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PIANO / Minnesota Open @ UMN, 3/30

Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2019 9:14 pm
by Muriel Axon
We are pleased to announce a mirror of PIANO / Minnesota Open on the Minneapolis campus of University of Minnesota on March 30, 2019. The exact building has yet to be determined, but it's likely to be Blegen Hall. PIANO is an open tournament, which means that anyone can register and teams can comprise players from multiple universities. This is a nationals-prep tournament, which means it will be tougher than ACF Regionals, but easier than ACF Nationals.

Registration
You can register by emailing kotha020 [at] umn.edu (cc: suacb [at] umn.edu) with the full roster of your team. A team formation spreadsheet is available here, but listing yourself there is not an official registration. (Note that this is the same as the 'interest' spreadsheet from earlier; remove yourself if you're no longer interested.

Fee schedule
Base fee: $120 per team
Buzzer: -$5/approved system
Staffer: -$15/approved staffer
Travel: -$10/200 miles one way
[this fee schedule is subject to revision as I consult with our team's board, but this is what it was for CMST last year]

We'll accept checks for "University of Minnesota Quizbowl Team" the day of the tournament, or mailed to arrive beforehand (PM for address).

Side events: we are still not 100% sure we will have side events, but we are currently planning to have them -- aiming to work this out ASAP!

Re: PIANO / Minnesota Open @ UMN, 3/30

Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2019 1:18 pm
by Muriel Axon
We are planning to run Eyes That Do Not See at lunch on Saturday, and we (or rather, someone) will figure out lunch delivery such that players can eat and play at the same time. I'm not aware of any other academic side events that will be ready by the mirror date.

Erik Nelson contacted us about whether we can get enough of a field for a second Twin Cities ACRONYM mirror on Sunday. I think that mirror is contingent on at least one of (1) there being a second side event to host then (to lessen the financial burden on us/Erik); (2) finding a place that doesn't charge for Sunday rooms; or, (3) getting a fairly large field. If you really want to see that mirror happen, contact me and/or Erik.

I apologize for the delay in figuring this out!

Re: PIANO / Minnesota Open @ UMN, 3/30

Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2019 4:56 pm
by Mike Bentley
Any chance for a mirror of the Guerilla History tournament after the main event on Saturday?

Re: PIANO / Minnesota Open @ UMN, 3/30

Posted: Fri Mar 08, 2019 3:44 pm
by Muriel Axon
Some of you have asked about side events. Thanks for your patience -- I'm sorry I didn't get back to you earlier! Here are my thoughts.

There is some interest in the following events: ACRONYM, SHAWARMA, and Guerrilla History. We are considering hosting these on Sunday. (Eyes would be on Saturday at lunch.) To answer Mike's question -- hosting them on Saturday seems out of the question because PIANO + Eyes may go late, we technically don't have access to the rooms after 4 unless we pay ~$280 for them, and we can't pay that much unless we run multiple events, which we probably wouldn't have time to do.

So, we would really have to do it on Sunday. I've created sheets in the sign-up sheet to assess how many people are interested in each of the events. SHAWARMA seems doable over lunch; the order of the other two has yet to be determined. Please sign up by Wednesday, March 13 if you're interested! You can still sign up afterwards (most likely), but if you have a stake in making sure your preferred side events happen, sign up as soon as you can.

We may have to ask for some amount (no more than $15 per person) to recoup costs of running these events. We are hoping to keep this cost down.

Re: PIANO / Minnesota Open @ UMN, 3/30

Posted: Fri Mar 08, 2019 4:26 pm
by Mike Bentley
Muriel Axon wrote: Fri Mar 08, 2019 3:44 pm Some of you have asked about side events. Thanks for your patience -- I'm sorry I didn't get back to you earlier! Here are my thoughts.

There is some interest in the following events: ACRONYM, SHAWARMA, and Guerrilla History. We are considering hosting these on Sunday. (Eyes would be on Saturday at lunch.) To answer Mike's question -- hosting them on Saturday seems out of the question because PIANO + Eyes may go late, we technically don't have access to the rooms after 4 unless we pay ~$280 for them, and we can't pay that much unless we run multiple events, which we probably wouldn't have time to do.

So, we would really have to do it on Sunday. I've created sheets in the sign-up sheet to assess how many people are interested in each of the events. SHAWARMA seems doable over lunch; the order of the other two has yet to be determined. Please sign up by Wednesday, March 13 if you're interested! You can still sign up afterwards (most likely), but if you have a stake in making sure your preferred side events happen, sign up as soon as you can.

We may have to ask for some amount (no more than $15 per person) to recoup costs of running these events. We are hoping to keep this cost down.
I thought there had been earlier discussion where there weren't going to be Sunday side events? I booked my flight such that I can't make any events on Sunday. I don't know about the rest of the field, but I'd be willing to pay the extra money to reserve rooms after 4 (it seems like that would work out to just like $12 per players if we had 6 teams).

We can also not hold Eyes (or push it it to Sunday and have someone else run it) if it means playing Guerilla on Saturday.

Re: PIANO / Minnesota Open @ UMN, 3/30

Posted: Fri Mar 08, 2019 4:30 pm
by Muriel Axon
Mike, you're right that I should have been more prompt in figuring this out -- basically, as someone who doesn't check the forums too often, I wasn't aware that these events existed until Tejas sent me messages about them. I also took too long to publicly announce that Sunday events were a possibility after Tejas's messages. That was a mistake on my part.

Everything in my post above assumes that most quiz bowl players have a low willingness-to-pay for these sorts of things. If it turns out I am extremely wrong about that, and we can get a large field of teams who can pay enough to recoup room costs, I would be glad to run Guerrilla History on Saturday.

Re: PIANO / Minnesota Open @ UMN, 3/30

Posted: Fri Mar 08, 2019 4:39 pm
by Mike Bentley
Muriel Axon wrote: Fri Mar 08, 2019 4:30 pm Mike, you're right that I should have been more prompt in figuring this out -- basically, as someone who doesn't check the forums too often, I wasn't aware that these events existed until Tejas sent me messages about them. I also took too long to publicly announce that Sunday events were a possibility after Tejas's messages. That was a mistake on my part.

Everything in my post above assumes that most quiz bowl players have a low willingness-to-pay for these sorts of things. If it turns out I am extremely wrong about that, and we can get a large field of teams who can pay enough to recoup room costs, I would be glad to run Guerrilla History on Saturday.
I mean, these costs ought to just be included in the main event fee. There's no way we're going to finish at 4 PM. And frankly if we're leaving that up to chance I'm going to explore going to another site because that's a pretty crappy experience.

Re: PIANO / Minnesota Open @ UMN, 3/30

Posted: Fri Mar 08, 2019 7:40 pm
by Auks Ran Ova
Muriel Axon wrote: Fri Mar 08, 2019 4:30 pm Mike, you're right that I should have been more prompt in figuring this out -- basically, as someone who doesn't check the forums too often, I wasn't aware that these events existed until Tejas sent me messages about them. I also took too long to publicly announce that Sunday events were a possibility after Tejas's messages. That was a mistake on my part.

Everything in my post above assumes that most quiz bowl players have a low willingness-to-pay for these sorts of things. If it turns out I am extremely wrong about that, and we can get a large field of teams who can pay enough to recoup room costs, I would be glad to run Guerrilla History on Saturday.
I'm not sure why you'd assume people have low willingness to pay! Even increased to offset the cost of extra room rental time, I don't think open tournament audiences generally have a problem with this--entry fees are relatively small compared to travel costs for this sort of event, and people are generally happy to play as many events as possible to get their money's worth out of the travel.

Relatedly, I'm not sure why anyone would assume that an open tournament wouldn't have side events, since they're a pretty standard part of any such weekend now, not least for that very value reason. Perhaps most relevantly, last year's spring open tournament at Minnesota ran on this exact model, and people were happy to pay increased side event fees to offset room costs.

Re: PIANO / Minnesota Open @ UMN, 3/30

Posted: Fri Mar 08, 2019 7:59 pm
by Cheynem
I think the confusing aspect to an outsider was if this used the same model as last year, the announcement was handled entirely differently--side events were clearly booked for Saturday and Sunday and prices were adjusted ahead of time. I have no problem paying anything higher for these events (of course, I won't be there as well).

Re: PIANO / Minnesota Open @ UMN, 3/30

Posted: Fri Mar 08, 2019 8:15 pm
by Auks Ran Ova
Sure, that's true; more prompt announcements (even if they're of relatively standard practices, or of practices with precedent) would've ameliorated a lot of the confusion. I also tend to overestimate others' ability to be cavalierly flexible with their schedules!

Re: PIANO / Minnesota Open @ UMN, 3/30

Posted: Fri Mar 08, 2019 9:22 pm
by theMoMA
Definitely willing to pay what's needed to facilitate side events.

Re: PIANO / Minnesota Open @ UMN, 3/30

Posted: Sat Mar 09, 2019 5:35 pm
by Aaron's Rod
Being that none of these teams are from a school (i.e., I assume nobody has to go through a finance office to send a check), perhaps just email teams about the benefits/drawbacks of a potential price increase, and raise the price if everybody consents? It's not the most graceful option, but it seems like it'd achieve your goals here.

Re: PIANO / Minnesota Open @ UMN, 3/30

Posted: Thu Mar 14, 2019 12:18 pm
by Maxwell Sniffingwell
Hey, following up on this. Are we still in the boat of "this is Nats difficulty but we only have rooms reserved until 4 PM"?

Re: PIANO / Minnesota Open @ UMN, 3/30

Posted: Thu Mar 14, 2019 12:37 pm
by Cheynem
I'm not sure if things have changed since I was a minor poobah (an Abba Dabba Doo Guy) at UMN, but we never were able to reserve rooms in Blegen past 4 PM. This generally did not matter at all, aside from the fact the rooms would lock and you had to be careful about that. When I first started at UMN, you could theoretically squat in the rooms basically forever afterwards, as since nobody else could reserve the rooms, you wouldn't be kicked out for that. Later on, we began to be kicked out by the custodial staff pretty consistently around like 7 or 8 PM. So I am assuming that what Shan meant is that we have the rooms officially until 4 and almost certainly unofficially until at least like 7. That's why scheduling further stuff officially on Saturday night is so tricky. But the actual tournament should be fine.

Re: PIANO / Minnesota Open @ UMN, 3/30

Posted: Thu Mar 14, 2019 1:02 pm
by CPiGuy
Cheynem wrote: Thu Mar 14, 2019 12:37 pm I'm not sure if things have changed since I was a minor poobah (an Abba Dabba Doo Guy) at UMN, but we never were able to reserve rooms in Blegen past 4 PM. This generally did not matter at all, aside from the fact the rooms would lock and you had to be careful about that. When I first started at UMN, you could theoretically squat in the rooms basically forever afterwards, as since nobody else could reserve the rooms, you wouldn't be kicked out for that. Later on, we began to be kicked out by the custodial staff pretty consistently around like 7 or 8 PM. So I am assuming that what Shan meant is that we have the rooms officially until 4 and almost certainly unofficially until at least like 7. That's why scheduling further stuff officially on Saturday night is so tricky. But the actual tournament should be fine.
Shan seemed to imply that you could in fact pay to reserve the rooms after 4.

More specifically, speaking from experience, JHU PIANO did not end until 8:30pm. Obviously we had a longer schedule due to the awkward field size, but you should be prepared for this tournament to run long. If you need an advantaged final (twelve rounds), I would not necessarily be confident that you could finish by 7.

Re: PIANO / Minnesota Open @ UMN, 3/30

Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2019 4:57 pm
by Muriel Axon
Here's the situation as it stands now:
  • Erik would really like an ACRONYM mirror to happen so that people who play here can staff the bigger, more important mirror at HSNCT. To that end, he's willing to subsidize the mirror somewhat to make sure that it happens. For that reason, I think we can keep room costs low on Sunday and we should feel fairly sure that ACRONYM and SHAWARMA II will happen.
  • For the main event, if we have 8 teams (and it looks like we'll have that with UMN players), we'd have a 10-round schedule, not including finals. Including finals and Eyes, of course, the event could go into the evening, which is troubling. Mike Cheyne is right, in that we've often stuck around in the rooms until 7-8 without incident; I don't really know how dicey things get after that, because we usually leave before that. I'm trying to figure out the best course of action with the board of the UMN team. To be clear, we can book rooms past 4.
  • Any potential room costs for any event will be lower per person if more people sign up. As Alex recommended, I'll send something out about a potential fee schedule in the next day or two.
  • We're planning on taking sign-ups to order food for lunch to sell at-cost on Saturday.
I also encourage people who want to reach me to do so using my email address in the original post (and cc: the club email address there). You will reach me faster there than on the forums.

Re: PIANO / Minnesota Open @ UMN, 3/30

Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2019 9:24 pm
by shar2931
Is there a time cutoff for registration? I think I have a team together, but I'm still waiting on some people to confirm.

Re: PIANO / Minnesota Open @ UMN, 3/30

Posted: Thu Mar 21, 2019 12:08 pm
by Tejas
Will we be playing guerrilla history? I’d like to have that, preferably Saturday but if not then Sunday after acronym.

Re: PIANO / Minnesota Open @ UMN, 3/30

Posted: Thu Mar 21, 2019 12:20 pm
by Mike Bentley
Nice hockey Cote d'Azur wrote: Thu Mar 21, 2019 12:08 pm Will we be playing guerrilla history? I’d like to have that, preferably Saturday but if not then Sunday after acronym.
Agreed that my strong preference remains to play Guerilla on Saturday, even if it's late. If we get kicked out you can always ad-hoc postpone it to Sunday.

Re: PIANO / Minnesota Open @ UMN, 3/30

Posted: Thu Mar 21, 2019 2:46 pm
by Muriel Axon
Our plan is to do what Mike says in his post. PIANO + Eyes will be a long day, but we'll have four efficient readers for the main event. We weren't able to negotiate a discount for Saturday rooms. (Brian checked our records, and it looks like last year, we just took a financial loss when booking both Saturday evening and Sunday rooms, which... is something we don't want to do regularly.) I'll send an email about all this shortly.

It would help a lot to have 3-5 more people playing ACRONYM. If you have any friends who may be interested but aren't signed up, please prod them!

As for a deadline for signing up for the main event -- we don't have a strict deadline because I think we can drum up an extra house team if needed to balance out the schedule. That said, I'd really love it if teams registered by Saturday night!

Re: PIANO / Minnesota Open @ UMN, 3/30

Posted: Thu Mar 21, 2019 7:39 pm
by Mike Bentley
By the way, the Eyes mirror is free if that's what's holding anyone back from signing up.

Re: PIANO / Minnesota Open @ UMN, 3/30

Posted: Fri Mar 29, 2019 2:49 pm
by Panayot Hitov
We lost our 4th - anyone in minnesota want to join us tomorrow, email me - pkirkdavidoff at gmail

Re: PIANO / Minnesota Open @ UMN, 3/30

Posted: Fri Mar 29, 2019 5:06 pm
by Mike Bentley
We also lost our 4th if anyone wants to join.

Re: PIANO / Minnesota Open @ UMN, 3/30

Posted: Sat Mar 30, 2019 2:59 pm
by Mike Bentley
Results from Eyes X:

Player 15 10 -5 Total
Will 14 3 3 225
Andrew 8 4 4 140
Sam 7 5 4 135
Auroni 7 3 2 125
Dyaln 6 7 14 90
Rob 6 1 3 85
Tejas 3 3 2 65
Greg 1 5 2 55
Shan 3 2 2 55
Tora 1 1 0 25
Alex 2 1 3 25
Erik 0 1 0 10
Joe 0 1 1 5
Bryan 0 1 1 5
Nabir 0 0 0 0
Matt 0 0 1 -5
Foster 0 0 1 -5
Jason 0 1 3 -5

Re: PIANO / Minnesota Open @ UMN, 3/30

Posted: Mon Apr 01, 2019 3:28 pm
by Muriel Axon
I regret to say that all scoresheets were lost, so no stats from the main event will be available. Whoops!

Re: PIANO / Minnesota Open @ UMN, 3/30

Posted: Mon Apr 01, 2019 3:34 pm
by Mike Bentley
Muriel Axon wrote: Mon Apr 01, 2019 3:28 pm I regret to say that all scoresheets were lost, so no stats from the main event will be available. Whoops!
April Fools? I seem to have seen stats on the DB yesterday...

Re: PIANO / Minnesota Open @ UMN, 3/30

Posted: Mon Apr 01, 2019 3:42 pm
by Muriel Axon
Since I was so rudely ratted out, I put the stats back up. Congratulations to hamburger university lab school (Will Nediger, Auroni Gupta, Dylan Minarik, Andrew Wang), who cleared the field! We ran Eyes X, Guerrilla History, ACRONYM, and SHAWARMA II -- big thanks to the editors/writers of those tournaments, which were all excellent. Thanks also to Alex Damisch, Niki Peters, Mike Bentley, Ashvin Srivatsa, Rob Carson, and Erik Nelson, who (besides Sam, Nibir, and I from UMN) staffed events and helped make the weekend a success.

Re: PIANO / Minnesota Open @ UMN, 3/30

Posted: Wed Apr 03, 2019 6:58 pm
by Aaron's Rod
It looks like I accidentally stole someone's pair of black sunglasses. They say @UMNUSA on the back and looked exactly like mine. Sorry! If they're yours, please let me know and I'll try to get them back to you.