10 Years of Chicago Open: My Greatest Memories

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Cheynem
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10 Years of Chicago Open: My Greatest Memories

Post by Cheynem »

Assuming I make it, 2019 will be the 11th Chicago Open I have attended. While there's been some ups and downs at this tournament, generally it's one of my favorite events of the year. I'd like to just post about my ten favorite memories from the ten previous ones, and hope others post some great CO memories as well.

2009: My first CO! I was bad and my team was bad (we went 2-10). Our best moment was almost certainly beating a team of Chris Ray/Ike Jose/Matt Lafer/Guy Tabachnick 175-170. Their 8 (8!) negs obviously helped. The round was capped by me getting a tossup on historical werewolves, followed by some bonus on Donald Duck. The question went like this:
[10] Inspired by “Diabolik,” this is Donald’s acanonical crime fighting and avenging alter-ego. Its was initially made only for the Italian market.
I decided to make up the name "Super Duck." This was an acceptable answer. We won by 5 points.

2010: This is one of the craziest CO's I attended. A storm knocked the power out at our hotel on Friday night, and it remained out the entire weekend. The tournament went really long and we still tried to play a lit tournament on Saturday night that literally didn't start until like around midnight. Of our group's two cars, one wouldn't start leaving CO on Saturday night, so those folks didn't get back to the hotel extremely late. My team went 7-7--we won our first game, lost seven in a row, and then won seven in a row. We won the first game when I managed to get this tossup:
His strength derives from his large, fuzzy ears, and his name refers to his skill in dealing with certain marauding animals, whom he kills by grabbing their jaws and ripping them apart bare-handed. For 10 points, name this title badass of the Andrejs Pumpurs-penned national epic of Latvia.


I had no idea who this was, but decided that a Latvian guy might kill...bears, and so his name might be "Bearslayer." And yes, that is an acceptable answer for Lacplesis. We won 245-220.

2011: A solid 6-8 finish, but I thought we played well. The highlight was probably a 305-140 buttwhipping of a Rob Carson-led team. Mik Larsen went 5/4/1 that game and had an amazing tournament throughout.

2012: I actually thought that finishing 6-10 at this tournament was pretty good, considering I ended up as the team's top scorer which is usually a recipe for disaster (my team was very solid though). My highlight here may have been mercilessly playing with the team formation spreadsheet and "naming" most of the teams, which the editors accepted as their actual names. This is why in the stats, you have team names like "Dharma and Greg Bums," "Frankenstein Wolfed the Meat Man," and "Disgusting Human Stains."

2013: The first time finishing above .500 at a CO. The most satisfying result was probably a victory over a very good Mike Sorice-led team that would have been in the finals otherwise. I remember in that round getting a bonus whose first part asked for DJ Baby Bok Choi, a character from a recent SNL Stefon sketch. 30'ing that helped to put that game out of reach.

2014: I played with this Jordan Brownstein kid. He's not bad (my other teammates were all All-Stars as well)! We tied for third place in my best CO finish ever. The most painful moments were probably either Jordan beating me to a wrestling tossup on Andy Kaufman or when Jordan accidentally messed up the name of Kafka's "Report to an Academy," which helped us lose to Matt Bollinger's team. This would perhaps have been even more painful if I had been able to contribute at all that game.

2015: A good, solid performance. Unfortunately, another painful memory:
We were playing a stacked Jordan-led team. Things got off to an interesting start when Evan Adams got a tossup on David Miscavige even though the copy of Going Clear I was reading was literally next to me on the table (I hadn't gotten very far though!). We thought we won, but they got two protests upheld (both, I note, begrudgingly the right calls). This led to a tiebreaker tossup on "opera singers," where all the clues are about foods named after them, which is the shittiest tossup I have ever seen and should never be a tiebreaker tossup. Chris Manners buzzed around the first clue and said "ballerinas," I think just mixing things up. (Amusingly, that tossup is from packet 1 in CO 2015--look a few tossups earlier). I can't blame him.

2016: I helped edit this CO. It was entertaining. The best moment was, of course, winning CO Trash the next day (see that thread).

2017: This was a very tough CO for me. I wasn't feeling the greatest and I had some anxiety issues/depression that weekend. I got like no sleep the night before. To further aggravate things, two of my teammates had flights canceled, preventing them from arriving. The tournament was also very hard, but Shan Kothari's brilliant play got us into the top bracket anyway. I sadly remember almost nothing about this tournament, though (other than never getting to play CO with famous academic and Twitter bad boy Marshall Steinbaum).

2018: Man, in terms of overall weekends, this is probably up there. Things got off to a bad start: I had booked a hotel near Hyde Park prior to the announcement of the move to Evanston--I ended up keeping the Hyde Park one for Friday but opting to book another hotel closer to Evanston for Saturday to avoid a series of really long drives. Then, the weekend before CO, I passed out due to dehydration, and was still experiencing some lightheadness spells that week (so I was apprehensive about a long, fatiguing weekend). I went, and of course, had a fantastic time. My team was great, we shockingly tied for 4th place, and we had a lot of fantastic wins and experiences (and then I won CO Trash again). Just some perosnal highlights:

-one-cluing The Great Dictator tossup on a clue about FDR noting the picture "is causing trouble in the Argentine." Auroni noted that "Mike Cheyne is definitely a person who has used the phrase 'the Argentine.'"
-one-cluing a tossup on "Miss America" against BSHU. Inexplicably getting a visual arts tossup on "Mexico" that round, to set up a chance to win if we could 30 a bonus. We got the middle and hard parts and then totally screwed up an easy part on "Essay Concerning Human Understanding" by saying "Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding" to lose by 5 points.
-in the most symbolic CO result ever, we beat 3rd place, 7th place, and 8th place teams...and lost to 21st place.

What say you, CO fans? What are your memories?
Mike Cheyne
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Re: 10 Years of Chicago Open: My Greatest Memories

Post by setht »

Cheynem wrote: Thu Mar 28, 2019 12:58 pmWe won the first game when I managed to get this tossup:
His strength derives from his large, fuzzy ears, and his name refers to his skill in dealing with certain marauding animals, whom he kills by grabbing their jaws and ripping them apart bare-handed. For 10 points, name this title badass of the Andrejs Pumpurs-penned national epic of Latvia.


I had no idea who this was, but decided that a Latvian guy might kill...bears, and so his name might be "Bearslayer." And yes, that is an acceptable answer for Lacplesis. We won 245-220.
You're welcome.
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Re: 10 Years of Chicago Open: My Greatest Memories

Post by Mike Bentley »

setht wrote: Thu Mar 28, 2019 3:25 pm
Cheynem wrote: Thu Mar 28, 2019 12:58 pmWe won the first game when I managed to get this tossup:
His strength derives from his large, fuzzy ears, and his name refers to his skill in dealing with certain marauding animals, whom he kills by grabbing their jaws and ripping them apart bare-handed. For 10 points, name this title badass of the Andrejs Pumpurs-penned national epic of Latvia.


I had no idea who this was, but decided that a Latvian guy might kill...bears, and so his name might be "Bearslayer." And yes, that is an acceptable answer for Lacplesis. We won 245-220.
You're welcome.
Ugh I remember being on the losing side of this game. I think that year my team did surprisingly well (not due to my efforts) apart from that damned loss.
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Re: 10 Years of Chicago Open: My Greatest Memories

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

In 2006, there was a war between Israel and Lebanon. Matt Weiner sided with Israel. Chris Borglum sided with Lebanon. They argued about it on the internet, and Beirut Borglum told Matt Weiner to put down the giant turkey leg he was holding (Matt Weiner, if you've never seen him, is a very large man). Matt Weiner then said he would beat Borglum at 2006 Chicago Open. Now, Matt Weiner is a really good quizbowl player. Chicago Open is a really hard tournament. You'd think that Matt Weiner's team would wipe the floor with Borglum's team at Chicago Open. But Borglum somehow beat him.
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Re: 10 Years of Chicago Open: My Greatest Memories

Post by Cheynem »

I wasn't there in 2006, obviously, but for the record, Matt's team finished at 9-3 and Borglum's team finished at 7-5 (although Matt's team had far better stats), so perhaps not THAT stunning an upset.
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Re: 10 Years of Chicago Open: My Greatest Memories

Post by Fado Alexandrino »

Every Canadian CO trip just tries to imitate this but fails at doing so.
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Re: 10 Years of Chicago Open: My Greatest Memories

Post by Cosmas's Tabernacular Earth »

The link Joe posted wrote:A lot of quizbowl players need haircuts
Oh no, not this again
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Re: 10 Years of Chicago Open: My Greatest Memories

Post by ValenciaQBowl »

You'd think that Matt Weiner's team would wipe the floor with Borglum's team at Chicago Open. But Borglum somehow beat him.
I've always been amused that Bruce has seemed to enjoy this result even more than anyone on my team that year (though we all enjoyed it, too!). But it should be said that Seth Kendall had the most toss-ups for my team in that match, and my former (at that time, current) Valencia player Sean Platzer got the crucial, penultimate toss-up on Louis Philippe from the clue about him being caricatured as a pear (an image of which Sean had once had tacked up on a bedroom wall). So it was certainly not me beating Matt, an outcome that would never happen if we played one-on-one. And though I did enjoy that win, I hold no negative feelings for Matt, with whom I've had plenty of fine interactions since.
In 2006, there was a war between Israel and Lebanon. Matt Weiner sided with Israel. Chris Borglum sided with Lebanon.
Hmm, I was in no way "siding with Lebanon." As I recall, my main beef in a forum post had to do with recent evidence that the IDF had targeted some Red Cross ambulances ferrying wounded. Unfortunately, some folks (not just Matt) thought I was taking an anti-Israel position, which wasn't my intention at all.

Mike wrote:
The tournament went really long and we still tried to play a lit tournament on Saturday night that literally didn't start until like around midnight.
I remember that lit tournament, which featured really good questions played by a lot of doubles teams featuring people who were wrecked with fatigue. I'm probably remembering it wrong, as I typically do, but I was playing a team of Jerry Vinokurov and somebody and there was a toss-up with an answer line of variants of "cooking spaghetti," based on clues from Haruki Murakami novels, which I got. Then the next day, at some other side event, there was a question on Murakami that used a clue about cooking spaghetti, which I mentioned to Jerry as coming up the night before, and he had no idea what I was talking about, presumably because we were all in something like a fugue state by that lit tournament's end. (But who knows, I may be mixing two events from different years or something--let's see how well y'all remember all the details when you've got 18-19 Chicago Opens under your belts).
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Re: 10 Years of Chicago Open: My Greatest Memories

Post by Cheynem »

The cooking spaghetti tossup, at least the one I remember at CO, was in CO 2012, but there might have been similar questions at other side events.

Also, for those who want to see the turkey leg debate play out in real time and also note that basically the idiocy of old forums discussions have now moved to Facebook and/or Discord:

http://www.hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewto ... 22&t=2994&
Mike Cheyne
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