.
Lukas Koutsoukos of Wilton had a great season as well, solo'ing to impressive victories at many sets this year; he is also a top five freshman. He went 42/83/7 at IS-188, just as one example (https://www.naqt.com/stats/tournament/t ... _id=175914).

Overall Poll
For the top 30 overall poll, I'll limit my suggestions mostly to those from the Northeast.
Asher Jaffe, Pedro Juan Orduz, and Cerulean Ozarow of Hunter should all be in the top 30 poll. Though I am admittedly biased as a Hunterite, their stats, especially at EFT (https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/6 ... rCollegeHS), show that they should all at least merit consideration for a top 30 ranking.
Dean Ah Now of Millburn dominated the region for the year, and thus I think it is fair to say that he is at the very least a top 2 player nationwide.
In no particular order, Joshua Yi of East Brunswick, Carolyn Meng of Livingston, Deepak Gopalakrishnan of High Tech, and Philip Terman of Ridgewood are all great players who should be voted top 30 in the nation as well.

Have a nice summer to you all!
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by buffaloz1331 »

A warning: I will not be dropping a full list, but I will be doing some light shilling. Let's get to some players

Matt Siff, in my view, is the clear-cut number one player in the country. Call me biased -- Matt Siff is better than specialists at their categories. He'll firstline tossups in any category, he'll get things you've never even heard of. Matt Siff doesn't put up insane powers but he does win games. The stats simply can't capture how pog this guy is. He is an insane generalist, having picked up science extremely quickly and well in the last year. https://hdwhite.org/qb/stats/player/Siff/ -- Matt Siff's hdwhite page. Check out EFT, PIANO, TO, PACE 2019, heck, look at anything you want. Not sure why I'm still belaboring the point -- he is the top individual player in the country, especially with much improved neg control. He's broken, even in an incredibly strong DMV circuit that boasts [in my opinion] multiple other top 30 players of its own, he stands out as the top player. Matt Siff is also extremely clutch, with an ability to go on runs [as evidenced in our game against Manheim Township at HFT] to secure or revive wins. This doesn't sound very convincing, and it's because I, a normally extremely verbose person, lack the words to describe Matt Siff's pure skill at the game of quizbowl. It has been unreal to play with Matt for three years -- seriously, this guy is the best quizbowl player around in the 2019-2020 season. #1 on your ballots, #1 in our hearts, I'll leave it at that. There are, of course, other contenders for number one. This is not to say I will hold it against you if you don't vote for Matt number one. But you definitely should. The rest of these will be shorter, and I will probably skip "consensus" top picks [Dean, John John, Karsten, etc, unless I feel there is a reason to go into it].

Avinash Iyer goes somewhere in the top 10, if not higher [personally, he's somewhere in my top 6.] The dude is scary -- he did not slow down after being easy top sophomore last year. His BLAST stats [https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/6 ... detail/#t6] and EFT stats [https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/5 ... tail/#p1_3] are some of my personal favorites -- but really, any of them will do. Avinash is a top high school quiz bowl player, no matter how you slice it.

Katherine Lei was already a, if not the top science player in the country coming into the season. She is also an incredibly underrated player on other parts of the distro, here are some HFT stats https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/6 ... tail/#p2_5 but the hdwhite is available to all. Katherine Lei is very, very good -- she's also a deadly player in lit/fa, especially poetry, and her [presumptive Blair A] team's top scorer. I know there's frequently debate over whether "specialists," even very good ones, should crack the top players. I think Kat Lei this year is a top player -- as I said above, she has a kind of "quiet generalism."

Which brings me to Chris Tong, of "Blair B" who should also be somewhere in your top 30. Not exactly sure where, but this guy is a beast. I originally played him as a history player. And then he became one of the best science players in the country. And to top it all off, some pretty good fine arts skills. While not what I would describe as a full generalist, Chris is a very, very strong player who will ensure Blair continues their stretch of excellence next year -- in my view, a top 20 candidate.

I seem to have been scooped on DMV, go read Justin's post, it sums it up pretty well. Moving on.

Aadi Karthik posted in this poll before me, but didn't even shout himself out. The one time I played Aadi, it was online at CALISTO. We [GDS B] barely managed a win against this excellent player -- I'm unfortunately mostly unfamiliar with the rest of Aadi's body of work and the specifics, but the stats speak for themselves, even if you are discounting online tournaments. Aadi most certainly deserves a spot in top sophomores, and it would not be outrageous to put him in the top 30 players, in my opinion.

Shardul Rao is a very strong, perhaps underrated, player, and a nice person. As with other people outside the DMV circuit, I've only had opportunities to play him online, but judging from those times and his stats [notice EFT in particular] Shardul is a top player this year. Not quite sure where I'd slot him in, but somewhere between 10 and 20 seems reasonable to me. Leading Mound's View to a top 30 Groger is no small feat.

East Chapel Hill's Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford isn't a name I've seen thrown around a whole lot in this discussion but Ben is pretty good at quizbowl, and scales up pretty well, as Conor said. I would definitely consider ranking him in your top 30.

Tegan Kapadia from Beavercreek has also become a very, very good player. I really don't know enough about Beavercreek or their matches to make this call, but he definitely belongs somewhere at least top 20.

Don't overlook Eshaan Vakil, who is quite the player. That is all.

Lyra Gemmill-Nexon on GDS B has become a rising force. Not sure how many people we're ranking in sophomore polls, or if she cracks a top 15 list, but if you're at a loss, I wouldn't shy away from including Lyra in your listing.

All my MOST teammates [Arjun Nageswaran, Abhinav Karthikeyan, and Avinash Iyer [of whom I have already spoken] are top 30 players. Arjun is a lil underrated but quite a good player, and Abhinav is just straight up scary to play against. Speaking of Arjun, his teammate Govind is a top 15, maybe top 10 player.

I think that's gonna do it, almost everyone I wanted to hit on has been covered either here or in previous posts -- what I said about Lyra above I think applies to me as well. Not sure if I crack top 30 players, but if you're at a loss for players at the bottom of your poll, I think I could deserve consideration.

Enjoy your polling.
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by entropy »

Avinash Iyer is good at quizbowl.

Also, I know it's not my place to tell people how they should vote, but in my opinion voters should not take online performances into account for this poll. I understand that the COVID-19 pandemic moved the part of the season from March on entirely online, and that there were many incredible online performances during this period that deserve commendation; however, the unfortunate truth is that some incredible performances are likely not credible. That said, it is currently impossible to verify the legitimacy of online performances, and online quizbowl itself is an environment very different from in-person quizbowl that benefits some players and disadvantages others. For these reasons, I think it is important that judgements be made only on the basis of in-person tournament performances.
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by aurochs-and-angels »

Having just perused the responses on the last few years’ player polls after reading this one, I am bewildered by the overall low level of discourse/“shilling” that pervades these threads every year. I would imagine that the purpose of the yearly player poll is to encourage critical discussion about the relative strength of various top players, as well as to generally celebrate the eclectic knowledge bases and abilities of (particularly lesser known) players. I don’t see how these sort of posts help with either.

If I were to construct my own top 30, I would first compile a large list of the players with the highest PPG/powers this year and make some hasty ordering based solely on the numbers. But then there’s so much more to consider. How much is the player shadowed particularly in his/her categories (as a 5 PPG teammate can shadow one more than a 60 PPG teammate depending on specialization)? At what question difficulty/style do they peak at? Do they underperform or overperform against Nats level opponents (the most/only relevant games)? I’d imagine this sort of knowledge is what people would contribute about their own circuits. Also, not only is this necessary to make a more accurate list, but analyzing and debating in some intelligible way is like... the whole point? Imagine if all discussions about, say, the top 30 NBA players consisted merely of such glib remarks as “Paul Pierce is very very good. Rank him overall too” or “Oscar Robertson put up crazy numbers, check out his 1962 stats and see for yourself!” Obviously trying to make some universal or objective ranking is bogus, but seeing people rationally justify their ordering is always enlightening.

As to the “celebrate the eclectic knowledge bases” point, these threads are a chance to give the overall community an insider perspective on the diverse and less famed competitors of your team/circuit (I imagine this is why subject polls began). Perhaps my conception of this is different than most, but: what in the world is interesting about the millionth “scales super duper gud at lit; consider him for your polls” post? Even aside from rankings, are people not curious in what the person is actually exceedingly knowledgable about? Are they flying through the 20th century American lit canon? Are they experts at Greek drama? Or do they just mindlessly mine QuizDB and make flashcards? What does “FA specialist” mean apart from making all around buzzes? What are they elite at? Unbeatable in painting? Have seen all of Wagner’s operas? This is of course all not to mention that the “crazy good at history and science” type posts don’t actually provide helpful information to use in conjunction with the stats (approximate amount of buzzes/powers in those categories) if there were a subject poll for someone who hasn’t played against almost all of these players (like me).

Seems as if the recent college polls are rather similar-ish, so maybe I’m alone here. Perhaps other people wouldn’t find this sort of discussion as interesting as I would?
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by BenWeiner27 »

whatamidoinghere wrote: Mon Jun 15, 2020 11:24 pm Shardul Rao: Shardul is an excellent player from his performances at WAIT, EFT, and Prison Bowl. Even if we disregard the online results he's shown to be an excellent fine arts and history based generalist.
This is true. Shardul is very, very good at quizbowl and definitely deserves a spot in your top 30.

I would also like to shill my teammate Brian Lin. Brian is a very capable history player who is also insane at Geography/Current Events, and very capable at large sections of the literature distribution (particularly poetry and world lit). Even with Amogh Kulkarni, who is another very capable history player, shadowing him for the latter half of the season, and Cece Shao, who is a very good lit player shadowing him the entire season, Brian still put up very good numbers, in particular at BLAST, where while playing with Amogh and Cece, he put up numbers in the ballpark of super impressive players like Matt Siff and William Orr. I think Brian definitely deserves a spot in the top 30.
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by meekerdouglas »

Just want to second Karsten's Northeast take. There is no world in which he and Basil shouldn't be on the overall player poll. I also think you guys should consider Nathan Sheffield from Belmont; his power rates are insane and he consistently puts up 80+ ppg even with solid support from Cindy and Seiyoung. Charles Yang from Lexington is also incredible.

All of these players are good generalists. They have their strengths and weaknesses category wise, but they're all super in touch with the canon.
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by Berniecrat »

Just a few notes as you get your ballots ready:
- In the case of players with the same name, such as Amogh Kulkarni from Wayzata and Amogh Kulkarni from Arcadia, please stipulate their school when you rank them (this isn't necessary for the sophomore ballot where only Arcadia Amogh is a sophomore)
- Try to include first and last names with proper spelling
- Don't forget the justification part of the poll - it doesn't have to be an essay but ideally it is more than just "m" or "because they are good at quib bowl" (two justifications we have received so far)
- If we feel that your ballot might not be informed, we will give you a chance to either resubmit or to write a more detailed justification to explain some of your picks
- When considering tournament performances, prioritize performances on harder sets, performances with harder fields, solid individual performances despite a strong supporting cast that may shadow, or on the other hand solid performances on team metrics such as PPB despite a lack of support. You should almost always factor in person tournaments as opposed to online, unless there just aren't enough in person tournaments a person has played (even then only use the online tournaments to fill in the gaps)
- This isn't a purely PPG poll - strong specialists with good scale-up can be considered as well for your ballots (such as Geoffrey Chen being ranked #8 in last year's overall poll). A question that might help guide you when you fill your ballot is "What player would add the most to a hypothetical team competing at nationals?"
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by Jeje Lalpekhlua »

Uh yeah, so here's another few players you might want to consider:

Arthur Delot-Vilain has been hugely shadowed by my #1 player in the country, Matthew Siff, consistently throughout the season, but he is a budding generalist in his own, with deep knowledge in history (See his really strong A Set Bee Victory), literature, fine arts, and biology. I think he should be in your top 30 and arguably, without his sudden rise this year, GDS might not have been in the top 5 postseason poll at the end of the year.

William Orr has had a meteoric rise into one of the most feared players in the DMV circuit and one of the top literature-based generalists in the country. In the most competitive tournament of the year (RM HFT in my opinion), he put up the most powers out of anyone, in a field that included Matt, Kat, Chris, Arthur, Will, etc. (you get the point). He also tied for the most powers at Georgetown BHSAT, which hammers this point even more. He should be a lock for your top 30.

Chinmay Murthy is someone that many of us will forget, but has put up huge stats on NAQT (like close to 5 powers per game) this year, while if nationals finished, probably would've led LASA to another impressive HSNCT finish. He should be in your top 30.

I think William Groger should be in your top 20. He might be very shadowed by his older brother, but William has been really impressive in literature, history, mythology, and a whole host of categories. He put up immense power numbers while playing alongside a top 3 player in the country, which is HUGE.

Justin Posner is arguably the best junior in the DMV circuit and I think the best player on RM. He put up a lot of powers on IS-190 and BHSAT while playing alongside myself and Derek, who also cover his best category, history. I think he should be voted in your top 30 for sure.

Arcadiamogh is scary and is rapidly improving. Online results to the side, he put up some really good numbers irl and should be in your top 30.

I think people also sleep on Raymond Wang from Ithaca, who should be in your top 10 for sure. His numbers at online tournaments have been absolutely bonkers and irl he put up nearly 5 powers a game on CALISTO, 11 powers on EFT, and a hell lot of powers in other tournaments.

Dylan Bowman's generalism is underrated, he should at least be in your top 15.

Uh, that's it and although our season didn't end as we wanted it to, I hope we can have a fun season next year as well.
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by buffaloz1331 »

aurochs-and-angels wrote: Tue Jun 16, 2020 6:37 am Having just perused the responses on the last few years’ player polls after reading this one, I am bewildered by the overall low level of discourse/“shilling” that pervades these threads every year. I would imagine that the purpose of the yearly player poll is to encourage critical discussion about the relative strength of various top players, as well as to generally celebrate the eclectic knowledge bases and abilities of (particularly lesser known) players. I don’t see how these sort of posts help with either.
I disagree with this statement, or rather, with the idea that "critical discourse" about top players as you have described it should be the dominant form of discourse. Yes, some posts, especially those about lesser-known players could stand to go more in depth, but the truth is that, especially in this season without a national championship, people don't really know how the top players in their region compare to top players in other regions. For this reason, shilling and providing stats/justification [which most of these posts do] why someone in the top few players is actually very good may help people to make their decision. I'll also address something you said in the second paragraph—because of the difficulties inherent in ranking the "top 30" players, I'm not sure how you'd even begin to compile a list of the top 30 PPGs from across the country this year [do you take into account difficulty, where would you even find such a list, etc]. Additionally, as you pointed out, PPG can be very, very misleading, as top 30 players may play with other very strong players, and people like Karthik Prasad or William Wang from TJ, despite not putting up blockbuster numbers, could still merit top 30 because they would be leading a nats-contending team.

In my view the kind of "shilling" that you decry is actually very helpful for constructing a poll of the top 30 players—I think most people are gonna have trouble deciding who to put in, especially as you get closer to the bottom of the poll and it becomes a) more and more random and b) harder and harder to decide who goes in/to think of who to put in. That's where these posts become helpful—"shilling" reminds you that there are players you forgot and may want to consider for your poll—I agree that perhaps a little more discussion of category/skill is warranted but as a TL;DR the shills are valuable, IMO.

Now, I do think, as I said, you are right that some posts ought to go a little deeper, and I commend those that have. I just wanted to point out that these kinds of posts can be very helpful. Now that I have thoroughly spent some time not contributing to rankings, I guess I'll leave an extra word or two.

Abhinav Karthikeyan, whom I already mentioned and Justin Posner, Richard Montgomery's dynamic duo, are two of the top players [certainly juniors] in the DMV circuit, both incredibly strong, even playing together. Both are fearsome at history and literature, and Justin has additional depth in RMPSS categories.
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by kingofcroutons »

I believe Andrew Kelley should certainly be considered on your player poll this year. He is easily the best player in Kentucky (which while it's a region less competitive than others like Illinois or the DMV area, this statement still holds some weight), and his ability to scale up/perform against other top players has really shown, especially at NASAT year where he was a large contributor to upsets against the top three Maryland teams, Missouri (twice), and New Jersey. This year, his most notable performance was probably at UK Fall, where he got 2.8 p/g, a statistic that is absolutely comparable to many other people who you may be considering for your player poll. Although nationals/NASAT were both cancelled, given Andrew's consistent upward momentum and already incredibly deep pockets in both history and literature, I have no doubt that he would've performed well at either of those events. Please consider him in your vote.
Last edited by kingofcroutons on Tue Jun 16, 2020 12:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by TheScientists »

This is far from a complete list, but they definitely deserve some more recognition:

Eshaan Vakil - I'm frankly surprised he's only been mentioned once (big ups to fellow Chargers fan Arthur), but he's straight up one of the best history-based generalists out there. He's also p good with scaling up, and is at the bare-minimum a Top-15 player. Let me repeat, Eshaan Vakil is incredible at quizbowl.

Ketan Pamurthy & Jisoo Yoo - I'm quite surprised they haven't been brought up in this thread, but holy crap are they insanely good players. Jisoo has been the most electric literature player I've seen. Ketan is absolutely nutty with Sci/FA. Both deserve a spot in the Top-30. They are very good.

Arthur Delot-Villain - Arthur is a very strong generalist, and has been consistently underrated due to being shadowed by Matt Siff. He's undoubtedly a Top-20 player.

Karan Gurazada - He's a very strong generalist and lights out when it comes to Science. Should be a lock in this poll.

Aadi Karthik - yeah uh, he's definitely a Top-5 sophomore. Just a great player.

Owen Farra - As Conor said, undoubtedly the best freshman this year.

Amogh Kulkarni & Ryan Sun - Both of them are insanely strong players for Arcadia. Arcadiamogh is definitely a Top-5 sophomore, and Ryan deserves a consideration in the Top-5.

Andrew Zeng, Jacob Hardin-Bernhardt, & Ian Lu - Andrew Zeng has gone from a deep history specialist (who's lights out at Roman content) to a beast of a generalist who still has retained that deep depth in history. He definitely deserves to be in your Top-5 poll. Jacob and Ian are definitely Top-5 freshmen this year.

Basil Sousonis - He's quite good.
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by nicole. »

Time to do some player shoutouts:

Ben Hu from Millburn might be shadowed by Dean, but he's still t-30 material. Ben is the best science specialist in the Northeast right now, and has put up really good numbers (albeit at a sets) when playing without Dean. As well as having good history coverage, Ben Hu will be a player to look out for this year and next.

Cooper Roh from Hotchkiss is arguably the upset king of the Northeast. Even discounting online, Cooper managed to beat full strength Andover, full-strength East Brunswick, 1/2-3/4 strength Ithaca. He's a super scary history player, and I can easily see him being a t-5 soph and making your top 30.

Arthur Gayden Arthur Gayden is a very good freshman, whose rise (especially online) is something to be commended. I know online isn't supposed to count, but even before online, Gayden put in some really good results.

Avinash Iyer: Avinash Iyer is perhaps the best player overall right now. He can consistently make top bracket at tourneys with and without teammates, something that can't be said for every top player. He's killer in history and an all around good generalist.

Shawn Cafferty-Lueck: While I don't think it is viable to rank Shawn right now, his Scottie Online performance was incredible for a first-time pyramidal performance and given their stats at History Bowl, I believe Shawn and Russellville would have been the dark horses of Nationals this year, coming in for a top 10 finish and wowing everyone. If Shawn and his team can make it to pyramidal tournaments next year, watch out, because Shawn can very well be a t-30 player next year.

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia) I would argue that ArcadiMogh for short is the best sophomore this year. His results across the board, especially at NAQT SoCal state Championships where his Arcadia B was able to solidly beat both full strength Westview and Del Norte, and MWT Open, where he pulled a super impressive 72 ppg given the field of active college and open fields. While I don't know his specialties given I don't play in SoCal, I do know that he's been a consistently strong generalist at the online tourneys I have read.

other players who are great but I don't have full paragraphs for: Gabe Forrest: really strong VFA player and hs level generalist, Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford: really strong player from East Chapel Hill, don't know specialties, Philip Terman from Ridgewood: really strong hist/myth/bible player and enough sci coverage to make do. Aiden Dartley from Ridgewood: really strong hist specialist, can't wait to see how he develops, Rosa Xia of Livi: really strong lit player, Carolyn Meng of Livi: very good generalist with nice sci focus, Matt Vigneau of South Burlington: strong history player and all rounder, upset Arcadia at Scottie Online, watch out for him in upcoming years, Aarush Santoshi of Tenafly MS/Bergen: due to the way ms and hs are split outside of Hunter in this region, not many results to speak of, but wow those Delta Burke results, burgeoning sci specialist, Enzo Cunanan of Trinity Prep: really strong history player, can't wait to see pyramidal results for next year, Nikolas Polsinelli of Trinity Prep: good support for Enzo, likely to be a top ms player next year.

Kris Noori managed to have a t-40 Groger Rank as a solo team. I think that speaks for itself.

Same thing to a lesser extent can be said about Basil Sousonis, Eli Issokson, Connor Mayers, Justin Ward (very underrated history player from BASIS McLean), BMB, and Wesley Zhang

And that's all for now
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by db0wman »

aurochs-and-angels wrote: Tue Jun 16, 2020 6:37 am Seems as if the recent college polls are rather similar-ish, so maybe I’m alone here. Perhaps other people wouldn’t find this sort of discussion as interesting as I would?
I agree, some more detailed discussion would be nice. I'll start things off with my own team, and I'd encourage others to create a detailed account of players that they know well.

Ethan Ashbrook is a literature and thought specialist, with some deep areas of knowledge in religion, mythology, and fine arts. He's generally considered to be a top-5 or top-3 literature player in the nation, which I would agree with. I basically never see him drop literature, even to me. From observation, his best areas seem to be drama and long fiction, although his poetry and shortfic are certainly elite. One time he powered 2 literature off of John Lawrence. His literature knowledge base is a mix of deep stuff that he's read and deep stuff that he mindlessly carded (lul). He has read a lot of books (not exactly sure how many but he's a voracious reader). I think he has somewhere around 35k cards and his performance depends a lot on how much he's been reviewing. His pet categories outside of literature include analytic philosophy, Coen brothers movies, and Nintendo. Ethan put up 8 powers in 9 rounds of Penn Bowl, which was one of the highest from a high schooler. I think his power spread was something like 6 literature, 1 philosophy, and 1 social science. He was consistently the lead scorer on Uni this year at tournaments, except on IS-188. He's also a capable generalist, as he covers various areas of American history, physical sciences, and music/ofa without Jonathan or I. Unfortunately, he didn't have any chances to showcase his generalism this year. Ethan plays (comparatively) poorly online so I wouldn't take those stats into account (nor should you be taking them into account anyway, read Karan's comment); he's a god in-person.

I am a science and fine arts specialist, and probably the best generalist on Uni A. I think my fine arts is top-3 in the nation, which you may agree or disagree with. My best subcategory of fine arts is classical music, specifically romantic and modern. I can power classical/baroque consistently but I have much more real knowledge in 1800s+ due to that being what I've listened to and played. Most of my pre-Beethoven knowledge is from packets and Schonberg. My visual arts is solid enough (strongest at 1600s-1800s). I've gotten much better at it recently from writing/editing. My other fine arts is a mixed bag (good at opera, inconsistently good/deep on film, decent at architecture, photography and dance, bad at fashion). I don't have too much real knowledge in OFA aside from film; it's mostly just been packet study for the others. My science is markedly weaker, but good enough to pull stuff off of top-tier science players. It's probably around top-15 or top-10? I don't cover biology and I split other science with Jonathan, so I'm not sure how much that factors into things. I'm not awful in those categories but I've never had to study them. I'm deepest in math, physics, and chemistry. Out of those, my best is probably math (math major). I don't have much real knowledge in science aside from math; I think the only textbooks that I've read are part of Klein and part of Griffith's QM. I mostly just carded from Wikipedia and other online references while I was actively studying science. At Penn Bowl (link above), my power spread was 2 music, 1 visual, 2 chemistry, 1 physics, and 1 trash. So as you can see, I'm not as deep as Ethan in one particular swath of the distribution like he is in literature, but I'm generally solid in all of my areas. I buzzed at least four times every game at NAQT state. Aside from my main categories, I'm also a solid literature and thought player. Unfortunately, I'm on a team with a player who is elite in both of those categories. My strongest areas of literature are short fiction and drama, with somewhat of a specialty in non-English language literature. I'm much better at philosophy that social science. I've had two in-person performances this year without Ethan where I've shown that I cover his categories decently well. WAIT, where a team of Jonathan and I beat Miami Valley twice, and the playoffs of NAQT State, where I had the highest power count in the field (over four per game). Ethan probably would have done similarly well had I been the absent one.

Jonathan is a history, geography, and biology specialist. Within Illinois, he's considered to be the best geography specialist, especially at physical geography. He has a lot of real knowledge in biology from textbook study and Science Olympiad stuff. Jonathan has some seriously deep knowledge in world and ancient history, and is pretty solid at the rest too. See round 4 of NAQT State, for instance, where he nearly locked Govind Prabhakar out of history and geography, going 4/4/0. His other specialty areas include other science and Abrahamic religion (we basically had a lock on Bible when Tim and Jonathan played together, and Jonathan is still extremely good at it). Unfortunately, he wasn't with us to play Penn Bowl. He scales up quite well though--he did alright on Sun God last season, and he's improved significantly since then. Jonathan is also a capable generalist, but he didn't have any chances to play out of the shadow of me or Ethan. He's pretty good at music and science, as well as some various areas of literature (he randomly took a tossup off Anson Berns at NASAT last year). Also, this is pretty anecdotal, but Jonathan is insanely clutch. He has won several games for us on the last tossup, especially at last year's nationals. He got 3 out of the last 5 tossups to complete our comeback against Stevenson in the finals of Earlybird. Jonathan and I broke H-M twice this season, which doesn't mean much, but it's still a fun anecdote. Overall, his history/geography/CE prowess makes him an NAQT monster and he's a very talented generalist.

I won't tell you how to vote since I'm probably not voting, but perhaps my insight might help you construct your ballots. A word of advice: don't overrank people based on their Discord presence. Also, probably vote for Kris Noori.
Last edited by db0wman on Tue Jun 16, 2020 8:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by aqblsheetsmanager »

As some people have stated, my teammate Benjamin McAvoy Bickford is an incredible generalist who also has deep pockets of knowledge in geo/ce/other, rmpss, and American history, among other things. He may not have the highest power counts, but he's incredibly good at getting midclues and bonuses all across the board and at many difficulties. He should definitely be in your sophomore poll and maybe even in your overall poll.
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by nickdai »

db0wman wrote: Tue Jun 16, 2020 2:47 pm Also, probably vote for Kris Noori.
I completely support this. As one of the few players with the honor of facing Kris Noori, I can safely say that I view him as a top 3 high school lit player, or maybe even THE best. At Michigan Winter, he continuously powered lit over other good players such as Shahar Schwartz and Justine French, often 3-1ing then in literature (I think he 4-0d once, not too sure). He’s a solid history player too. 60 powers in 8 rounds of HFT was very impressive too. Man negs a big too much, but as someone who attends Westview I am legally obligated to not comment on other people’s negs because I probably neg more. Also he’s coming to SoCal so I could be biased, but we 100% stan him. TL;DR - Kris op, pls vote
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by Jasconius »

Don't underrank Katherine Lei. Her science specialism alone would be enough to put her into the top 10 (she's not as good as Geoffrey Chen, but at HS Nats difficulty she plays similarly), but she's also an amazing literature and FA player, which means she should be ranked higher than Geoffrey was. The best comparison I can make is Fred Zhang, who was fourth on last year's poll. Katherine should be similarly high.

Arthur Delot-Vilain should be on your ballot. The obvious comparisons are William Groger and Arjun Nageswaran, second scorers on top 10 teams. Compare Arthur to William or Arjun. I'll wave my hand here and say these are all comparable performances and should all be ranked in the 21-25 range.

You might be forgetting strong players on teams ranked towards the bottom of the top 25: Aadi, Chinmay, Eshaan, Sanjeev, Robert (DCC), Raymond, Tegan.
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by Zealots of Stockholm »

etotheipi wrote: Mon Jun 15, 2020 11:20 pm Someone who doesn't get nearly enough attention (overlooked region, not online, etc) is Sanjeev Uppaluri from Cambridge. He's basically solo in all the tournaments he plays, and he's definitely t4 in Georgia (worse than us, Hooch, Eastside). Notably, while playing six of the eight best teams in Georgia on LOGIC (excluding himself and Eastside) he put up 7 powers per game, and won second to Hooch A at the most recent Georgia tournament (albeit one where Lambert was in a different division due to my lack of attendance), putting up >4 powers per game on sct dii (this is Cambridge team stats, not sure if he was playing solo, crooked GATA won't take individual stats, but he's definitely atleast 95%of these powers judging by other tournaments with far more reasonable policies on individual stats). Also absolutely blew Lambert, noted postseason ranked team, out 500-100 or something in November on WAIT.

tl;dr Sanjeev definitely merits consideration for t30 nationwide.
Seems worth noting that Sanjeev put up a pretty respectable performance on a very hard Fall Open set https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/5 ... detail/#t5
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by Ozymandias314 »

I don't usually make these posts but I guess I will.

Karsten should be very high on your poll. Like very very. He was 1st at EFT lit and 3rd at EFT history and this was a field with very good undergraduate and graduate players from Yale/Harvard and such schools. To further demonstrate his monstrous dominance, consider that I went 38/79/20 on WHAQ III in the 2018-19 season before I made a single card in science (this is my way of saying I was actually a pretty competent humanities generalist as a junior. Consider then this year Karsten puts up around 7-9 powers a game (!!!!) while playing with someone who was usually getting 3 humanities powers a game before. I was basically reduced to only buzzing on science this year (occasionally getting some deep history/myth/visual fine arts buzzes over Karsten), but my point is that Karsten's dominance has still been slightly understated this season. He is (somehow) even better than what everyone thinks. Put him as your top Sophomore and also like T3 I guess. In a sense I guess this paragraph also semi-shills for myself (shadow effect ish???), but I was not a super consistent performer this season.

Other shill is for Katherine Lei of Blair. I think a lot of people have already mentioned this, but having practiced with the MIT team a few times on college regs stuff I would like to reiterate that she is insane at science and also very good at several subjects outside of that.

Also vote for Charles Yang because he is not only my friend but also very very good (despite what he says).
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by Ehtna »

Since me and my teammates have already been shilled for, I figured I'd take this opportunity to dote on two people that deserve it. Because a specific somebody won't do it themself :roll:

If you keep up with Dylan's YouTube channel, you'll know that Govind Prabhakar is the best player in Illinois. Not only that, he is one of the best, if not the best, history player in the country. From my experience playing him, his best subcategories are world and ancient history, however he is still very dominant in American, Commonwealth, Euro, and any other subcategory you can think of. Even with two history players on Uni's team, Govind has consistently split and beaten us on history in most games we've played against Stevenson. Along with history, he's generally considered to be one of the best CE and geography players in the state. He's also quite good at religion and mythology, specializing in Eastern content. He's also a very decent generalist, and niche specialties outside of his categories include foreign films, random science knowledge, and anything and everything India. I kid you not, he will beat you to any India-related content you can think. But even if he's not as good a generalist as others mentioned above, I would argue that his depth of knowledge in his specialties completely make up for it. He won Scobol Solo back in December against opponents such as Ben Fry, Dylan Bowman, and Jonathan Lau. Playing Penn Bowl, he garnered 10 powers in 10 rounds, which is one of the best performances out of any high schooler who played the set. But by far his most impressive performance was on DII SCT, where he put up a whopping 50 powers over 15 rounds. This phenomenal performance also includes an instance of him powering seven questions in one round. He scales up insanely well and has been the scariest player in Illinois for the past year, and he rightfully deserves a place on your ballot as one of the best players in the country.

And because he's too scared to do it himself, I also have to give a big mention to Arjun Nageswaran. Arjun unfortunately lives in the shadows of Govind, however by himself he is absolutely a force to be reckoned with. He specializes in history and current events, which very unfortunately does line up with Govind most of the time. But even with Govind present, Arjun is very capable of picking up questions all over the board. He tied for third at Scobol Solo, and even when playing on a team with Govind, he was the 4th scorer on Penn Bowl at New Trier, garnering a very impressive 5 powers over the tournament. And just in my experience, he has picked questions off of us in every category, including lit(!) and science. I think overall, these results speak to the capability of Arjun as a player. He has very deep knowledge in many categories and has been a deciding factor in Stevenson's victories throughout the season. You never know when he's going to know more than you, and you never see it coming, which makes him such a difficult opponent to go up against.

With that, I leave it up to others to shill for the rest of the Illinois squad. May the odds be in our favor next time the universe decides to stop an Illinois team from winning a high school national championship.
Last edited by Ehtna on Tue Jun 16, 2020 11:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by whatamidoinghere »

aurochs-and-angels wrote: Tue Jun 16, 2020 6:37 am Having just perused the responses on the last few years’ player polls after reading this one, I am bewildered by the overall low level of discourse/“shilling” that pervades these threads every year. I would imagine that the purpose of the yearly player poll is to encourage critical discussion about the relative strength of various top players, as well as to generally celebrate the eclectic knowledge bases and abilities of (particularly lesser known) players. I don’t see how these sort of posts help with either.

If I were to construct my own top 30, I would first compile a large list of the players with the highest PPG/powers this year and make some hasty ordering based solely on the numbers. But then there’s so much more to consider. How much is the player shadowed particularly in his/her categories (as a 5 PPG teammate can shadow one more than a 60 PPG teammate depending on specialization)? At what question difficulty/style do they peak at? Do they underperform or overperform against Nats level opponents (the most/only relevant games)? I’d imagine this sort of knowledge is what people would contribute about their own circuits. Also, not only is this necessary to make a more accurate list, but analyzing and debating in some intelligible way is like... the whole point? Imagine if all discussions about, say, the top 30 NBA players consisted merely of such glib remarks as “Paul Pierce is very very good. Rank him overall too” or “Oscar Robertson put up crazy numbers, check out his 1962 stats and see for yourself!” Obviously trying to make some universal or objective ranking is bogus, but seeing people rationally justify their ordering is always enlightening.

As to the “celebrate the eclectic knowledge bases” point, these threads are a chance to give the overall community an insider perspective on the diverse and less famed competitors of your team/circuit (I imagine this is why subject polls began). Perhaps my conception of this is different than most, but: what in the world is interesting about the millionth “scales super duper gud at lit; consider him for your polls” post? Even aside from rankings, are people not curious in what the person is actually exceedingly knowledgable about? Are they flying through the 20th century American lit canon? Are they experts at Greek drama? Or do they just mindlessly mine QuizDB and make flashcards? What does “FA specialist” mean apart from making all around buzzes? What are they elite at? Unbeatable in painting? Have seen all of Wagner’s operas? This is of course all not to mention that the “crazy good at history and science” type posts don’t actually provide helpful information to use in conjunction with the stats (approximate amount of buzzes/powers in those categories) if there were a subject poll for someone who hasn’t played against almost all of these players (like me).

Seems as if the recent college polls are rather similar-ish, so maybe I’m alone here. Perhaps other people wouldn’t find this sort of discussion as interesting as I would?
After reading this post and Dylan's comments on discord, I have endeavoured to make a case for myself to be at the very least top 4 in your ballot. Below are my personal HFT tossup stats.

Note: this was over 8 games at this tournament
Total: 65/19/19 (The stats on the hsquizbowl website aren't completely accurate)
History: 18/2/4, mostly even between major parts of history
Literature: 13/6/3, mostly even between major parts of lit
Science: 20/1/2, mostly split evenly between physics, chemistry, and math, with 2 biology powers
RMPSS: 9/4/2, mostly religion/mythology questions, with a philosophy and social science here or there
Others: 1/1/2, the 1 power is from Current Events
Fine Arts: 4/5/4, with most of the points on visual FA
(yes, I know this adds up to 17 negs but I already spent a lot of effort trying to compile these stats and it would take quite a lot of effort to go back and try to pull memories from over 3.5 months ago).

I will now begin to emulate Dylan's style of writing about himself by writing about my strengths and weaknesses in the categories.
1) I am not a very biology based science person (my school science classes this year are all physics/chemistry), and physics/chemistry/math are where I spend the most time on the outside studying either via textbooks or in my classes.
2) In terms of literature, I usually card/packet study (though I haven't carded nearly as much as Ethan Ashbrook's 35k cards). I still believe I have a strong enough grasp at higher levels of canon (I think at EFT I had about 4 or 5 literature powers), so I would rate myself as somewhat strong in that subject.
3) I would say I'm best at scaling up in History but since NorCal has stiff history competition (from Shiva, Jason, Karan, Josh, etc.), I feel the history stats here are slightly deflated compared to how they would be in a different region.
4) In terms of Fine Arts, I am decent at bonuses on visual arts mostly because I mindlessly made a lot of painter/painting cards. I'm not very good at non-visual arts or non-bonuses at higher levels.
5) For RMPSS, I'm decently good at non-Christian Religion, and I've begun taking up Philosophy because I had nothing to do over coronabreak.
6) Regarding Geo/CE/Trash, I'm decently good at current events/historical geography (mostly from studying history), and I can get the occasional CE buzz since I am a news monkey. I cannot get any trash points whatsoever.

So what does this all mean? I would say that my generalism is definitely near the top at least from my stats on the big three, but this also shows that other quizbowlers' detailed analyses of either themselves overall or their tournament performances would be useful in assessing skill either overall or in certain terms such as subject breakdowns.

Also, commenting on other people, Karsten's EFT stats do indeed speak for themselves (if you want more information category-wise, he also had the most amount of literature points at that EFT site of people in the prelims). He's also read a large portion of the literature canon and also just knows a lot of things.
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by Og's Magog Bog »

Want to talk briefly about a couple of Texas people
- Robert Condron is a very good player, especially on NAQT. He covers literature (but not really poetry or plays), history, visual fine arts, religion, philosophy, social science and current events and has put up great stats on IS. He also had one of the best WORKSHOP performances of any high schooler and he did it in real life.
- Ketan Pamurthy is a really good science and fine arts-based generalist who I've seen get really good history buzzes on Aayush. He's definitely improved a lot during the quarantine, which combined with the lack of IRL mACF stats for Dallas players might make him hard for a lot of people who are reluctant to weigh online performances to rank, but I assure you based on my experience playing him that he is really that good.
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by The Hands Resist Him »

I guess I'll join in on the New England circuit shilling:

Karsten is very good, but everyone knew that already
Corollary: Vincent Fan's performances playing in Karsten's shadow are impressive and you should consider putting him on your ballot

Also look at Basil Sousonis's HFT stats, they should speak for themselves (57/81/20 142 ppg)

For people not in the New England circuit, don't underrank Nathan Sheffield from Belmont, he's a very good science/lit player with lots of real knowledge (especially in math/physics) and gets a lot of powers (he put up 74 powers in 11 games on LOGIC, one of the best power numbers of anyone playing that set at any site) (Also he's very nice and will give you peppermints at tournaments)

Also I guess I'll shill for myself and say I maybe should be somewhere in the second half of your ballot: I'm for sure not the best player in Massachusetts or anything, but I can buzz across pretty much every category with a generally low neg rate. Some stats: 50/60/9 130 ppg on IS-190, 31/72/6 96 ppg on HFT (second only to Basil), 13/62/14 62 ppg on EFT (with 4/2/0 vs a full Harvard A), 49/90/7 145 ppg on CALISTO (with 6/3/2 to beat Cooper Roh).
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by joshxu »

Nick Dai has already done a solid "shilling" of SoCal, and I'd like to highlight some of these players as well. Largely because SoCal is a relatively small region, I don't believe that any more than two or three of these players should really be ranked in your top 30 overall, but nevertheless all of them are worth shilling on a national platform.

Westview's Shahar Schwartz was decidedly the best player in SoCal this season, and should be ranked in the top 10 of your ballot. Barring a neg (which he's prone to do a lot), literature tossups almost never get past him, and he's easily among the top lit players in the country. His top specialties are literature and science, but he's just so good at quiz bowl that he's capable of getting insane buzzes all across the entire distribution. His individual dominance was fully on display at PPT (IS #186) this past October (https://www.naqt.com/stats/tournament/t ... _id=168338). After some of his teammates began leaving mid-way through the afternoon, he singlehandedly obliterated strong teams such as Del Norte A and Santa Monica A (twice) en route to the tournament victory. In his games against us, he had early buzzes all across the entire distribution, getting insane lit buzzes within eight words as well as powers in history, art, and religion, to name a few. Another of his performances worth specifically highlighting is DNE (BLAST) (https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/6 ... etail/#t10), where he carried Westview A to another dominating tournament victory. His 55 powers in 11 games was among the best marks put up by any player on the set in the entire country.

Before the season, Arcadia's Amogh Kulkarni was known to be a solid history specialist, but he has since developed into one of the top generalists in SoCal. In addition to becoming [by far] the best history player in SoCal (from personal experience, having to deal with this is often extremely painful for other history specialists), he has expanded to become a top lit player as well, and like Shahar, can simply get insane buzzes throughout the entire distribution. Amogh-led Arcadia teams have regularly challenged Westview A this season, resulting in two tournament victories (LOGIC and IS #192—note: the "A" team played as Arcadia B here). Despite his persistent depreflexing, Amogh should definitely be in your top 30 overall and probably top 2 in the sophomore poll. As an aside, online performances should rightfully not be considered, but his 29 powers and 72.31 PPG at MWT Online were absolutely insane.

Beyond Shahar and Amogh, I doubt there are enough spots left in the top 30 for the following players, but their accomplishments this season nevertheless deserve a shout-out.

I, Josh Xu, was routinely the highest-scoring player at SoCal tournaments this season, although this is more of a function of having absolutely no subject overlap with my teammates and regularly playing without very many, if any, teammates. As a history/geography/CE/philosophy specialist, I'm heavily geared toward NAQT questions, and this shows in my stats—I had 5.6 powers per game on IS #188 and 5.4 powers per game on IS #190, both of which led the field. While my housewrite stats were nowhere near as good this year, playing BLAST solo was quite the adventure, as it seemed like every game I played formed a distinct chapter of my career that led me to question my identity as a quiz bowl player... I digress. While Amogh is by far the best history player in SoCal this season, I can fairly safely claim a distant second, and I've been able to take advantage of NAQT's packet variability to pull off massive upsets (this was my best one: https://www.naqt.com/stats/tournament/g ... id=1004358).

Although Canyon Crest Academy was a disappointment this year (especially in regard to tournament attendance), Raymond Song, Wesley Zhang, and Jonathan Hsieh all deserve to be shouted out as top specialists. Wesley, a history/geography/science specialist, only played twice this season (BLAST and IS #190) and had very different individual results (possibly due to a stats error?), but still proved to be one of the strongest players in SoCal. In particular, he demonstrated that converting 11 tossups in a game will almost always be sufficient to win in his win over otherwise undefeated Westview A on BLAST (https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/6 ... detail/#t1) (although note that his one teammate, Leo Gu, converted one tossup). Raymond, a lit/FA-based generalist, also had spotty attendance and consistency issues this year, but was the leading scorer (at least according to stats) on the CCA team that shocked SoCal by not only showing up to NEGFIVE but also winning with a dominant 25.15 PPB (https://www.naqt.com/stats/tournament/t ... _id=186687). Jonathan was by far the best science specialist in SoCal this year, as he would very often (barring a neg) convert those tossups first-line, although he did have a significant neg problem. Lastly, CCA's fourth player, Shreyank Kadadi, should not be forgotten. Over the past two years, I've always been trying to figure out what exactly he covers, and I still have no idea what his "specialties" are. He just has an insane ability to power the most random tossups on every subject, making him an insane fourth scorer, probably the best in SoCal this year.

From Del Norte, Kyle Ke and Joshua You were probably the best one-two punch in all of SoCal. Kyle is an FA-based generalist who can cover much of the entire distribution, and Joshua has developed from an excellent science specialist into a solid generalist in his own right. The way they complement each other is insane. I saw this firsthand at NEGFIVE (IS #190). After a comfortable win over Del Norte in prelims (n.b. the score may not look too comfortable, but we basically had the game locked after 15), I had to watch the two seemingly alternate powers on every tossup en route to a playoffs obliteration of us, with the duo combining for a statline of 10/2/3 and 155 points (https://www.naqt.com/stats/tournament/g ... id=1004365). Del Norte did suffer a lot this year from general inconsistency, as they finished second a whopping five times to three different opponents, but they were at times an extremely dominant team that could've made a deep run at nats.

The final two players who I think deserve shilling are Westview's Rohan Venkateswaran and Arcadia's Ryan Sun. Rohan is the captain of Westview B on NAQT and the fourth player on Westview A on housewrites, and is a lit/FA specialist. When playing on a team with Shahar, he suffers greatly from his shadow, but ironically he has had the upper hand against Shahar when they oppose each other. He popped off at ACE (IS #188) this past November, averaging 4.2 powers per game and 86.50 PPG, good for third and second in the field, respectively.

Like Amogh, Ryan was also an insane sophomore, but suffered from playing in his shadow. As he is a history/literature/FA specialist, he has to directly compete with Amogh, but has nevertheless put up amazing stats, averaging 2.3 powers per game alongside Amogh's 4.3 at Triton Fall (HFT) (https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/6 ... detail/#t9). While I don't think he's top-5, Ryan is certainly one of the best sophomores in the country.

While there definitely aren't enough spots in the overall poll to rank all or even most of these players I've mentioned (and unfortunately no subject polls, where many of them would surely have been ranked), their impressive performances throughout the past season certainly deserve attention at the national level.
Josh Xu

Santa Monica High School (Class of 2021, Captain, Team President)
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by AGoodMan »

People shouldn't sleep on Raymond Wang from Ithaca; he's especially killer on literature as I remember from our HFT mirror.

Basil Sousonis is also very, very good from personal observation at HFT. I reckon he's top 30.

I've never seen Uni Lab play, but the fact that not one, but two high schoolers (Ethan Ashbrook and Dylan Bowman) playing on the same team each put up almost 1 power per round on Penn Bowl is extremely impressive (this year's Penn Bowl difficulty was a cut above last year's). Jonathan Lau's stats from NAQT State are also very impressive. There are definitely some very strong generalists out there, but Uni Lab has three unbelievably strong specialists and they should all definitely be in the poll.

Rohan Ganeshan seems to be a strong player and probably deserves consideration in the poll, though I'm not sure if he is in high school yet.

I've known Govind Prabhakar since like 2014 and that dude is insane on history. Don't forget him.
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by K@b00m »

I'll chip in my thoughts here.

In the SE circuit, you definitely need to vote for Aadi Karthik from Lambert for sophomore and perhaps overall. He is extremely good at humanities and scales super well. You also need to consider Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford from East Chapel Hill. Owen Flanagan is overlooked, and he scales really well on history and literature. William Orr from Langley is super good, and Stefan Calin from TJ is insane at science. Just watch him sometimes, you'll see. You could also consider me for Sophomore. Shiva Oswal should also be considered for sophomore- he's insane at history and does really well generalizing.

Karsten Rynearson is hands down, the best sophomore this year, no questions asked. He does insanely well even on college sets and has dominated the Northeast QB circuit with his insane playing skills. He deserves to be first in the sophomore standings and definitely on the Top 30 overall poll. Cooper Roh is also very good, especially at history, and he's generalizing really well. Basil Sousounis won the High School Level C Buzzword Tournament Season 1, and has very impressive stats, and can get questions from literally every category. Hunter is very good as always, and Pedro and Cerulean should both be up for consideration. Ithaca is also super strong this year, and their team members should definitely be there for consideration as well. Dean Ah Now should be on your polls as well, as he has done really well for Millburn this year as always. Abhinav Karthikeyan and Katherine Lei are both specialists, but they are also really good at other categories. But, by far, one of the best players in the DMV circuit is Matthew Siff. His humanities knowledge has dominated the region, and he should definitely be in the top 10 overall. His other teammates have to be considered as well. In Ohio, the Groger brothers (both of them) should definetly be considered, and John John soloed ACF Fall in Chicago with VERY impressive results. He HAS to be in the top ten. Moving west to Illinois, Ethan Ashbrooke, Jonathan Lau, and Dylan Bowman should all be up for consideration. Those three form one of the strongest teams in QB History, I'm sure, and the strongest team by far this year. All of them should be up for consideration. Another duo, Arjun Nageswaran and Govind Prabakhar should also be up there. Govind is probably the strongest history player by far this year, and he should definitely be in the top 30. Moving back south, Robert Condron has done really well on Buzzword, and Chinmay Murthy is one of the strongest NAQT players this year by far. Moving to the far west (PST), Shahar Schwartz, Karan Guruzada, and Avinash Iyer HAVE to be in the top 30. Shahar is crazy at lit and science, Karan is insane at literally everything, and so is Avinash. All three of them have to be in the top 30. Also for consideration should be players from Saratoga and CCA. Eshaan Vakil carries Clark really well.

That's all for now, let me know if I'm missing anybody.
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll

Post by Berniecrat »

Reminder that the poll closes tonight so get your ballots in!
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Re: 2019-20 Groger Ranks Player Poll: RESULTS POSTED

Post by Berniecrat »

Congratulations to your winners!

NATIONAL A TEAM
1. John John Groger - Captain & Player of the Year (the Miami Valley School, Dayton, Ohio, 12)
T-2. Dean Ah Now (Millburn High School, Millburn, New Jersey, 12)
T-2. Matthew Siff (Georgetown Day School, Washington D.C., 12)
4. Avinash Iyer (Mission San Jose High School, Fremont, California, 11)

FRESHMAN OF THE YEAR
Owen Farra (St. Louis Patriots, St. Louis, Missouri)

SOPHOMORE OF THE YEAR
Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts)

If you are one of the winners please email [email protected] with your name and address so we can figure out the safest way to ship your plaques

Full results can be found here: https://grogerranks.com/2020/07/06/2019 ... l-results/

With this, the Groger Ranks season is finally over. We will hopefully have a few updates about our future in the coming months, but for now enjoy your summer and stay safe!
Arjun Nageswaran
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Stevenson '21
Harvard '25
Locked