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2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Tue Mar 19, 2019 12:32 am
by DumbJaques
I am pleased to formally announce the 2019 Chicago Open, which will take place on Saturday, August 3. Unfortunately, a series of creative attempts to secure a location in Hyde Park (which accounted for some but by no means all of the delays in this announcement) ultimately fell short. Thus, this tournament will take place at Northwestern University. We will make every effort to find a better building than last year's... acoustically complex experience.

Editing Team:

I will be serving as head editor, with Jacob Reed ably assisting (as well as editing the Fine Arts and Religion). The rest of the editing team includes Sriram Pendyala (Science), Alston Boyd (Philosophy and some Lit),Will Holub-Moorman (SS and some Lit), and Jonathan Magin (assisting on Lit). In keeping with my general editing philosophy for high-level events, though, many of us will hopefully be contributing across categories. Especially me, in Science.

Submission Schedule and Fees:

Base fee: $250

June 1: -$50
June 15: -$25
June 22: $0
July 6: +50
July 20: +$100
Each day after July 20: +$20/day
After July 27: You will be dropped from the tournament barring extenuating circumstances that have been cleared with the editors.
The weekend of May 25: +$500, this is my wedding weekend, do not do this to me

Incentives: We will again be using packet quality discounts. However, note that properly adhering to the target difficulty (see below) will be a significant component of this metric - almost certainly more so than in years past.
-Excellent packet (almost all questions usable with minimal to no editing): -$100
-Good packet (many questions usable with minimal to no editing): -$50

Buzzer discounts:
-$10 per working buzzer
-$20 per approved moderator

Set Philosophy

1) This CO will not be as hard as recent years. I just don't see a reason to justify the recent difficulty creep; it seems to be brutalizing the field for no apparent reason. I do not mean to discourage people from asking about awesome, worthwhile content that can't really come up elsewhere; just understand that such content, following my long-endorsed Bell Curve model of difficulty, will represent a very small minority of questions. I'm not unconflicted about this - there are trade-offs to having an easier event, and it's less likely you'll hear that amazing tossup that makes your day because you love it and nobody else knows it. But I'm hopefully that making the remaining literally 99.75% of the tournament more accessible will make up for it.

[In conjunction with this, I think it would be totally great to see the return of some suitably IMPOSSIBLE side event (in the vein of Impossible Speedcheck, Experiment, or even Arrabal), to take place at the other summer event or some other time. I just don't think the hallmark open event of the year needs to also be the most experimental one.]

What does this mean for you? Mainly, please don't submit packets modeled on the harder parts of the past several years of CO. Tossups should resemble ACF Nationals or a tick harder. Bonuses should be along the same lines, except that I'd like people to really think carefully about choosing hard parts. I have a suspicion that many, many hard parts at CO (or even Nats) are just going totally unanswered by the field. Again, novel and important content is ok in a hard part, but (a) not all the time and (b) you still want to have some reasonable expectation of someone actually, you know, answering it. If you just want to make people feel humbled, tape-record a monologue instead.

2) I'm choosing not to repeat last year's experiment with dialing up the non-Western arts, which I (and most everyone else I spoke to) felt did not work. I'm not at all averse to different (and ideally less plentiful) attempts to deal with this acknowledged bias in the canon, but I do think we need other ways to go about it. This does not, of course, mean there will be 0 non-Western arts - but there will certainly be much less than 33%.

3) This CO will feature a set sub-distribution for "modern world" content. (Note: Lower-case; not to be confused with Modern World content, of which this tournament will impose a hard 0/0 maximum). What do we want here? Good current events, good questions about geography, and a healthy dose of thought regarding the last 25 years of human civilization. It is my hope that this will rehabilitate the geography/CE distribution at higher levels of difficulty, which is something that we've been trying to figure out for a while now but are still having trouble getting a handle on. I'm going to hold a community conversation in the next month or so in the Discord to generate ideas and debate what this should look like, so I'll amend some details here after that happens.

4) Lastly, I want anyone in the community to feel very encouraged to drop us a line if you have thoughts on the event, the changes, etc. In particular, I welcome feedback/opinions on CO content by players of ALL EXPERIENCE AND SKILL LEVELS. I suspect there are a number of really great members of our community who don't feel that they are "allowed" to weigh in on something like CO for reasons of seniority/ppg/whatever. I vehemently disagree with this philosophy, so if that's the case, I want you to feel particularly welcome to contact us.

Distribution:

Literature (5/5)
1/1 American
1/1 British
1/1 European
1/1 World
1/1 Any literature (you should feel encouraged to do creative things in this part of the distribution)

History (5/5)
This tournament will slightly modify the way the history distribution is interpreted. This actually isn't a big change; I don't expect it will end up feeling different than the regular variation of the "2/2 Euro" we get across all events. But that variation right now is quite large and somewhat ad hoc, and I'd like to take a step at (imperfectly) formalizing it a bit better.

1/1 American
1/1 "European" (Western Europe, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, modern history that's part of the European tradition like much WWI/WW2 content, etc. Commonwealth history also goes here)
1/1 Mediterranean-Plus ("Euro" history that is more Mediterranean in nature, Islamic world and things that were adjacent to the Islamic world, Ancient and Classical, Central Asian)
1/1 Non-Western (Latin American, African, East Asian, and otherwise global or transregional history; you can also write questions on the Islamic world here if you do not write them in the Med+ distribution)
1/1 Choice (include at least .5/.5 questions that go outside the bounds of the usual history distribution in some way, including historiography)

Science (5/5)
1/1 Biology
1/1 Chemistry
1/1 Physics
1/1 Other Science
1/1 Any Science (At least one of these questions should be "science history"; for the other, try to emphasize interdisciplinary or creative questions here rather than just writing an extra topic in a base category)

Fine Arts (3/3)
1/1 Visual Arts
1/1 Music
1/1 Other Arts (one visual and one auditory; you may count sculpture either here or as visual, as a judgement call on where it fits better given the specific topic)

Religion 1/1 (This can include beliefs that are myth-y, particularly in terms of folklore or practices associated with mythologies)

Thought (2/2)
1/1 Philosophy
1/1 Social Science

Modern World (1/1)
Try to aim for one of these sub-categories (don't write two questions from the same one):
-Significant current events that are adjacent to phenomena people actually study
-Good questions about geography (meaning they incorporate human, cultural, historical, and other academic content; do not be afraid of category cross-contamination as long as the entire question isn't about the same non-MW category)
-Thought regarding the last 25 years of human civilization (research from sociology, political science, international relations, anthropology, etc. that has focused on recent developments in human societies, government, and beliefs)

Some notes here: You do not need to write an entire question that is thematically "pure"; indeed, you will often want to avoid doing so. For example, if you use clues about ethnographic and political science studies that have been done in Nigeria, you don't need to make the rest of the question about other academic studies that have been done in Nigeria (since that question would be very hard). You can draw from other geography or CE material to properly construct a difficulty curve - and, again, you probably should do this.


Other Academic (1/1)
This category should mainly include:
-Other social science or thought that is not pure philosophy
-Interdisciplinary questions, including things that might touch on culturally significant aspects of popular culture (though no more than 1 of the latter)
-Creative topics that don't fit cleanly into a particular sub-category

This category should NOT be used for "something that could easily go in a base category and I just felt like writing more of"

1/1 Choice


All inquiries/packet submissions should be sent to [email protected].

We're grateful for being entrusted with the responsibility of not ruining your CO experience; really looking forward to seeing everyone in August.

EDIT:
To register, please fill out the form found here https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIp ... sp=sf_link



Field Update:
Billy Busse, Rob Carson, Andrew Hart, Tejas Raje
Zach Foster, Zhenglin Liu, Chris Sims, and Ian Dewan
Chris Borglum, James Lasker, Dylan Minarik, Ryan Rosenberg
Aidan Mehigan, Daniel Hothem, Ryan Humphrey, Jason Zhou
Mike Bentley, Matt Bollinger, Mike Cheyne, Shan Kothari
Charles Hang, Chinmay Kansara, Rohan Rai, Erik Tomasic
JinAh Kim, Selene Koo, Olivia Lamberti, Lauren Onel
Joey Goldman, Jason Golfinos, John Lawrence, and Mike Sorice
Caleb Kendrick, Will Alston, Kai Smith, Andrew Wang
Jason Asher, Jonathan Mishory, Brian Kalathiveetil, Will Bordowitz
Tracy Mirkin, Taylor Harvey, Alex Shaw, Jonathen Settle
Aseem Keyal, Weijia Cheng, Graham Reid, Stephen Liu
Mike Etzkorn, Mitch McCullar, Matt Lafer, Ryan Westbrook
Kevin Wang, Matthew Lehmann, Rahul Keyal, Sam Bailey
Aayush Rajasekaran, Tamara Vardomskaya, Jay Misuk, Alex Fregeau
Halle Friedman, Emmett Laurie, Matt Mitchell, Vishwa Shanmugam
Eric Chen, Michael Coates, Grant Li, Tim Morrison
Jordan Brownstein, Jaimie Carlson, Ophir Lifshitz, Eric Mukherjee
Auroni Gupta, Jakob Myers, Clark Smith, Adam Fine
Matt Weiner, Sean Smiley, Boyang Jiao, Jerry Vinokurov

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Tue Mar 19, 2019 2:36 am
by Auroni
DumbJaques wrote: Tue Mar 19, 2019 12:32 am Again, novel and important content is ok in a hard part, but (a) not all the time and (b) you still want to have some reasonable expectation of someone actually, you know, answering it. If you just want to make people feel humbled, tape-record a monologue instead.
I'm looking forward to playing this tournament and agree with a vision of CO that's scaled back in difficulty, but come on dude, there's no need to be a colossal asshole in articulating it.

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Tue Mar 19, 2019 3:40 am
by Auks Ran Ova
Auroni wrote: Tue Mar 19, 2019 2:36 am
DumbJaques wrote: Tue Mar 19, 2019 12:32 am Again, novel and important content is ok in a hard part, but (a) not all the time and (b) you still want to have some reasonable expectation of someone actually, you know, answering it. If you just want to make people feel humbled, tape-record a monologue instead.
I'm looking forward to playing this tournament and agree with a vision of CO that's scaled back in difficulty, but come on dude, there's no need to be a colossal asshole in articulating it.
Yeah, no need for this. You're better than that.

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Tue Mar 19, 2019 10:49 am
by DumbJaques
Auroni wrote: Tue Mar 19, 2019 2:36 am
DumbJaques wrote: Tue Mar 19, 2019 12:32 am Again, novel and important content is ok in a hard part, but (a) not all the time and (b) you still want to have some reasonable expectation of someone actually, you know, answering it. If you just want to make people feel humbled, tape-record a monologue instead.
I'm looking forward to playing this tournament and agree with a vision of CO that's scaled back in difficulty, but come on dude, there's no need to be a colossal asshole in articulating it.
Is this being a "colossal asshole?" It certainly wasn't my intention, though I suppose it is somewhat pointed. But really, I'm quoting the direct language used in the justification of a previous CO's philosophy, posted publicly on the forums, in which an editor tape-recorded a monologue and declared his intent to make people feel humbled. I strongly objected to and disagreed with that attitude then, and still object and disagree with it now. I find it elitist, alienating, harmful for quizbowl, and quite worthy of opposition on exactly those grounds.
I actually think it was a problem the community wasn't more vocal in pushing back on this - I certainly wasn't, precisely because I was concerned about coming down too harshly on someone who was putting in a ton of effort, clearly loved the game, and didn't seem to be in the best place personally. But I also think this reticence undermined the community responding to CO 2017 the way it should have. If an over-the-top and harmful statement by a person of entrenched power and standing in the community can't be lightly mocked (by invoking literally no more than its own language!), I'm not sure what can be.

I do apologize if this was overly mean-spirited (though I think "colossal asshole" is in fact far, far more aggressive and unwarranted than anything I wrote!). I certainly don't wish to start CO off with contention; I'm happy to discuss this more with people (though I think it might be better to do so off-line rather than in the announcement thread).

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Tue Mar 19, 2019 4:11 pm
by A Dim-Witted Saboteur
x-post from the matchmaking thread:

I made a team formation spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing
If you have formed a team, please register that information therein.

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Sat Mar 23, 2019 12:10 pm
by Cheynem
I realize the first post is flippant...but should we *not* actually turn in any packets until after May 25?

Also, what are the Sunday events? I believe I see Scattergories and Age of Empires so far. You could probably do one more, even, but might be fun not having a long-ass Sunday.

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Sat Mar 23, 2019 2:22 pm
by John Ketzkorn
Cheynem wrote: Sat Mar 23, 2019 12:10 pm I realize the first post is flippant...but should we *not* actually turn in any packets until after May 25?

Also, what are the Sunday events? I believe I see Scattergories and Age of Empires so far. You could probably do one more, even, but might be fun not having a long-ass Sunday.
I'll endorse a "long-ass Sunday." I'm interpreting this as, you can turn it in early, just not on the weekend of May 25th.

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Mon Mar 25, 2019 4:44 pm
by DumbJaques
(Yeah, I'm not really going to charge you $500).

Re: Side events, I will note that nobody has officially registered their side event yet, so right now zero things are happening.

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Mon Mar 25, 2019 5:55 pm
by Mike Bentley
Do you plan on having the distribution posted soon? That will be helpful in getting work divided up.

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Sun Mar 31, 2019 3:12 pm
by DumbJaques
The other editors and I have finalized the distribution; the announcement post has been updated accordingly. Thanks for everyone's patience.

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Sun Mar 31, 2019 3:43 pm
by naan/steak-holding toll
Myth is dead :sad:

Excited for the altered distribution, though!

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Sun Mar 31, 2019 6:21 pm
by VSCOelasticity
So when writing our packets are we free to incorporate things traditionally asked as myth in the literature distribution?

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Sun Mar 31, 2019 9:05 pm
by Good Goblin Housekeeping
you appear to have mistakenly placed a mandatory "other history/other academic" question in the other science distribution : I would recommend amending this

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Sun Mar 31, 2019 9:15 pm
by Jet Fuel Can't Melt Steel Dreams
Banned Tiny Toon Adventures Episode wrote: Sun Mar 31, 2019 9:05 pm you appear to have mistakenly placed a mandatory "other history/other academic" question in the other science distribution : I would recommend amending this

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Sun Mar 31, 2019 9:34 pm
by John Ketzkorn
Banned Tiny Toon Adventures Episode wrote: Sun Mar 31, 2019 9:05 pm you appear to have mistakenly placed a mandatory "other history/other academic" question in the other science distribution : I would recommend amending this
Agreed, "Any science" with one being mandated as "history science" feels like its going to be slotted into "other science," which is not what the "other science" category is for.

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Mon Apr 01, 2019 2:01 pm
by Mike Bentley
John Ketzkorn wrote: Sun Mar 31, 2019 9:34 pm
Banned Tiny Toon Adventures Episode wrote: Sun Mar 31, 2019 9:05 pm you appear to have mistakenly placed a mandatory "other history/other academic" question in the other science distribution : I would recommend amending this
Agreed, "Any science" with one being mandated as "history science" feels like its going to be slotted into "other science," which is not what the "other science" category is for.
As someone who has written several hundred science history questions, I guess I'll raise my voice as being in favor of this change to include a science history question here.

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Fri Apr 05, 2019 5:50 pm
by DumbJaques
John Ketzkorn wrote: Sun Mar 31, 2019 9:34 pm
Banned Tiny Toon Adventures Episode wrote: Sun Mar 31, 2019 9:05 pm you appear to have mistakenly placed a mandatory "other history/other academic" question in the other science distribution : I would recommend amending this
Agreed, "Any science" with one being mandated as "history science" feels like its going to be slotted into "other science," which is not what the "other science" category is for.
I don't know exactly what this means, but I assure you there is no plan to specifically target the Math/CS/Earth Sci/Astro distributions at this tournament.

It's hard for me to be tremendously sympathetic for people who cannot tolerate good science history playing a small role in the science distribution. Questions in other categories regularly include content that's somewhat more about the circumstances of creation than the hard content of the subject itself; relevant biographical material about artists/authors, for instance, functions just fine in those distributions. It's not like we're talking about any fatherly sailmakers, here.

[Was literally going to cite Mike Bentley as clear proof that it's possible to write very good "science history" material that's very much still "science", but he showed up and did it himself!]

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Fri Apr 05, 2019 11:08 pm
by Carlos Be
DumbJaques wrote: Fri Apr 05, 2019 5:50 pm
John Ketzkorn wrote: Sun Mar 31, 2019 9:34 pm
Banned Tiny Toon Adventures Episode wrote: Sun Mar 31, 2019 9:05 pm you appear to have mistakenly placed a mandatory "other history/other academic" question in the other science distribution : I would recommend amending this
Agreed, "Any science" with one being mandated as "history science" feels like its going to be slotted into "other science," which is not what the "other science" category is for.
I don't know exactly what this means, but I assure you there is no plan to specifically target the Math/CS/Earth Sci/Astro distributions at this tournament.

It's hard for me to be tremendously sympathetic for people who cannot tolerate good science history playing a small role in the science distribution. Questions in other categories regularly include content that's somewhat more about the circumstances of creation than the hard content of the subject itself; relevant biographical material about artists/authors, for instance, functions just fine in those distributions. It's not like we're talking about any fatherly sailmakers, here.

[Was literally going to cite Mike Bentley as clear proof that it's possible to write very good "science history" material that's very much still "science", but he showed up and did it himself!]
I think the history of science distribution in Lederberg 3 sets a good example for how history of science should be written.

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Mon Apr 08, 2019 8:52 am
by naan/steak-holding toll
I think "history of science" has perhaps gotten a bit of a bad name based on how it has been executed before. Much like historiography questions suck if they don't make a connection to the actual history subject material, science history questions suck if they don't talk about the actual science. It's probably easy for someone to write a tossup on the Human Genome Project without making any discussion of genetic sequencing methods, but that would be an egregiously bad science question (though not as bad of an Other Academic question). Furthermore, I definitely agree with the point about not going after "other science" - as Lederberg showed, high level quizbowl is already really lacking on a lot of important applied math / data science topics.

That said, I think there's a point to be made that "science culture" topics are legitimate and reward knowledge that "real scientists" so to speak actually possess. Anecdotally, one of the best buzzes I saw at the ICT was a science player first-cluing a tossup on a topic that he works on based on a science history/culture clue. Clues about important textbooks, Nobel Prizes, Hilbert problems, "the first person to accomplish this kind of synthesis did it using X and Y products," or even somewhat hokey questions on Haldane sneak into the distribution all the time, and I don't see too many of those getting complaints. If we're going to use an "expansive" definition of science history to include "science culture" in general to mean any questions with some of these clues, then despite how disadvantageous this will be for my team, I don't think it will be too awful if we have a couple more such questions, as long as none of them are of the "apprenticed to a bookbinder" type.

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2019 10:00 am
by Cheynem
Assuming Scattergories and Age of Empires are happening, is there a third event that could be stuck in there? I feel like, flippancy aside in my earlier post, you could pretty easily do a third tossup-only event (maybe one that only ran at a high school nationals or something).

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Mon Apr 29, 2019 4:19 am
by rahulkeyal
Cheynem wrote: Fri Apr 12, 2019 10:00 am Assuming Scattergories and Age of Empires are happening, is there a third event that could be stuck in there? I feel like, flippancy aside in my earlier post, you could pretty easily do a third tossup-only event (maybe one that only ran at a high school nationals or something).
Following up on this, it'd be great if the schedule of Sunday events could be finalized soon. I'd guess there are others are in the same boat as me and need to get back home Sunday night, and the earlier the schedule is finalized the sooner players can plan accordingly.

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Mon Apr 29, 2019 9:31 am
by ValenciaQBowl
I was waiting to see if anything else came up, but I have five rounds (20 each) of toss-ups on film by my former Valencia player (and answerer of the toss-up that won the most famous match of which I've been a part) Sean Platzer (with a handful of my contributions). The distribution is "stuff Sean likes," so it's a mix of foreign/indie/art/cult film and mainstream stuff, maybe in about a 70/30 mix. And though there are no repeats, certain areas can be asked about more than once (for instance, though there's no Harry Potter movie stuff in the set, if it were, there could be a toss-up on a specific HP film title in one round and maybe a toss-up on a character from the films using different clues in another). I think people who like film toss-ups would enjoy it.

If the CO organizers approve and if there's interest, I could certainly run those five rounds after the other two Sunday events. That could probably be done in 1.5-2 hours. But no worries if not.

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Mon Apr 29, 2019 9:43 am
by Cheynem
I'd like that.

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Mon Apr 29, 2019 4:52 pm
by DumbJaques
First, here is a registration form to officially register for the tournament: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIp ... sp=sf_link

On side events:

We have 3 possible events - Scattergories, Age of Empires, and Super ACRONYM 2. Right now, Scattergories is officially confirmed for Sunday.

I'd like to find a way to have all three events (though this may not be possible), and am interested in getting everyone's thoughts on this. I don't think we really want an event Saturday evening of CO; I was there in 2007, and like, yikes. That means the other options are to do AoE on Friday night (like we used to back in the day!), or to have all 3 events on Sunday. (The third option is just not to do one event).

In theory, I think it's viable to do 3 on Sunday, but it feels like a lot. On the other hand, we haven't done a Friday evening event in a while, though I didn't think it was a particularly disastrous option when we did (but perhaps I've forgotten the details?). If none of these feel remotely possible, I guess this will become a discussion of which events we want to have.

Thoughts?

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Mon Apr 29, 2019 5:11 pm
by naan/steak-holding toll
As of about a month ago, I'm planning to run AoE on CO Sunday unless there are any strong objections. I would be able to run it Friday as I won't have any work obligations and will likely be in Chicago at least a day in advance, but since I suspect a lot of the audience will have such obligations and consequently be flying in late, I'd rather not take a huge cut to the potential audience.

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Mon Apr 29, 2019 5:19 pm
by Cheynem
My theory is that Super Acronym just won't work--that's a full tossup/bonus tournament. Surely there's some other tossup only event that could be run here instead?

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Mon Apr 29, 2019 5:23 pm
by Mike Bentley
One crappy thing about Friday events in the past is that many people were staying in the O'Hare area, which added like 1.5 hours in transport time when you could have been sleeping. So there's maybe some more wiggle room for a Friday event. I'd personally like that since I'll already be in town, but suspect this will eat into the field.

It doesn't seem super realistic to do all three side events on Sunday--or at least not to have the last one going until well after anyone with a Sunday flight would have to leave.

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Thu May 16, 2019 10:08 pm
by DumbJaques
It sounds like the consensus is to go with two side events and run ACRONYM (somewhat ironically) at Side Event Weekend. This still leaves open the possibility of doing a third event (if one is available) on Sunday, but it's certainly not a necessity.

Also, the field has been updated. Make sure to register!

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Thu May 16, 2019 10:40 pm
by Cheynem
Since Side Event Weekend (in Urbana anyway) is going to take place before CO this year, an event that didn't get played there could be held in reserve for the third Sunday event.

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Fri May 17, 2019 9:44 am
by ValenciaQBowl
Jus' sayin'.
I was waiting to see if anything else came up, but I have five rounds (20 each) of toss-ups on film by my former Valencia player (and answerer of the toss-up that won the most famous match of which I've been a part) Sean Platzer (with a handful of my contributions). The distribution is "stuff Sean likes," so it's a mix of foreign/indie/art/cult film and mainstream stuff, maybe in about a 70/30 mix. And though there are no repeats, certain areas can be asked about more than once (for instance, though there's no Harry Potter movie stuff in the set, if it were, there could be a toss-up on a specific HP film title in one round and maybe a toss-up on a character from the films using different clues in another). I think people who like film toss-ups would enjoy it.

If the CO organizers approve and if there's interest, I could certainly run those five rounds after the other two Sunday events. That could probably be done in 1.5-2 hours. But no worries if not.

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Mon May 27, 2019 10:28 am
by adamsil
I finally managed to submit room requests in for 15 rooms in Kresge for both Saturday and Sunday this year. Assuming they go through (and they should), this year's CO should actually be air conditioned! :grin: If you anticipate needing more than that many rooms for your event, please let me know ASAP.

EDIT: Rooms confirmed for Saturday and Sunday.

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Sun Jun 09, 2019 9:21 pm
by rahulkeyal
I understand that the submission dates have been announced for a while, but would it be possible to create a +$0 deadline somewhere in between next Saturday (June 15th) and July 6th? The price increase ($75) feels steeper than most submission tournaments - a more gradated schedule might allow teams more time to put together higher quality packets.

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Mon Jun 10, 2019 11:55 am
by naan/steak-holding toll
Would strongly agree with Rahul - as someone who's been pulled into a lot of editorial duties recently, and who is on a team with at least one other person with similar commitments, I'd appreciate having a $0 deadline as well.

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Mon Jun 10, 2019 2:31 pm
by Wartortullian
Strongly agree with Rahul and Will here. A $0 deadline would be extremely helpful.

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Mon Jun 10, 2019 3:07 pm
by Majin Buu Roi
I don't mean to contradict Will, Rahul, et al here, as I would also somewhat like this spelled out explicitly, but I personally presumed the submission schedule to be saying that any packet submitted between 6/15 and 7/6 would receive a +0. Again, just speaking personally here, I don't think the penalty jump after 7/6 is that extreme given such a large no penalty window. Again though, having this system (or, if I presumed wrong, whatever the system actually is) enumerated from the editing team's mouth would be pretty universally appreciated, I think.

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2019 11:48 am
by DumbJaques
It's specifically my hope to encourage people to submit on earlier timetables in order to give packets the attention they deserve. But if having an extra week would really help people (especially those with recently-concluded editor commitments), I'm comfortable adding a $0 deadline on June 22. I understand there's a bit of a steeper escalation built in here, but CO editing is a pretty large task with a tight turnaround (since we generally don't expect packets to come in while schools are still in session/nationals are going on).

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2019 11:50 am
by DumbJaques
I'd also like to reiterate that the discounts for earlier submission are SUBSTANTIALLY less than the discount for a really well-written packet. The easiest way to save yourself money is to give us a very good product that requires minimal editor work.

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2019 12:16 pm
by DumbJaques
One more: The field has been updated and is officially at 18 teams (but I've been given the impression more sign-ups may be expected). I'm going to talk with the editors/staffers and confirm we can go up to 24 without losing our minds. In the meantime, if you are a interested in playing this tournament, it is imperative that you register ASAP. We may not be able to guarantee spots in the field for late comers.

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2019 12:24 pm
by ryanrosenberg
DumbJaques wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2019 12:16 pm One more: The field has been updated and is officially at 18 teams (but I've been given the impression more sign-ups may be expected). I'm going to talk with the editors/staffers and confirm we can go up to 24 without losing our minds. In the meantime, if you are a interested in playing this tournament, it is imperative that you register ASAP. We may not be able to guarantee spots in the field for late comers.
The Rafael/Dees/Weiner team is listed twice.

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2019 1:56 pm
by Mahavishnu
ryanrosenberg wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2019 12:24 pm
DumbJaques wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2019 12:16 pm One more: The field has been updated and is officially at 18 teams (but I've been given the impression more sign-ups may be expected). I'm going to talk with the editors/staffers and confirm we can go up to 24 without losing our minds. In the meantime, if you are a interested in playing this tournament, it is imperative that you register ASAP. We may not be able to guarantee spots in the field for late comers.
The Rafael/Dees/Weiner team is listed twice.
For that matter, the Florida team is also listed twice.

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2019 10:24 am
by Cheynem
The submission dates are on Saturday--we're probably shooting to turn our packet in on Sunday--would this still fall under the Saturday submission date (I ask because both Regionals and Nationals set submission cutoff dates on the end of Sunday)?

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Mon Jun 17, 2019 3:40 pm
by DumbJaques
The submission dates are the submission dates, but if a team needs a one-day extension for reasonable circumstances, this is very likely fine.

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Mon Jun 17, 2019 5:55 pm
by Cheynem
Can we get a packet count?

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Tue Jun 18, 2019 9:11 am
by DumbJaques
Packet submissions

-$50

Charles Hang, Vishal Puppala, Rohan Rai, Erik Tomasic


-$25

Jason Asher, Jonathan Mishory, Brian Kalathiveetil, Will Bordowitz
Mike Bentley, Matt Bollinger, Mike Cheyne, Shan Kothari


-$0

Auroni Gupta, Jakob Myers, Adam Fine, Clark Smith
Mike Etzkorn, Mitch McCullar, Matt Lafer, Ryan Westbrook
JinAh Kim, Selene Koo, Olivia Lamberti, Lauren Onel
Joey Goldman, Jason Golfinos, John Lawrence, and Mike Sorice
Caleb Kendrick, Will Alston, Kai Smith, Andrew Wang
Tracy Mirkin, Taylor Harvey, Alex Shaw, Jonathen Settle

+$50

Aidan Mehigan, Daniel Hothem, Ryan Humphrey, Jason Zhou
Eric Chen, Michael Coates, Grant Li, Tim Morrison
Zach Foster, Zhenglin Liu, Chris Sims, and Ian Dewan

+$100

Jordan Brownstein, Jaimie Carlson, Ophir Lifshitz, Eric Mukherjee
Billy Busse, Rob Carson, Andrew Hart, Tejas Raje
Kevin Wang, Matthew Lehmann, Rahul Keyal, Sam Bailey
Chris Borglum, James Lasker, Dylan Minarik, Ryan Rosenberg


+$120

Aseem Keyal, Weijia Cheng, Graham Reid, Stephen Liu

+$140

Matt Weiner, Sean Smiley, Boyang Jiao, Jerry Vinokurov

+$200

Halle Friedman, Emmett Laurie, Matt Mitchell, Vishwa Shanmugam

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Mon Jul 01, 2019 11:11 am
by DumbJaques
Packet submissions have been updated. Let us know ASAP if something seems amiss.

Also, we're actively seeking volunteers to playtest the set. Please drop a line to the editor account ([email protected]) if you're interested. Please do this rather than unofficially mentioning to one of the editors that you're available - this will help us keep track of everyone!

Lastly, Jacob O'Rourke has graciously assumed the post of TD for Chicago Open. All interested staffers should make sure to fill out the official staffing registration form, which will be posted soon. Please *do not* enter your names in the unofficial spreadsheet.

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Mon Jul 01, 2019 7:30 pm
by 1992 in spaceflight
DumbJaques wrote: Mon Jul 01, 2019 11:11 amLastly, Jacob O'Rourke has graciously assumed the post of TD for Chicago Open. All interested staffers should make sure to fill out the official staffing registration form, which will be posted soon. Please *do not* enter your names in the unofficial spreadsheet.
The staffing spreadsheet can be found here. Please fill out this sheet if you want to staff Chicago Open-this is the only official method of signing up to staff CO.

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Tue Jul 16, 2019 11:27 am
by DumbJaques
Hey, two important reminders as we close in on the two-week mark:

1) UPDATE YOUR ROSTERS. We were informed of a team that dissolved today because one of the editors overheard it in the basketball chat. Please make sure the roster in the first post in this thread reflects who's actually coming to this event.

2) If your packet isn't in, you've chosen to wait until the last deadline. This is, of course, your prerogative, but I certainly hope it means that you'll be shooting for that $-100 "excellent packet" discount instead. Either way, please send packets in as soon as possible, as this will directly correlate with the amount of work we can put into them.

Details on planned schedules, etc., will be posted in the next week or so, once we confirm attendance and packets.


EDIT: Remember that the google spreadsheet is NOT OFFICIAL and does not count as your registration for this tournament. If you are not listed in the first post in this thread, you are not registered for this tournament.

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Tue Jul 16, 2019 4:19 pm
by grapesmoker
More importantly, I am looking for a team to play on so if your team is missing people and/or you would like someone to regale you with old-timey stories between matches, get in touch.

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Fri Jul 19, 2019 10:09 am
by Senator_Jay
Hey all, I just figured out that I'm available for CO now, having formerly been committed elsewhere. If anyone has room for an extra teammate, that would be awesome! Otherwise I guess I can staff. Hmu if you have a spot for Canadian pleasantry and a love for historical geography that might approach that of Will Alston's!

Re: 2019 Chicago Open (8/3/2019) at Northwestern University

Posted: Sat Jul 20, 2019 3:14 pm
by naan/steak-holding toll
Hmu if you have a spot for Canadian pleasantry and a love for historical geography that might approach that of Will Alston's!
Stop underselling yourself 🙄