ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

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ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by vinteuil »

I'm delighted to announce PIANO/MO: Pre-ICT and ACF Nationals Open/Minnesota Open, for mirrors in March 2019. I (Jacob Reed) will be head-editing the set, with other writers and editors including Sam Bailey, Michael Borecki, Stephen Eltinge, Adam Fine, Joey Goldman, Jason Golfinos, Will Holub-Moorman, Matt Jackson, Wonyoung Jang, Michael Kearney, Moses Kitakule, Shan Kothari, Chloe Levine, John Marvin, Adam Silverman, and Derek So.

We are making a concerted effort to have the set be noticeably easier than recent pre-nats opens, while still providing a rigorous nationals-prep experience; our target difficulty could be described as roughly "3.5" on the scale used on Ophir's excellent quizbowl calendar website. All tossups will be 8 lines or less (10pt TNR) before powermarking; bonuses will have no more than 9 lines of clues.

There will be 15 powermarked packets, plus 10/10 tiebreakers.

Our distribution is slightly experimental:
4/4 Literature (1/1 world and other)
4/4 History (1/1 each American, European, and World, with 1/1 Ancient history, archaeology, and "other")
4/4 Science (1/1 biology, 1/1 chemistry, 1/1 physics, 1/1 math and other)
3/3 Arts (1/1 visual, 1/1 auditory, 1/1 audiovisual or "useable"). Just over 1/5 of the slots are earmarked for "world" art.
1/1 Philosophy
1/1 Economics and Psychology
1/1 Religious texts, myths, and legends
1/1 Other religion and other social science
1/1 Other academic, geography, and current events

Please email me (Gmail: jacob.alexander.reed) if you have any questions about the set, would like to mirror it, or would like to contribute.

Mirrors
Canada: Toronto (3/10)
California: Stanford (3/9)
Upper Midwest: Minnesota (3/30)
Lower Midwest: OSU (3/24)
Northeast: Yale (3/30)
Mid-Atlantic: Johns Hopkins (3/9)
Southeast: Georgia Tech (3/30)
UK: Oxford (3/30)
Online (3/10)
Last edited by vinteuil on Wed Mar 06, 2019 7:27 pm, edited 24 times in total.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by vinteuil »

Some quick clarifications:

"Ancient history": this is loosely defined on purpose, allowing us to balance subdistributions as needed. In any event, it's meant to be a global subdistribution with fairly broad chronological boundaries (e.g. it will encompass "Classical" cultures like early imperial China). This tournament will not have 1 historiography/archaeology question per packet; some of "other history" will be common links and other "miscellaneous" material.

Mirrors: I marked "upper" and "lower" Midwest, but by the latter I really meant "a good site for those in the midwest who aren't going to UMN"; I imagine that Ohio or western Pennsylvania would also fit this bill.
Last edited by vinteuil on Fri Aug 24, 2018 10:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

will be head-editing the set, with other writers and editors including Sam Bailey, Michael Borecki, Stephen Eltinge, Jason Golfinos, Matt Jackson, Wonyoung Jang, Michael Kearney, Shan Kothari, Chloe Levine, John Marvin, Adam Silverman, and Derek So.
:shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock:

EDIT: Out of curiosity, will there be any length guidelines / caps for this set? One thing I really didn't like about CMST and this past year's CO was the frequency of ten and eleven line tossups (I'm told some in CMST went as far as twelve). I personally don't see why you need more than eight or nine in a well-controlled set.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by vinteuil »

Length caps are now given in the announcement. (For the record, CO included no 11 line tossups and relatively few of 10 lines.)
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

vinteuil wrote:Length caps are now given in the announcement. (For the record, CO included no 11 line tossups and relatively few of 10 lines.)
I count seven ten-line tossups in Editors 2 alone (edit: four without powers)...but thanks :razz: this is much appreciated
Last edited by naan/steak-holding toll on Fri Aug 24, 2018 12:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by ErikC »

What's the reasoning behind the grouping of economics and psychology as 1/1 separately from other social science? I don't think I've seen that before.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by Cheynem »

MYSTERIUM (also a Jacob Reed joint) did this. A very wise person asked for the reasoning, and Jacob responded:
I think that more economics and psychology results (and more of the people who conducted the studies etc.) make it into newspapers, blogs etc., for instance. And I think that people are more likely to have taken classes in those two than in the other social sciences. But it's definitely not a normative claim about how much econ and psych are intellectually "worth."
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

Would folks on the East Coast consider consolidating on a single mirror site at Yale? I understand that it would be a bit of a haul for Mid-Atlantic folks, myself included, but it'd be pretty cool to have a huge main mirror like (This) Tournament Is A Crime's Michigan site in 2017.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by Romanos I Lekapenos »

Will there be an online mirror for this?
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by Bosa of York »

My opinion is probably both the least important for a good field, and the least affected by Will's idea of anyone who could be called Mid-Atlantic, but I'd go up to a Yale site.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by vinteuil »

theclassicsguy wrote: Thu Nov 01, 2018 8:41 pm Will there be an online mirror for this?
I'm happy to let other people use it for an online mirror, but not interested in running one myself.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by Beevor Feevor »

Has there been a decision made on whether a southern mid-Atlantic site will exist? I'd prefer to have a JHU site for convenience, given that JHU requires a hotel on our part already, but UVA will travel if necessary for Yale.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

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Beevor Feevor wrote: Tue Nov 06, 2018 4:38 pm Has there been a decision made on whether a southern mid-Atlantic site will exist? I'd prefer to have a JHU site for convenience, given that JHU requires a hotel on our part already, but UVA will travel if necessary for Yale.
Are you asking if the JHU mirror is confirmed? It is.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by Beevor Feevor »

vinteuil wrote: Tue Nov 06, 2018 9:00 pm
Beevor Feevor wrote: Tue Nov 06, 2018 4:38 pm Has there been a decision made on whether a southern mid-Atlantic site will exist? I'd prefer to have a JHU site for convenience, given that JHU requires a hotel on our part already, but UVA will travel if necessary for Yale.
Are you asking if the JHU mirror is confirmed? It is.
I am indeed. Phenomenal! I'll look forward to a date confirmation.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

vinteuil wrote: Thu Aug 23, 2018 4:26 pm Lower Midwest: OSU (date TBD)
wait what

EDIT: to be clear, this will have the same field-decimating problem that the second Midwest mirror of CMST would have had.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by Cheynem »

Regardless of where this tournament is, I'd like to see some hard dates announced pretty soon.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by CPiGuy »

Auks Ran Ova wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 2:40 pm
vinteuil wrote: Thu Aug 23, 2018 4:26 pm Lower Midwest: OSU (date TBD)
wait what

EDIT: to be clear, this will have the same field-decimating problem that the second Midwest mirror of CMST would have had.
Jacob, unlike the CMST editors, listed all of the intended mirror sites when the set was announced and was pretty clear that there would be a second Midwest mirror about three months ago, so this shouldn't come as a surprise:
vinteuil wrote: Thu Aug 23, 2018 5:14 pm Mirrors: I marked "upper" and "lower" Midwest, but by the latter I really meant "a good site for those in the midwest who aren't going to UMN"; I imagine that Ohio or western Pennsylvania would also fit this bill.
Expecting Michigan, Michigan State, and Ohio State, plus any other interested Ohio schools, to travel great distances for the second year in a row is pretty unreasonable, not to mention that the existence of an OSU site should be more convenient for Chicagoland people, who now have a site that's over an hour closer to them. I completely understand Rob's desire to have a large field at his preferred site, but the only way to ensure that would inconvenience a significantly greater number of teams. I appreciate both the editors' forthrightness and timeliness in posting mirror information and their decision to prioritize access to the tournament over a limited number of supersites.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by vinteuil »

Auks Ran Ova wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 2:40 pm
vinteuil wrote: Thu Aug 23, 2018 4:26 pm Lower Midwest: OSU (date TBD)
wait what

EDIT: to be clear, this will have the same field-decimating problem that the second Midwest mirror of CMST would have had.
I had a number of Midwestern teams say they simply wouldn't be able to attend a Minnesota mirror.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by touchpack »

Do not hold two Midwest mirrors, period, full stop.

Nobody wants to play in the fractured fields that would result, and I implore the editors to cancel one of them immediately.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

touchpack wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 3:07 pm Do not hold two Midwest mirrors, period, full stop.

Nobody wants to play in the fractured fields that would result, and I implore the editors to cancel one of them immediately.
Agreed. The Midwest can't support substantial fields at two sites for a tournament of this difficulty. Traditionally editing the tournament entitles you/your team to at least right of first refusal for a site, so it's somewhat irritating that Minnesota would have a site promised to it, then yanked away, but that's probably on balance less irritating than having a site promised to it, then having another site pull away 80% of its potential field.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by A Dim-Witted Saboteur »

Just posting here to say that this new OSU site is likely the difference between Michigan State attending this tournament and either not doing that or paying exorbitant sums out of pocket. I applaud the editors' decision to announce it.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

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Auks Ran Ova wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 3:20 pm
touchpack wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 3:07 pm Do not hold two Midwest mirrors, period, full stop.

Nobody wants to play in the fractured fields that would result, and I implore the editors to cancel one of them immediately.
Agreed. The Midwest can't support substantial fields at two sites for a tournament of this difficulty. Traditionally editing the tournament entitles you/your team to at least right of first refusal for a site, so it's somewhat irritating that Minnesota would have a site promised to it, then yanked away, but that's probably on balance less irritating than having a site promised to it, then having another site pull away 80% of its potential field.
I mean, as Connor pointed out, I announced my intention to look for a site in OSU range months ago; I had representatives from a number of midwest teams say that they were likely to simply not be able to play the tournament if the only midwest mirror were in Minnesota.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by vinteuil »

Just to be clear, I'm talking to Shan about consolidating to one Midwest site and promise this will be resolved soon but like...I posted about this two months ago precisely in case people had problems with it! I wish people had brought up these concerns in the meantime.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

vinteuil wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 3:24 pm
Auks Ran Ova wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 3:20 pm
touchpack wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 3:07 pm Do not hold two Midwest mirrors, period, full stop.

Nobody wants to play in the fractured fields that would result, and I implore the editors to cancel one of them immediately.
Agreed. The Midwest can't support substantial fields at two sites for a tournament of this difficulty. Traditionally editing the tournament entitles you/your team to at least right of first refusal for a site, so it's somewhat irritating that Minnesota would have a site promised to it, then yanked away, but that's probably on balance less irritating than having a site promised to it, then having another site pull away 80% of its potential field.
I mean, as Connor pointed out, I announced my intention to look for a site in OSU range months ago; I had representatives from a number of midwest teams say that they were likely to simply not be able to play the tournament if the only midwest mirror were in Minnesota.
Sure, I mean, my fault for not noticing and saying something earlier, I guess. We're saying now (still months in advance, thankfully) that unlike lower-difficulty tournaments, open tournaments like this generally can't support multiple decent-sized Midwest mirrors. This shouldn't be a particularly hard thing to anticipate, not least because of the issue with CMST last year. I'm certainly not unsympathetic* to teams constrained by budget issues, so I can understand the decision to put a site in a more accessible location, but this combination of circumstances means that Minnesota is basically unavoidably getting screwed here, which sucks.

*well, to be honest, maybe a little unsympathetic, having spent years in school at Minnesota constantly driving to relatively distant places like UIUC, Michigan, or MSU, then paying out of pocket to travel to those places from Minnesota as an open player, but my personal circumstances are certainly not everyone's!
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by Wartortullian »

Cheynem wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 2:54 pm Regardless of where this tournament is, I'd like to see some hard dates announced pretty soon.
Echoing this. Some of us would like to book flights as early as possible.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

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CPiGuy wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 3:06 pm
Expecting Michigan, Michigan State, and Ohio State, plus any other interested Ohio schools, to travel great distances for the second year in a row is pretty unreasonable, not to mention that the existence of an OSU site should be more convenient for Chicagoland people, who now have a site that's over an hour closer to them. I completely understand Rob's desire to have a large field at his preferred site, but the only way to ensure that would inconvenience a significantly greater number of teams. I appreciate both the editors' forthrightness and timeliness in posting mirror information and their decision to prioritize access to the tournament over a limited number of supersites.
Even if OSU was cancelled, nobody's forcing you to go to Minnesota. If Johns Hopkins is more convenient and you'd rather play that field, go there. Breaking up the Midwest is dumb for the same reasons it was dumb last time. Not having a strong Minnesota site for a tournament putatively called Minnesota Open is, uh, weird?
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by CPiGuy »

Aaron's Rod wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 5:14 pm
CPiGuy wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 3:06 pm
Expecting Michigan, Michigan State, and Ohio State, plus any other interested Ohio schools, to travel great distances for the second year in a row is pretty unreasonable, not to mention that the existence of an OSU site should be more convenient for Chicagoland people, who now have a site that's over an hour closer to them. I completely understand Rob's desire to have a large field at his preferred site, but the only way to ensure that would inconvenience a significantly greater number of teams. I appreciate both the editors' forthrightness and timeliness in posting mirror information and their decision to prioritize access to the tournament over a limited number of supersites.
Even if OSU was cancelled, nobody's forcing you to go to Minnesota. If Johns Hopkins is more convenient and you'd rather play that field, go there. Breaking up the Midwest is dumb for the same reasons it was dumb last time. Not having a strong Minnesota site for a tournament putatively called Minnesota Open is, uh, weird?
Uhm, JHU is still a pretty great distance from Michigan -- I think it'd be over eight hours' drive, and therefore almost ten for MSU.

I agree that breaking up the Midwest is dumb, I just also think that hosting the only Midwest mirror in Minnesota is more dumb, seeing as Minnesota is basically the least convenient possible site in the Midwest (short of, like, Michigan Tech).
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by Cheynem »

I feel like since Sam and Shan (not to be confused with Sam the Sham) worked on the set, it would only be fair to have the tournament be in Minnesota. I do agree that sucks for Michigan and perhaps Ohio teams, and so I would urge that whatever regular season open tournament happens in 2020 be mirrored elsewhere. If we had access to a time machine, perhaps we could even move the 2018 CMST out of Minnesota as well.

I am curious how much of the field would be affected. Last year, the people who came into Minneapolis were a few retired players from Michigan, two Michigan State players, a sort of full Michigan team, various U of Chicago teams (not the main A team), and the usual retired people from Illinois and Chicago (not counting Minnesota people/teams themselves). I would expect an Ohio State mirror would affect the Michigan schools, but I wonder how many of them would have come into Minnesota anyway. Would that also grab the Chicago people?
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

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CPiGuy wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 5:30 pmI just also think that hosting the only Midwest mirror in Minnesota is more dumb,
What part of "Minnesotans wrote for this" do you not get?
CPiGuy wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 5:30 pm seeing as Minnesota is basically the least convenient possible site in the Midwest (short of, like, Michigan Tech).
Michigan Tech! A great example of a team that's willing to travel to Minneapolis once a year. (And yes, I get how MI geography works, but it's still >6 hours for Michigan Tech and NMU.)
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

CPiGuy wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 5:30 pmUhm, JHU is still a pretty great distance from Michigan -- I think it'd be over eight hours' drive, and therefore almost ten for MSU.
Ten hours is a conservative estimate of the drive time from Minnesota to Michigan and is markedly less than potential drives to Michigan State or, to pick another Midwest location at random, Ohio State. Sometimes, especially for relatively limited-audience tournaments like high-difficulty opens, you just have to choose whether or not you want to travel an inconvenient distance (or trade cost for time and buy* a plane ticket).

This is not to say, of course, that the spring open (or any given tournament) should always be in Minnesota (or in any one location); that would be absurd. However, Mike re-raises the very valid point that two Minnesota players are editing this tournament , which is basically the strongest indicator of hosting priority there is.

*honestly not trying to be self-aggrandizing here, just indicating my dedicated willingness to put my money where my mouth is. I'd happily attend a 2020 open in Michigan, and would once again encourage the UMN team to do the same!
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by CPiGuy »

There are as many Harvard and Chicago players listed among the tournament producers as Minnesotans; I fail to see why Minnesota in particular ought to get a site as a result of this. I guess they might just be writing and not editing, though.

More to the point, since people seem to be in agreement that there ought to be one site for the entire Midwest and not a "lower midwest" and "upper midwest" site, I contend that Minnesota is a uniquely bad choice to be such a site, given its considerable distance from, uh, literally everyone else in the Midwest quizbowl circuit (seriously, Chicagoland is the closest at six hours). If Minnesotans want to host a site for the tournament, that's fine, but it's unreasonable of them to expect that to be taken seriously as a good site for the entire Midwest -- especially since a number of Midwest teams have apparently indicated their inability or unwillingness to play at such a site. I can't help but think it's a little bit selfish for Minnesotans to want to host the tournament themselves, exclusively, even when doing so would prevent several teams from playing the set at all!
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by Cody »

Minnesota has been given a mirror because they have editors there, which is a fine quizbowl norm but is at odds with the plans of the editing group as a whole. The question is who will actually play at the Minnesota mirror if there is an additional site in the Midwest? Pretty much no one, which means that (as hashed out last year) the Midwest cannot support a mirror at Minnesota and a mirror elsewhere in the Midwest.

It is understandable if the editing group of PIANO/MO and players in the Midwest desire a more accessible mirror. But if that was the intention from the start, what was the point of awarding essentially a 2-team mirror to Minnesota?

It seems to me that Minnesota, more than anyone, encounters problems with (essentially) being baited-and-switched out of mirrors when players in the Midwest express resistance to traveling to UMN. I find that unfair, and I would be pretty upset if it happened to my program.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by vinteuil »

Cody wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 6:27 pmIt is understandable if the editing group of PIANO/MO and players in the Midwest desire a more accessible mirror. But if that was the intention from the start, what was the point of awarding essentially a 2-team mirror to Minnesota?
Again, multiple times in the intervening two months, a number of representatives from midwestern quizbowl teams seemed to think that OSU was sufficiently far enough away for this to work out (i.e. that at least some Chicago-area teams would go up to UMN).
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by Muriel Axon »

I'm initiating a conversation about this with our club leadership and with Sam. At this point, I'm speaking for nobody but myself.

I'm not too invested in having a Minnesota mirror -- although of course Sam and I would both like to see our questions in play. My take is that:

1. Various folks are right that there's no way to have two Midwestern mirrors of a tournament without splitting the field, and
2. The only place where you can put a Midwestern mirror without making it hard for someone to attend is, like, Chicago.

I apologize that I didn't bring this up with Jacob earlier; I saw that he was looking for an "eastern Midwest" site in Ohio or Pennsylvania, but I just had just imagined that it would be in Pittsburgh or something (?). In any case, not thinking about what this would mean was a poor choice on my part.

I feel fairly confident that some good Minnesota teams (from UMN, St. Olaf, Carleton, and potentially open teams) are not likely to drive or fly to OSU, but I also don't feel good about having a mirror of a hard open tournament with only six local teams. There may be teams that couldn't play a UMN mirror, but there are also teams that couldn't play an OSU mirror.

I went to Michigan State as an undergraduate and road-tripped with Joe, Connor, and Ryan Dillon to Minneapolis for Minnesota Open -- that was just the sort of thing you had to do to play! There was an entire era when the main site of Minnesota Open was an event that people would travel long distances to attend. Maybe now standards have shifted and that's considered an unreasonable burden, but we used to do it. I bring this up not because I have a strong personal stake in the ultimate decision (see above), but because I just think the idea that Minnesota is inaccessible is not right.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by CPiGuy »

Cody wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 6:27 pm It seems to me that Minnesota, more than anyone, encounters problems with (essentially) being baited-and-switched out of mirrors when players in the Midwest express resistance to traveling to UMN. I find that unfair, and I would be pretty upset if it happened to my program.
This is, uh, literally what happened to Michigan last year with CMST, and I am in fact pretty upset that it happened to my program. (I don't really want to go into my issues with the CMST editing team here, but suffice to say that that experience is a large part of the reason I have such strong opinions this time around.) I sincerely hope that PIANO's editors don't do the same thing to Ohio State. Minnesotans have had almost three months to express their desire to Jacob that there not be a Lower Midwest site, seeing as he not only included it in the mirror list but made a separate post explicitly indicating the intent to have a mirror in Ohio or Western Pennsylvania; for them to only do so once it is announced is extremely unfair to the OSU club, who may have declined to bid for sites of other spring tournaments in favor of this once (since that's sure as hell what Michigan did last year)!

I would encourage the editors to cancel neither mirror, unless Cody is correct in that the field for a Minnesota mirror would be so small as to be untenable. Even if only, say, 6 teams play at Minnesota, they should still get to host the tournament if they so desire -- just not at the expense of the rest of the Midwest.
Last edited by CPiGuy on Mon Nov 12, 2018 6:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

CPiGuy wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 6:19 pmI can't help but think it's a little bit selfish for Minnesotans to want to host the tournament themselves, exclusively, even when doing so would prevent several teams from playing the set at all!
Similarly, I can't help but think it's a little selfish for various teams to take the position that occasionally traveling to Minnesota is an unbearably onerous burden, but never consider that the same principle might perhaps apply in reverse to Minnesota and Minnesotans traveling to the other ends of the Midwest. It would be nice if no tournament ever required lengthy travel for anyone, but living in one of the sparser parts of a huge-ass country kind of precludes that.
vinteuil wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 6:34 pm Again, multiple times in the intervening two months, a number of representatives from midwestern quizbowl teams seemed to think that OSU was sufficiently far enough away for this to work out (i.e. that at least some Chicago-area teams would go up to UMN).
I'd be willing to hear this out; that is, if the Minnesota field is closer to what Mike describes (i.e. the CMST field from last year) than to what I initially expected, I think it could work--with the caveat that I still believe trying to split the Midwest field for an open tournament will generally be a much worse idea than simply hosting it at various places in various years so everyone eventually does their own share of the traveling.
Muriel Axon wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 6:36 pm I went to Michigan State as an undergraduate and road-tripped with Joe, Connor, and Ryan Dillon to Minneapolis for Minnesota Open -- that was just the sort of thing you had to do to play! There was an entire era when the main site of Minnesota Open was an event that people would travel long distances to attend. Maybe now standards have shifted and that's considered an unreasonable burden, but we used to do it. I bring this up not because I have a strong personal stake in the ultimate decision (see above), but because I just think the idea that Minnesota is inaccessible is not right.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by Cody »

CPiGuy wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 6:41 pm
Cody wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 6:27 pm It seems to me that Minnesota, more than anyone, encounters problems with (essentially) being baited-and-switched out of mirrors when players in the Midwest express resistance to traveling to UMN. I find that unfair, and I would be pretty upset if it happened to my program.
This is, uh, literally what happened to Michigan last year with CMST, and I am in fact pretty upset that it happened to my program.
I won't argue that you shouldn't be upset with the editors of CMST. But Minnesota was (quite clearly) the program most wronged by the additional Midwest mirror of CMST that then had to be revoked, and I think you are focusing some of your anger at the wrong target.
Auks Ran Ova wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 6:41 pmI'd be willing to hear this out; that is, if the Minnesota field is closer to what Mike describes (i.e. the CMST field from last year) than to what I initially expected, I think it could work--with the caveat that I still believe trying to split the Midwest field for an open tournament will generally be a much worse idea than simply hosting it at various places in various years so everyone eventually does their own share of the traveling.
This is good practice for all regions, and something for editors to be cognizant of year-to-year.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by Wartortullian »

Muriel Axon wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 6:36 pm I went to Michigan State as an undergraduate and road-tripped with Joe, Connor, and Ryan Dillon to Minneapolis for Minnesota Open -- that was just the sort of thing you had to do to play! There was an entire era when the main site of Minnesota Open was an event that people would travel long distances to attend. Maybe now standards have shifted and that's considered an unreasonable burden, but we used to do it. I bring this up not because I have a strong personal stake in the ultimate decision (see above), but because I just think the idea that Minnesota is inaccessible is not right.
Agreed. Long travel times are a thing; deal with it.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by touchpack »

Muriel Axon wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 6:36 pm I went to Michigan State as an undergraduate and road-tripped with Joe, Connor, and Ryan Dillon to Minneapolis for Minnesota Open -- that was just the sort of thing you had to do to play! There was an entire era when the main site of Minnesota Open was an event that people would travel long distances to attend. Maybe now standards have shifted and that's considered an unreasonable burden, but we used to do it. I bring this up not because I have a strong personal stake in the ultimate decision (see above), but because I just think the idea that Minnesota is inaccessible is not right.
I absolutely agree with this--it's preposterous to suggest that a bit of travel is unreasonable. Literally every year I've been in quizbowl, there has been one Midwest site of the spring open, and teams travel to it, because traveling is part of quizbowl! Sometimes people from Minnesota come to the lower midwest, sometimes people from the lower midwest come to Minnesota--over time, it all balances out and is fair to everyone. Suck it up and travel like literally everyone in the midwest (and in quizbowl in general!) does year in and year out.

I maintain that splitting the fields is a terrible idea and I would consider staying home if the MN mirror is going to be only 4-6 teams because of this nonsense.
Last edited by touchpack on Mon Nov 12, 2018 7:11 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by touchpack »

One other point I'd like to make: part of the allure of playing a hard-difficulty open tournament is the opportunity for a highly competitive field to form from groups of highly talented quizbowlers of various ages and various locations travelling to one place. Like, Chicago Open has exactly one site for a reason! The spring open usually only has a few sites, and always has exactly one in the midwest. Splitting up the talent in the midwest to me is antithetical to the purpose of running a high-difficulty open in the first place. If this were a regular season closed regular difficulty tournament, of course there would be an upper and lower midwest mirror--but that's a completely different scenario, and the spring open has (since 2011) ALWAYS had exactly one midwest site for good reason! In my eyes, diluting the field ruins an important part of the tournament experience, and depending on how the fields shake out I would seriously consider staying home if that happens.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by vinteuil »

touchpack wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 8:45 pm One other point I'd like to make: part of the allure of playing a hard-difficulty open tournament is the opportunity for a highly competitive field to form from groups of highly talented quizbowlers of various ages and various locations travelling to one place. Like, Chicago Open has exactly one site for a reason! The spring open usually only has a few sites, and always has exactly one in the midwest. Splitting up the talent in the midwest to me is antithetical to the purpose of running a high-difficulty open in the first place. If this were a regular season closed regular difficulty tournament, of course there would be an upper and lower midwest mirror--but that's a completely different scenario, and the spring open has (since 2011) ALWAYS had exactly one midwest site for good reason! In my eyes, diluting the field ruins an important part of the tournament experience, and depending on how the fields shake out I would seriously consider staying home if that happens.
I don't want to get too off-topic here, but I want to point out that you and I have had radically different quizbowl experiences, largely colored by the regions we spent most of our scholastic careers playing in. Northeast spring open mirrors are "just another tournament" for the most part, so I've only had the experience you talk about once (in 2014) and it hasn't been a problem for me.

Likewise, after years of playing in this circuit, I've seen many times that, when teams say that they (due to problems of funding and/or numbers of drivers) simply won't be able to go to a tournament far away, they legitimately will just not go. Nobody wants that. I trust that, when MSU and other schools say they would have had real, legitimate problems coming to a Minnesota mirror (to the extent that they would be likely not to be able to attend any site), they actually mean it.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by Mike Bentley »

For what it's worth I'm most likely going to attend the Minnesota mirror and am looking for teammates.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by A Dim-Witted Saboteur »

While I have no issue with going long distances (including to Minnesota!) for tournaments (and neither do my teammates), we remain under budgetary and "no one wants to drive 9 1/2 hours"-ary constraints that people telling us to "suck it up and drive" and petulantly threatening to boycott this tournament do very little to address.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by Wartortullian »

So, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that the UMN site would require Illinois players for a decent field, but the OSU site wouldn't---the problem being that OSU is a slightly shorter drive from Chicago than UMN. What if the editors allow both sites, but require special approval for people traveling from central time to play at OSU?

Also, sorry if I was too harsh above. I realize that all teams have constraints on where they can travel to, and I shouldn't take my frustration with our circuit out on the midwest.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by Maxwell Sniffingwell »

Mike Bentley wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 9:06 pm For what it's worth I'm most likely going to attend the Minnesota mirror and am looking for teammates.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by Viridian »

A Very Long Math Tossup wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 9:45 pm So, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that the UMN site would require Illinois players for a decent field, but the OSU site wouldn't---the problem being that OSU is a slightly shorter drive from Chicago than UMN. What if the editors allow both sites, but require special approval for people traveling from central time to play at OSU?
I fully endorse this -- throwing one Midwestern mirror under the bus in order to facilitate another should be avoided. Granted that roughly 5 or so individuals at last year's UMN CMST mirror were from Michigan, I don't believe that this would hinder any of the Midwestern fields (even though I generally dislike the idea of having 2 Midwestern mirrors in the first place).

In general, the intent of PIANO entails, as stated in the OP,
vinteuil wrote: Thu Aug 23, 2018 4:26 pm providing a rigorous nationals-prep experience
Sacrificing the field size of a single mirror fundamentally contradicts the idea of providing nationals-prep experience, to speak for the collegiate teams that attend these tournaments for that purpose. Ideally, providing a nationals-prep experience would consist of having a singular tournament in the Midwest. Due to the concerns mentioned throughout this thread, I do understand why there would need to be two mirrors (and I fully empathize w/ Conor + the rest of Michigan as to their reasons why). Even if there's no (or barely any) precedent, I feel as though the sole purpose of having a suitable field size at both mirrors serves as grounds to implement special approval for teams traveling from CST who want to attend the OSU mirror. Since the editors decided that there would be two mirrors in the Midwest, I encourage them to consider implementing (and administrating) this to equalize both mirrors' fields.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by Good Goblin Housekeeping »

hey so i went to a school that was hypothetically in the middle of the state of illinois, which happened to be maybe... less than 5 hours from OSu and like a 7.5 hour drive to umn I sure as hell would want to go to the osu mirror and would be pretty peeved if for some reason the editors of the set require i have special permission for that in hypothetical situation we could drive the morning of
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by ThisIsMyUsername »

I am not going to wade into the debates about the correct number and location of sites for this tournament, whether travel sacrifices should be reciprocal, etc. I just want to comment on this horror of an idea:
A Very Long Math Tossup wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 9:45 pm So, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that the UMN site would require Illinois players for a decent field, but the OSU site wouldn't---the problem being that OSU is a slightly shorter drive from Chicago than UMN. What if the editors allow both sites, but require special approval for people traveling from central time to play at OSU?
If you are seriously proposing or endorsing this, then you either have failed to notice the word "open" in the tournament's name or you do not understand what this word means. To make a tournament open, you don't add restrictions that aren't applicable to closed tournaments. You don't take two teams that can and do play tournaments at the same site throughout the entire regular season, and tell them that they now can't play each other if they want to.

There is also an ambiguity here. Open tournaments are played by open teams--ones composed of people who are not necessarily from the same school or even in school at all. Does "Illinois players" mean literally any player coming from the state of Illinois, or just teams from schools in Illinois? If it means the former, then in addition to stopping school teams from playing their normal opponents, you are also preventing people from forming teams that cut across geographical lines (which is, again, part of the point of an open tournament). If it means the latter, then we are in the even more ridiculous situation in which you are penalized for wanting to play with your normal teammates.
Viridian wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 10:20 pm I fully endorse this -- throwing one Midwestern mirror under the bus in order to facilitate another should be avoided.
Throwing players under the bus to facilitate propping up another site should be avoided even more strenuously. Mirrors exist to serve players, by giving them a chance to play a tournament. Players do not exist to serve mirrors, by giving them business.
Viridian wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 10:20 pm Sacrificing the field size of a single mirror fundamentally contradicts the idea of providing nationals-prep experience, to speak for the collegiate teams that attend these tournaments for that purpose. [...] Even if there's no (or barely any) precedent, I feel as though the sole purpose of having a suitable field size at both mirrors serves as grounds to implement special approval for teams traveling from CST who want to attend the OSU mirror. Since the editors decided that there would be two mirrors in the Midwest, I encourage them to consider implementing (and administrating) this to equalize both mirrors' fields.
I have checked the midterm election results, and confirmed that you were not, in fact, chosen "to speak for the collegiate teams that attend these tournaments for that purpose." Speak for yourself. Especially when you are making the entirely nonsensical claim that preventing the strongest teams in the region from playing each other somehow affords them better prep for nationals.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

ThisIsMyUsername wrote:Throwing players under the bus to facilitate propping another site (a site mostly being demanded by hosts rather than players) should be avoided even more strenuously. Mirrors exist to afford players a chance to play a tournament. Players do not exist to give mirrors business.
This, exactly this. Some people (myself included) are fine traveling long distances for mirrors. Others lack the funds and/or patience and/or time to do so. On balance, giving more people a reasonable opportunity to play the set is better than creating more strong mirrors. I'd prefer if the Mid-Atlantic were a single mirror, but the main editors have every right to run the main mirror at their school (Yale) and doing so would make the tournament pretty inaccessible for teams like Duke and UVA.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Post by Muriel Axon »

The bottom line is that without a strong showing of support for a Minnesota mirror -- whether underlain by a formal rule directing teams there or not -- it just won't happen. I encourage people who would be likely to play a UMN mirror to list their names or their teams on this spreadsheet. The main purpose of the Notes columns are to indicate whether your attendance depends on the date. This information will help us figure out whether we can run a mirror or not. Of course, we will take into account that not everyone is on the forums all the time.

Signing up on this spreadsheet is certainly not committing to play, but we also can't be in a position where we think we have enough interest to run a mirror and then everyone flakes. Please be judicious.

EDIT: swapped out link for one I can allow people to edit more easily

EDIT: edited again on request to fix the link
Last edited by Muriel Axon on Thu Nov 15, 2018 12:44 am, edited 1 time in total.
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