Subject-specific player polls

[vinteuil]

I liked the Science Player Poll idea last time we did it—it produced a lot of more focused and engaged discussion than the broader thread. Why don't we do this every year? And for every subject?

This is a thread where you can post your (subjective, likely incomplete/inaccurate) rankings of players in whatever category or subject you choose, or put forward points for discussion.

For instance, I think this year it's really interesting to ask who the great science players are. Obviously Adam Silverman has shot up to at least the top 5, maybe even the top 2. Who do people think constitute the top 5? What about history players?

EDIT:

Adam Silverman got every single biology and chemistry tossup in the ICT playoffs.

[Benin Rebirth Party]

You should vote for Rein Otsason in your science player poll. A big part of Toronto's success is his specialty in the physical sciences. His weakness at bio harms him moderately, but it wouldn't be a far stretch to call him a reasonable candidate for top 5 physics players.

[1992 in spaceflight]

You should seriously think about putting Stephen Eltinge in your top 25! (Or top 20 like I am.) He's got incredible consistency (look at his play in the top bracket!!) in physics, physics-y science, not-so-physics-y science, history, current events, and completely random impossible shit; he's an incredibly efficient player who contributes a great attitude as a teammate; and his (serious) generalism gets pretty far shadowed on this team, especially by Adam and Isaac. Stephen is also the only person on my team [EDIT: one of like four players in all of quizbowl] who's so goddamn good at his 1/1 that (as Will Alston alluded to above) I just put down my buzzer on physics nowadays—I'm not going to beat him to it.

[gyre and gimble]

I think this kind of thing only really works for a category like science, where every team is only going to have one (if any) dedicated specialist. Otherwise it's too hard to compare. Maybe history is another appropriate category. But literature seems too diverse and dilute to really compare across teams (for example, in two games against Auroni and Will, and three games against John this year, I got zero sense of who was better than who at literature; and in some of those games, I got half the literature tossups in the round, even though I'm not in their tier). As for any other category, 1 tossup per round is really not enough to get a good sense.

I say this because I think this thread is likely to make zero progress if a whole bunch of people just post to say, "My teammate is really good at X. I saw him second-line a tossup on Y one time!"

[vinteuil]

I say this because I think this thread is likely to make zero progress if a whole bunch of people just post to say, "My teammate is really good at X. I saw him second-line a tossup on Y one time!"

For what it's worth, I'm more interested in those kind of posts than in making any real "progress."

[gyre and gimble]

I say this because I think this thread is likely to make zero progress if a whole bunch of people just post to say, "My teammate is really good at X. I saw him second-line a tossup on Y one time!"

For what it's worth, I'm more interested in those kind of posts than in making any real "progress."

I guess I should clarify by saying, I don't mean this thread should eventually come to a list of best current events players or whatever. But it's also not that meaningful for there to be a ton of posts claiming that somebody is good, without a good way of comparing between these players. If 25 people post in this thread saying they have teammates that know a lot of literature, I'm not going to be convinced that all 25 people are elite literature players.

[kitakule]

I say this because I think this thread is likely to make zero progress if a whole bunch of people just post to say, "My teammate is really good at X. I saw him second-line a tossup on Y one time!"

For what it's worth, I'm more interested in those kind of posts than in making any real "progress."

I guess I should clarify by saying, I don't mean this thread should eventually come to a list of best current events players or whatever. But it's also not that meaningful for there to be a ton of posts claiming that somebody is good, without a good way of comparing between these players. If 25 people post in this thread saying they have teammates that know a lot of literature, I'm not going to be convinced that all 25 people are elite literature players.

I know it isn't perfect, but couldn't we use performances at subject-specific side-events/tournaments to compare? Granted, these events don't happen that often, but when they do they're really a good opportunity to see the best players in a certain subject face off on a good number of questions. A good number of elite literature players participated in the Lit Skype League earlier this year, for instance.

[Red Panda Cub]

The only person who beat George to bio at Nationals this year was Eric, and, as Will said in the player poll thread, we had 26ppb on bio at Nats, so I think George deserves a look-in here. He also got the chemistry tossup in every playoff game except those against Stanford (who have a chemistry PhD student) and against Penn (man this Eric guy is pretty good at science?). But, yeah, vote for George in the science poll.

Edit: Ewan MacAulay of Cambridge powered something like 38 consecutive chemistry tossups through Penn Bowl-EFT-Terrapin this year, so is probably a top-3 chem player. He's also rad at the rest of the science distro.

[adamsil]

To be less hyperbolic--Max and I split science this year pretty much 50-50, and he took a mostly-chemistry-tiebreaker tossup against us in the ICT playoffs, so Dylan's high praise isn't totally true, and my best game at Nats was the one against Yale, so that might color Jacob's opinion too. I also did much better at the science at ICT than I did at Nats.

Rein is a very good science player. Combined we went 4/0/0 on the science in our game at ICT, and he had a crazy-good physics buzz at Nats against us too.

[touchpack]

I say this because I think this thread is likely to make zero progress if a whole bunch of people just post to say, "My teammate is really good at X. I saw him second-line a tossup on Y one time!"

For what it's worth, I'm more interested in those kind of posts than in making any real "progress."

I guess I should clarify by saying, I don't mean this thread should eventually come to a list of best current events players or whatever. But it's also not that meaningful for there to be a ton of posts claiming that somebody is good, without a good way of comparing between these players. If 25 people post in this thread saying they have teammates that know a lot of literature, I'm not going to be convinced that all 25 people are elite literature players.

I entirely agree with Stephen here--while it's good to know that say, George Corfield is a good biology player that will beat non-biology players to the category perfunctorily, that isn't super helpful in trying to construct a ranking. However, with Ophir's analytics, it may be possible to create a data-based system of ranking players. I did a simple analysis of the top 10 scorers in science at the Michigan site of TTIAC:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

So, in this spreadsheet, I have naively ranked the players by science PPG, but that's not a great metric, mostly because some of the players were in lower playoff brackets and were getting late 10s vs non-science teams, and I'm interested in looking at depth of knowledge here to see how the top players would stack up against eachother. So, I used the buzzpoint tracking and counted out the number of times each player beat the entire field to a tossup. (Twice, two players buzzed on the exact same word--I awarded each player half a first-buzz in those scenarios) Looking at the power numbers and first-buzz numbers, I then sorted the players into "tiers" and subjectively ranked the players within those tiers based on the stats. (Ashvin gets the edge in tier 3 over James and Andrew because he had to play in the highly competitive top bracket--I think all my other choices should be self-explanatory).

Now if we had these stats for ICT/ACF Nationals, we could plausibly create a fairly accurate ranking of top players. All I can really see from these stats is that Sam has improved considerably from last year's ICT, when Brian beat him to 5 science tossups in one game to beat Maryland in the semi-finals, and that Eric is a cut above everyone else (except potentially Adam, who I suspect is as good as me... but he didn't come to Crime, so we just don't know!)

[Make sure your seatbelt is fastened]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

This data is pretty fascinating -- is TTIAC clear? If so, would it be possible to see the rest of the buzzpoints from the main site?

[Brian McPeak]

I say this because I think this thread is likely to make zero progress if a whole bunch of people just post to say, "My teammate is really good at X. I saw him second-line a tossup on Y one time!"

For what it's worth, I'm more interested in those kind of posts than in making any real "progress."

Right. Making a ranking is fine, but it's also fun to give kudos for things people can't see in the stats. With this in mind, I'll say that Kenji's geography buzzes at ICT were disgusting. Just horrifying.

[Sima Guang Hater]

My Science Rankings

1. Josh Alman (while cheating)
2. 2010 Eric Mukherjee
3. Andy Watkins (while cheating)
4. The Apocalyptic Figure that Results when peak Seth Teitler and peak Selene Koo do the Fusion Dance
5. 2012 Eric Mukherjee
6. 2014-5 Eric Mukherjee
7. Billy Busse
8. 2017 Eric Mukherjee
9. Adam Silverman
10. Stephen Eltinge
11. Rohith Nagari
12. Brian McPeak
13. George Corfield and his British Stethoscope
14. Rafael Krichevsky
15. Max Schindler Wielding a Stack of Flashcards like Gambit from the X-Men
16. Ewan MacAulay
17. Kevin Wang
18. Sam Rombro
19. Someone Homeomorphic to Jacob Reed
20. Auroni Gupta's Bone Marrow

I've never seen Rein Otsason play, so I can't comment on him

[jonah]

4. The Apocalyptic Figure that Results when Seth Teitler and Selene Koo do the Fusion Dance

Calvin, or Julian?

[Cheynem]

What about Steven Hines (cheating)?

[Sima Guang Hater]

What about Steven Hines (cheating)?

I wasn't impressed

[vinteuil]

2. 2010 Eric Mukherjee
5. 2012 Eric Mukherjee
6. 2015 Eric Mukherjee
8. 2017 Eric Mukherjee

but what about the other years?? my life isn't complete without knowing 2014 vs. 2011

[aseem.keyal]

Nathan Weiser should be in your top 25. I'm pretty sure he's the second best US History player in the country (after Jordan). He also put up 17 powers at ICT (I think the stats awarded me one of his powers, not sure).

Nathan's also really good at film. He's destroyed probably every regular difficulty film tossup I've seen him play, and got the second most powers/points at our Eyes mirror (going 10/4/5) almost solely off of his film knowledge. I don't know much about who's good at film, but I'd place him at top 5 comfortably, and probably top 3. He's also a pretty good Americana player in general, from history to literature.

[vinteuil]

You should be considering Jason Zhou for your ballot. Here are two facts about Jason:
1) He is very good at history. If you have played him you should be able to confirm this fact.
2) He has become very good at history despite a systematic inability to take in information about the world. If you have talked to him about food or Neil Patrick Harris you should be able to confirm this fact.

[Sima Guang Hater]

Delete this post please

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

My Science Rankings

1. Josh Alman (while cheating)
2. 2010 Eric Mukherjee
3. Andy Watkins (while cheating)
4. The Apocalyptic Figure that Results when peak Seth Teitler and peak Selene Koo do the Fusion Dance
5. 2012 Eric Mukherjee
6. 2014-5 Eric Mukherjee
7. Billy Busse
8. 2017 Eric Mukherjee
9. Adam Silverman
10. Stephen Eltinge
11. Rohith Nagari
12. Brian McPeak
13. George Corfield and his British Stethoscope
14. Rafael Krichevsky
15. Max Schindler Wielding a Stack of Flashcards like Gambit from the X-Men
16. Ewan MacAulay
17. Kevin Wang
18. Sam Rombro
19. Someone Homeomorphic to Jacob Reed
20. Auroni Gupta's Bone Marrow

I've never seen Rein Otsason play, so I can't comment on him

Where's Chris Ray?

[Jem Casey]

I am late here as always, but wanted to shout out my teammates for being very good at their categories, since their countless hours of work and elite specialism may have been somewhat obscured by the stats and their bad luck on ACF Nationals 2017 – Editors’ Finals 1 (which was by far the worst packet for them that we played all year). I thought this thread would be more appropriate for describing their strengths as specialists, but you should absolutely consider voting for all of them in the main player poll as well.

Weijia Cheng: Weijia is the best religion player in the country, and probably the best by a large margin (and, as such, should be on your player poll ballot). Because of him, Maryland got every religion question at Nats (13 in a row) until Sam and I decided to start buzzing in the Michigan games. Also an elite econ and a good history player, with some generalist firepower that unfortunately went untapped on this year's Maryland A (not next year's, though!). I'd argue that none of the title-contending teams, given Weijia in 2016 and an understanding of his strengths as a player and studier, could reasonably have left him off their 2016-17 A team, since he can become truly unstoppable on any categories you tell him to learn (which, again, should earn him a spot on your player poll ballot).

Ophir Lifshitz: a top 5 music player, an elite linguist, and one of the best at his other science subcategories, astro and cs. Ophir got every music tossup he heard for three tournaments in a row (WAO, SCT, regs), then destroyed a bunch of music at TTIAC, where he also went 2/1/0 to win our first "Chicago A" game. He's a bit more subdistribution-dependent than most specialists, so his stuff not coming up at Nats hurt his statline. Will also get other random humanities things without really knowing what they are ("What's Mysore?"--Ophir, on powering a Mysore tossup against Michigan at "housewrite").

Sam Rombro: As has been pointed out above, Sam improved a lot this year, becoming an indisputably a great physics player and a top science player in general. Take a look at his ICT stats; dude got exactly two tossups--mostly science, with some good naqt category buzzes thrown in--in every game of the playoffs (not counting the, uh, 4 he got against McGill). After the prelims he had six powers, more or as many as a bunch of players who'll rank above him in the poll. This is a good person to have on your quizbowl team.

[Taper or die. Can you do any less?]

Rein Otsason is very good at the science things.

I think most Nats-attending players have a range of topics for which they can say "I am virtually unbeatable on this subject matter". But while some are rather narrow (mine is Saivite Hindu mythology), Rein's is scarily broad (most of the physics things, most of the math things, all of the engineering/technology things, lots of the physical chemistry things, etc.)

[Santa Claus]

17. Kevin Wang

what

[The Ununtiable Twine]

math player poll:

1. Harrison Brown

math team poll:

1. Alabama 2012-13

[ErikC]

Zhenglin Liu from Toronto B is still new to the game and is already a beast at auditory fine arts (a decently competitive area in Canada) and his knowledge doesn't seem to fall off at any difficulty level. In his last year he'll be in contention for one of the best opera players.

[everdiso]

Zhenglin Liu from Toronto B is still new to the game and is already a beast at auditory fine arts (a decently competitive area in Canada) and his knowledge doesn't seem to fall off at any difficulty level. In his last year he'll be in contention for one of the best opera players.

This is a good shoutout. I personally wouldn't be surprised if he were among the best opera players already. He's solo-30d Chicago Open opera bonuses in practice too many times to ignore.

[Amizda Calyx]

math player poll:

1. Harrison Brown

math team poll:

1. Alabama 2012-13

I'd also like to point to Sam Braunfeld and Samir Khan as great math players, as they scored 48 and 46 powers respectively at Math Monstrosity while playing on the same team.

[CPiGuy]

math player poll:

1. Harrison Brown

math team poll:

1. Alabama 2012-13

I'd also like to point to Sam Braunfeld and Samir Khan as great math players, as they scored 48 and 46 powers respectively at Math Monstrosity while playing on the same team.

Yeah, this was really impressive, particularly them collectively powering the last 11 questions of the first round.

[The Ununtiable Twine]

math player poll:

1. Harrison Brown

math team poll:

1. Alabama 2012-13

I'd also like to point to Sam Braunfeld and Samir Khan as great math players, as they scored 48 and 46 powers respectively at Math Monstrosity while playing on the same team.

Yeah, this was really impressive, particularly them collectively powering the last 11 questions of the first round.

The next iteration needs to have more challenging content! :)