RESCHEDULED - TJIAT on 1/28/12 -- LIST II Mirror

[tribble]

TJ has rescheduled its annual TJIAT to Saturday, January 28, 2012. We’ll be mirroring Ladue High School’s LIST II question set. We’re aiming to get as many teams in attendance as possible on such short notice.

Logistics: Our address is 6560 Braddock Road Alexandria, Virginia 22312. Registration will start at 8:00, with the opening meeting starting at 9:00. Breakfast will be provided.

Fees: Registration is $70 per team; discounts are $10 each for fully functional buzzer sets, experienced moderators, and traveling over 200 miles. Checks should be made payable to “TJHSST” with “Quizbowl Tournament” in the subject line. We would prefer that payment be brought on the day of the tournament, but mailing in advance is fine too; anything sent via snail mail should be addressed c/o Carolyn Gecan.

Signup: Sign up on our handy-dandy website. This is the link to the field update; I’ll also keep a field update running in this post. If you need to change your registration information at any time (e.g. register one additional or one fewer team), you can do so here.

Any questions can be directed to the TJ quizbowl officers at [email protected]. We hope to see you in January!

[tribble]

As many people have noticed, TJIAT has a date conflict with the VHSL Scholastic Bowl Northern Regionals at Edison High School. This was accidental but unfortunately unavoidable; by the time we realized we had a scheduling conflict, it was too late to reschedule TJIAT, so we have opted to go ahead with holding TJIAT on the 21st. We’re sorry that this may prevent Northern Region teams from attending TJIAT, but we saw this as a better alternative than canceling the tournament and depriving teams in the DC metro area of a chance to hear LIST II. Any specific concerns about this can be directed to the TJ Quizbowl officers at the email listed above.

[Smuttynose Island]

As many people have noticed, TJIAT has a date conflict with the VHSL Scholastic Bowl Northern Regionals at Edison High School.

If you haven't done so already, it would probably be prudent to send an explanation as to why you cannot reschedule TJIAT to any Northern Region coach who brings this point up as many of them do not read the forums.

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Field (15):

GDS (3)
Gonzaga
Howard
Longfellow
Montgomery Blair
The Narwhals
New Kent
Quince Orchard
Richard Montgomery
St. Anselm's (2)
Walter Johnson
Whitman

We've cleared registrations from the 21st; to sign up for the 28th, go here!

I'll be updating this post as frequently as possible, but this will be automatically updating as registrations come in.

[tribble]

Bumped because this is now less than three weeks away! Now's a good time to sign up.

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This tournament is now platinum certified by PACE, so the top 25% of the field will qualify for the NSC.

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With 18 teams signed up, registration has now closed. If more teams are interested, I'll start a waiting list.

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Fairfax County has now cancelled all extracurricular activities in anticipation of inclement weather. We'll look into rescheduling, but it looks highly unlikely that things will work out.

[SunWukong]

This is very disappointing. As far as the quizbowl schedule goes, next week is totally clear for rescheduling, but I could see that might not work in terms of school availability, moderators, etc. If next week is a possibility, GDS is available and eager to attend.

[Down and out in Quintana Roo]

Unbelievable.

Also, possibly sending a phone message to teams would have been a good idea, as i did not know/check this until right now. Thanks.

[tribble]

Pending availability of the school building and a faculty sponsor, we're looking into re-scheduling for January 28th. We realize this is an SAT date and are trying to gauge team interest. If your school would be interested in sending team(s) to a tentative tournament on the 28th, please email [email protected] with an estimated number of teams. If we get fewer than 12 teams by Tuesday night, we definitely won't be able to put on a tournament.

Sorry for the tentative nature of our plans right now.

[Down and out in Quintana Roo]

CR would be unable to attend.

[tribble]

Well, it looks like we'll be able to put this on after all! Registrations have been cleared and re-opened. We understand that this is very short notice, but if your school intends to send a team, please sign up here at your earliest convenience. We hope that this tournament may be a good opportunity for schools to prepare for any upcoming VHSL competitions, or just play some good quizbowl.

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At 13 teams, this field has grown very quickly! Registrations will close tomorrow afternoon at 4:00.

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Prelims!

[Kouign Amann]

1. Whitman
2. Blair
3. St. Anselm's
4. GDS

This tournament was mostly ok, and thanks to TJ for hosting, but I'm confused as to the rationale for the playoff scheduling. Why weren't results from prelim games against playoff teams carried over? How were teams seeded into their playoff brackets? It seems to me especially important to carry over the prelim result if two teams from the same prelim bracket end up in the same playoff bracket. At the end of the playoffs, the top four teams each had one loss to another playoff team, but because games weren't carried over, Blair and Whitman had their losses discounted. People may accuse me of being bitter, which I guess I am a little, but I still don't think the playoff schedule was entirely fair. Would it not have made more sense to simply cross over the top four and bottom four from each prelim bracket? This would have resulted in the same number of rounds for everyone except the teams in the final and wouldn't have had the carry-over issues.

[tribble]

Playoffs have been added. I'll be working on combined prelim and playoff stats over the course of the next few days.

Since it's not clear from the stats, here's how placings worked out in the end:
1. Whitman
2. Blair
3. St. Anselm's A
4. GDS A
5. New Kent
6. RM
7. WJ
8. Gonzaga
9. GDS C
10. GDS B
11. & 12. Narwhals and St. Anselm's B (both left before round 11, which they would have played each other in)
13. Longfellow
14. Howard
15. Quince Orchard (left after lunch)

Teams were divided into two brackets of eight (with one bye in the Cludeo bracket) in the morning and played a round robin. Teams were then rebracketed into parallel afternoon brackets by putting 1st and 3rd seeds from Cluedo with 2nd and 4th seed from Cheekbones, then the 2nd and 4th seeds from Cluedo with the 1st and 3rd seeds from Cheekbones. The same thing was done for the bottom brackets, which each had one bye (Quince Orchard left after lunch and thus forfeited all afternoon games). After playing a three-game round robin, teams played cross-bracket final games.

As Aidan mentioned above, this probably was not ideal. If we had arranged play so that the top four teams in one bracket played the top four teams the other bracket in the playoffs, and the prelim stats carried over to final rankings, it would probably have worked better. We welcome any constructive commentary on this.

Thanks to everybody who came today on less than a week's notice and to Mrs. Reback and Mr. Gilbert for helping staff. Also, thanks to Max Schindler and the team from Ladue HS for the great questions!

As this set is not yet cleared for discussion and the set will be mirrored elsewhere in the coming weeks/months, please do not discuss any questions on any public parts of the internet, etc. Any commentary about the tournament format, etc. can be discussed here or sent to [email protected].

EDIT: Combined stats have now been posted. When I merged the SQBS files, it deleted everything but the final score for the game. I'll keep working on this, but here's what I have for now.

[Edward Powers]

Seems like St. Anselm's deserved a better fate, going 9-1 overall and posting a 2-1 record against the two teams finishing ahead of it, while Whitman and Blair were both 8-2 overall, with Whitman going 2-2 against St. Anselm''s and Blair, while Blair went 1-2 against Whitman and St. Anselm's? Seems to me that Aidan has a legitimate criticism of the bracketing for the playoffs.

EDIT: This comment of course is not meant to disparage the excellent efforts of Whitman & Blair---they played by the rules in place at the time. Rather it is an effort to add to St. Anselm's puzzlement over those difficult to understand playoff rules. Of course, as Sarah suggested, mistakes can happen and I'm sure TJ did not mean to create such puzzlement. I guess the old saw 'live and learn' is appropriate here.

[Mewto55555]

As this set is not yet cleared for discussion and the set will be mirrored elsewhere in the coming weeks/months, please do not discuss any questions on any public parts of the internet, etc. Any commentary about the tournament format, etc. can be discussed here or sent to [email protected].

In fact, I'd love to receive any set-related feedback anyone may have -- just shoot me an email ([email protected])!