Early Autumn Collegiate Novice at Yale (09/17/11)

[Adventure Temple Trail]

Yale University will be hosting the Northeast site of this year's Early Autumn Collegiate Novice Tournament on Saturday, September 17, 2011. This tournament is meant to serve as an introduction to collegiate quizbowl for entirely new players or teams with less experience in the college game, using length-restricted easier questions. I, Matt Jackson, will be handling registration for this event, and will share tournament direction duties with John Lawrence.

To register for Collegiate Novice 2 at Yale, email me at REDACTED, specifying the number of teams, buzzers, and staffers you'll be bringing. If you have other questions about the event, you can feel free to email me as well.

Posts in this thread which "express interest" do not count as official registrations.

Cost
The cost for Collegiate Novice 2 is $15 per player. A school may bring any number of players, who will compete on teams of up to four.
We're also offering a $5 discount for each buzzer set that a team brings. If your team is bringing an experienced moderator, we can offer up to one $5 discount.

Checks made out to Y. Student Academic Competitions (not "Yale Student Academic Competitions") can be sent out to YSAC, P.O. Box 204600, New Haven, CT 06520 or given to us on the day of the tournament.

Location and Time
The tournament will take place on the main campus of Yale University in New Haven, CT, in William L. Harkness Hall (WLH). To facilitate travel, we plan to hold registration a little later than usual (between 9 and 9:30 AM), with games beginning at 9:45. Regardless, do not be late! We plan to be completely finished with the tournament at 4 PM, and can only do this if everyone is punctual.


Tournament schedule
The exact schedule will depend on the final number of teams in the field. If 20 teams show on Saturday, the schedule will be as follows. Teams will be split into two brackets of ten, which will each play a round-robin of nine games against the other teams in their bracket. The first five games will be played in the morning, after which the tournament will pause for an hour-long lunch break. Rounds 6 through 9 will continue after lunch. Once round 9 is finished, teams will be ranked within their bracket by win-loss record, with points per game breaking ties between teams with the same record. The first ranked team in one bracket will then play the first-ranked team in the other for 1st and 2nd place in a one-game final; all other teams ranked the same will play for the next set of two places in the same manner.

Eligibility

1. All ACF eligibility rules apply, except when they contradict the rules below.

2. This is a tournament for introducing collegiate novices to quizbowl. Consequently, no high school teams or players are eligible.

3. Anyone (who does not break Rules 1 or 2) who has never played quizbowl before is automatically eligible. Other academic competition does not count as quizbowl for this rule.

4. Players meeting one or more of the following criteria must apply to the head editor for special permission to play:

i. If you have already completed your second year of college (calculated from time in college, not credits). Time in a post-secondary high school program does not count.

ii. If you were ever on a playoff or top-bracket team at NAQT HSNCT or PACE NSC.

iii. If you have ever scored at least 30 points per game at any college tournament.

iv. If you have ever won any college tournament.

5. Anyone who does not fall into any of the four categories listed in Rule 4 is automatically eligible to play.

Given that there's a possibility of several new or revived teams forming in the area, led by players that meet criterion ii in particular, I strongly encourage anyone who's thinking about bringing a new team to email Andrew Hart ([email protected]) asking for the exemptions that they think would work best.

Field
Stony Brook (1)
NYU (3)
RPI (4)
UConn (2)
Columbia (2)
Cornell (1)
Brown (1)
Yale house (4)

Total: 18 teams

We hope to see you on the 17th!

[Ondes Martenot]

I can't give specifics, but RPI will be bringing about 2 teams, 1-2 moderators and a buzzer system

[Adventure Temple Trail]

Field updates and physical tournament location updates continue. Some real contenders from the region are still pretty conspicuously missing - you know who you are; sign up!

[Tejas]

Cornell will likely bring 2 teams, 2 moderators and one buzzer system.

[Ondes Martenot]

We have 14 signed up to go (and will probably get an additonal 15th to come), so we're actually going to bring 4 teams to this

[Adventure Temple Trail]

This is just a reminder that posts in this thread don't count as official registrations. Please email me the most up-to-date information on your teams' status when you are certain of it.

Also, it looks as though we'll need to set a field cap of 20 teams. At the pace that we're adding teams, this will start to be a problem soon, so sign up quick!

[UConnQuizbowl]

Say, does anyone have suggestions about parking (especially free parking) near the tournament location? Thanks!

User was reminded to add a signature.

[Ondes Martenot]

There is a visitor's parking lot on Temple St. between Wall and Elm that is free to use

[Adventure Temple Trail]

See above for an update on the scheduling of the tournament.

We have reached our 20-team field cap for this tournament. If you're still interested in attending, please email me and I'll create a waitlist, then see if there's anything I can do to move you into the main field.

UPDATE: With Cornell bringing only one team, we now have extra space for exactly one (1) team in the field. If your school has people it can bring and you can email me tomorrow, you're in. Otherwise, we are likely to combine two house teams and play an 18-team schedule different from the one originally posted.

[Ondes Martenot]

Matt,

I am really sorry to do this to you but there's been an....."issue" with one of our driver's cars and we're going to be a team short. I'm sorry this is such short notice, I literally had zero control over this.

[Excelsior (smack)]

Matt,

I am really sorry to do this to you but there's been an....."issue" with one of our driver's cars and we're going to be a team short. I'm sorry this is such short notice, I literally had zero control over this.

If I'm not mistaken, we were going to run an 18-team schedule by collapsing five house teams into four (5 players per team); accounting for one less RPI team, we can run the same schedule with five full house teams instead. So we should be fine.

[Excelsior (smack)]

Apparently RPI undropped their team, so we are staying on the 18-team schedule with four house teams. RPI undropped their team, but NYU condensed from 3 down to 2 teams, so we re-expanded to 5 house teams, and are using the following 18-team schedule. We will play 3 prelim brackets of 6, followed by a rebracket into three more brackets of 6 (top-middle-bottom), with teams not playing the team they played during the prelims. Ties will be broken on PPG. If the top two teams in the top playoff bracket are separated by one game or less (based on playoff record, including the playoff team they played in the prelim bracket), a one-game final will occur. If the top team in the top playoff bracket has a 2-game lead over the next teams, there will be no final.

Stats will start to appear here after games begin Prelim stats are now here: http://srivatsa.org/staaaats/eacn/EACN_ ... dings.html
(Stats will be rehosted on results.scobo.net after the tournament is over)

EDIT (10:38a): Games got underway around 10:20am, so we're a bit behind schedule.
EDIT (~12:20p): Round 3 is complete, with parts of round 4 trickling in.
EDIT (1:57p): Playoffs are about to begin; stats are here: http://srivatsa.org/staaaats/eacn/EACN_ ... dings.html (the playoff stats include one carryover match from the prelims)
EDIT (5:05p): Tournament is over; Matt Jackson will post about something or the other eventually.

[Adventure Temple Trail]

After five prelim and four playoff rounds (counting thee relevant prelim round against another top-bracket team for the sake of overall playoff record), Yale One (9-0) emerged one game ahead of RPI A (8-1); with only one packet left, RPI chose not to play a final and risk tying the record. Congratulations to Yale One and to the field's individual top scorer, Spencer Weinreich. The next five top scorers in order were Max Stivers of NYU, Ben Horowitz of Yale Five, Yue of Brown, Qi of RPI, and Isaac Park from Yale Two. We're very glad everyone attended, and sincerely hope to see you again at ACF Fall on the 5th, as well as the other events of the area (such as MAGNI on the 29th).

Thanks to Aaron Cohen of RPI, Mirza Ahmed of NYU, and Colin from Cornell for volunteering to come with their teams to staff. Thanks also to Nolan Esser and to Dave Madden of History Bowl fame, the latter of whom not only volunteered to staff, but brought six absolutely tournament-saving buzzers. Complete stats will be posted by Ashvin at some point soon.

[Excelsior (smack)]

Prelims (YSAC assumes no responsibility for any injury caused by reading the names of these brackets)
Playoffs (Including one game carried over from the prelims)

Corrections to the statistics should be directed to me at ([email protected]).

As a reminder, the packets used at this tournament will be used at multiple other tournaments over the course of the next few weeks and thus may not be publically discussed until all other tournaments using these packets are complete.

[Whiter Hydra]

Yale One (9-0) emerged one game ahead of RPI A (8-1); with only one packet left, RPI chose not to play a final and risk tying the record.

So I have no idea if this would be a good idea or not, but would playing the one finals packet and using the aggregate scores of both games played to determine the winner be a reasonable method in this case?

[Down and out in Quintana Roo]

They could have played two half-packets or something, too.

[Matt Weiner]

They could have played two half-packets or something, too.

Also known as "one packet"...

[Tower Monarch]

They could have played two half-packets or something, too.

Also known as "one packet"...

Well, as long as each half is roughly distributed correctly (probably not, but maybe sufficiently close), they could have used a half-packet for finals and the second half for a potential tiebreaker. As long as both teams agreed, I'd say that would've been fair. I'm not sure why, but I don't like the idea of comparing combined scores. I think it has to do with the false assumption of completely equal packets (if one was noticeably close to the favorite subjects of one team, two comparable teams would show one decisive victory and one close game). I'm less than confident about this though.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

Half packet finals are so misguided. I don't know why people decided that two half-games could substitute for the two most important games in a tournament.

[Lightly Seared on the Reality Grill]

The idea that the result of a half packet could be held on the same level as one on a full packet (i.e the first Yale 1/RPI A match) is a bit more than misguided.

[Down and out in Quintana Roo]

The idea that the result of a half packet could be held on the same level as one on a full packet (i.e the first Yale 1/RPI A match) is a bit more than misguided.

Well with the packet situation that was provided, you're saying that not playing is better than playing something? Perhaps there should have been more packets written for this tournament.

[Matt Weiner]

Yes, not playing a final and just giving the tournament to the team with the better record is preferable to playing a fake "final" that could result in a team losing the tournament despite actually being tied. Whether the solution is to write/use more packets or to accept that sometimes you don't need an advantaged final is something that depends on the particular circumstances.