Players Choice Awards

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Victor Prieto
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Players Choice Awards

Post by Victor Prieto »

Voting is now live for this year's awards.
___________

Based on the suggestion of Justin Hawkins from the players poll thread (and with his permission), I've decided to organize a quizbowl version of the Players Choice Awards. These awards are not intended to distract from the player poll, but instead try to recognize collegiate players and community leaders in unique categories who may not otherwise be recognized. The nominations and voting will be entirely community driven, not by me. The two awards I believe are uncontroversially justified for inclusion are:

Rookie of the Year: the best collegiate player who had not competed in any collegiate tournament prior to September 2017 (collegiate or open tournaments played as a high school or dual-enrolled student are excluded from this definition), where "best" is defined as most valuable at securing wins for their team compared to the other players on the ballot. I realize the definition of "best" has been a point of contention in previous player polls, but I have hope that breaking it down into smaller polls might ameliorate this issue. I really could use more help with the rest of this process than getting bogged down in the definition of the word "best." Other awards are free to narrowly define their criteria, so we can maybe divide up different definitions of the word to recognize different people?

4th Scorer of the Year: the player who scored the lowest number of points on any team that competed at ICT or ACF Nationals, but was more valuable at securing wins for their team compared to the other players on the ballot.

I could use ideas for more awards, so I'll have a suggestions box. The link to the suggestions box can be found here.

I have a good idea of the methodology, but I welcome to suggestions on the process. My plan is to have the suggestions box open starting from now until April 28th, then open nominations until May 5th, and then have voting available from May 5th through May 12th. Other elements of the process which I could use some input on:

1. The voting process will not, strictly speaking, be anonymous. A name will be required for each form submission, but only so I can make sure nobody was submitting fraudulent ballots (not a perfect system, but I think it'll be okay). The only information that will be released publicly will be the number of votes. Nominations will be made anonymously.

2. I want to prevent people from voting for their own teammates or friends that they see very regularly in the region. My idea to enact this was to have voters identify their region on the form, and then the ballot would exclude players from their region. I've worked up an example of what I mean.

3. I would like to have non-playing roles highlighted, too. Please submit suggestions for awards that don't directly involve playing ability! I'm also open to the possibility of a "special achievement" award section, for unique accomplishments that don't fit neatly in a category.
Last edited by Victor Prieto on Sun May 20, 2018 10:10 am, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by A Dim-Witted Saboteur »

Victor Prieto wrote:Rookie of the Year: the best collegiate player who had not competed in any collegiate tournament prior to September 2017 (excluding high schoolers and dual-enrolled students), where "best" is defined as most valuable at securing wins for their team compared to the other players on the ballot. I realize the definition of "best" has been a point of contention in previous player polls, but I have hope that breaking it down into smaller polls might ameliorate this issue. I really could use more help with the rest of this process than getting bogged down in the definition of the word "best." Other awards are free to narrowly define their criteria, so we can maybe divide up different definitions of the word to recognize different people?
Do open tournaments competed in as a high schooler count as "collegiate" for these purposes?
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by Victor Prieto »

An Economic Ignoramus wrote:Do open tournaments competed in as a high schooler count as "collegiate" for these purposes?
I've adjusted the definition to make it more clear.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by Cheynem »

I'd like to see the "Most Improved" award. I think that was a cool idea.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by vinteuil »

Cheynem wrote:I'd like to see the "Most Improved" award. I think that was a cool idea.
it’s aseem you fools
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by Borrowing 100,000 Arrows »

I guess I'll make the case for Thatcher Chonka as fourth player of the year.

Pros: sick Harold Hotelling knowledge, drank a whole bottle of Captain Morgan after ACF Nats and didn't die, has the bushiest of eyebrows
Cons: recorded a neg after falling asleep on his buzzer
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by Cheynem »

Just in case Jacob is serious, while Aseem certainly might be the most improved player, I don't think the award should honor players in that vein--Aseem was already a very strong top 25 player and moved to a MVP candidate. He got better, much better, but it's not like anyone was like "I don't think that Aseem guy is that good." I think the award should be more for people who went from like sub 10 PPG to top 50 type player (because I think those accomplishments slip through the cracks more). Obviously this is not my award, though.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by Fat Lip »

Borrowing 100,000 Arrows wrote:I guess I'll make the case for Thatcher Chonka as fourth player of the year.

Pros: sick Harold Hotelling knowledge, drank a whole bottle of Captain Morgan after ACF Nats and didn't die, has the bushiest of eyebrows
Cons: recorded a neg after falling asleep on his buzzer
Could do better with more LMFAO knowledge though
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by Fado Alexandrino »

Akhil Garg's ACF Fall ppg: 29.09
Akhil Garg's ACF Regionals ppg: 11.50
Akhil Garg's ACF Nationals ppg: 20.00

:thinking emoji:
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by Tejas »

I’d suggest having a separate award for total newcomers, players who had never played quizbowl before.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by A Dim-Witted Saboteur »

Nice hockey Cote d'Azur wrote:I’d suggest having a separate award for total newcomers, players who had never played quizbowl before.
I'll second this suggestion, but with people who haven't played pyramidal quizbowl before.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by vinteuil »

Cheynem wrote:Just in case Jacob is serious, while Aseem certainly might be the most improved player, I don't think the award should honor players in that vein--Aseem was already a very strong top 25 player and moved to a MVP candidate. He got better, much better, but it's not like anyone was like "I don't think that Aseem guy is that good." I think the award should be more for people who went from like sub 10 PPG to top 50 type player (because I think those accomplishments slip through the cracks more). Obviously this is not my award, though.
I was serious, but this is a good point. (When have I EVER missed the spirit of a discussion before??) I guess plugging Taylor Harvey again also misses this slightly, but hopefully that’s closer.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by gimmedatguudsuccrose »

Victor Prieto wrote:
2. I want to prevent people from voting for their own teammates or friends that they see very regularly in the region. My idea to enact this was to have voters identify their region on the form, and then the ballot would exclude players from their region. I've worked up an example of what I mean.
This methodology seems a bit odd. For one, the region with the most voters will have the fewest number of people who could possibly vote for them. Second, if this is based primarily on nationals, we've (presumably) all seen the performance of the players on the ballot. Although people frequently vote for members of their club (and maybe their region) higher than others, that hasn't stopped the overall player poll from being fairly successful. I think having a section asking "are you friends with [X Player]" would be much more effective at removing bias than this setup.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by TheIronLadyOfQuizbowl »

Fat Lip wrote:
Borrowing 100,000 Arrows wrote:I guess I'll make the case for Thatcher Chonka as fourth player of the year.

Pros: sick Harold Hotelling knowledge, drank a whole bottle of Captain Morgan after ACF Nats and didn't die, has the bushiest of eyebrows
Cons: recorded a neg after falling asleep on his buzzer
Could do better with more LMFAO knowledge though
This insult would hurt if it hadn't already haunted my dreams for months.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by Hip Hop Since Nineteen Seventy-Eight »

vinteuil wrote:
Cheynem wrote:Just in case Jacob is serious, while Aseem certainly might be the most improved player, I don't think the award should honor players in that vein--Aseem was already a very strong top 25 player and moved to a MVP candidate. He got better, much better, but it's not like anyone was like "I don't think that Aseem guy is that good." I think the award should be more for people who went from like sub 10 PPG to top 50 type player (because I think those accomplishments slip through the cracks more). Obviously this is not my award, though.
I was serious, but this is a good point. (When have I EVER missed the spirit of a discussion before??) I guess plugging Taylor Harvey again also misses this slightly, but hopefully that’s closer.
I agree that Taylor deserves recognition in this domain as he has improved significantly over his career, but I'd definitely put him in my top 25 for individual players. As far as most improved, I think my teammate Jonathen Settle deserves some recognition. He has gotten ridiculously good at science in the past year which has been a huge part of Florida's improved performance at the national tournaments this year.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by Judson Laipply »

Shameless Chicago promotion time:

Matthew Lehmann and Luke Tierney are both freshmen who scored over 20 PPG in the ACF Nationals top bracket and led their team to it's first top 10 finish in at least the last 5 years (and probably more than that).

If they aren't both in your ballot for rookie of the year (barring this weird "no voting for your home region" rule), you've fucked up.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by not quite »

Hip Hop Since 1978 wrote:As far as most improved, I think my teammate Jonathen Settle deserves some recognition. He has gotten ridiculously good at science in the past year which has been a huge part of Florida's improved performance at the national tournaments this year.
I can agree with this. It was scary playing science tossups against Florida (vs. the rest of the 2nd bracket) because of how good he is. In our room, he buzzed incredibly early on NF-kappaB and I was left quite impressed.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by vinteuil »

I already posted about him in the other thread, but Adam Fine had the highest PPG of any 4th scorer in the top bracket of nats, while also playing on the team with the highest PPG and tossups PPG. If that doesn't make him the best 4th scorer in the country, I don't know what does, but you should also consider that four of his six deepest specialties are in physics, math, music, and painting.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by DumbJaques »

I don't see a reason not to do all-NBA teams (by which I mean, 1st team, 2nd team, 3rd team, etc. Though also like, in terms of basketball skill, this would also be good and correct).
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by Victor Prieto »

A few people have submitted suggestions for awards so far, but not very many. At the very least, there's some submissions that I'd like to highlight as inspiration for others, including some very goofy ones that I love. If you have any ideas (inspired by below), I'd encourage you to submit them here. If you can, try to match the style of the description of the two I put in the original post, in terms of preciseness of language.

The ones that I like so far:

Most Improved Player: player who has improved the most since the previous year.

Upset of the Year (submitted as the "Liberty defeats Penn" award): awarded to the team that pulled off the most notable upset of the year. Examples from last year would include McGill taking a top bracket spot from Columbia at ICT or Northwestern making a run to the ICT finals. If this is included, I will probably choose to make it a specific game.

Best Neg Award (submitted as specific to player, but I changed it to specific negs): awarded to the funniest neg story from this year. Examples included in the submission included Willa Catheters (I really like this one), Strom Gurmond, and the Chinese Communist Kuomintang Party.

Best Easy Tournament: awarded to the best easy tournament of the year. Neither "best" nor "easy" was defined in the submission.

I came up with excluding players in the same region as the voter because I wanted to prevent players in mega-clubs like Berkeley or Chicago from getting 20 votes from their own teammates, and because I'm going to try to make it easy to finish the ballot in less than 10 minutes (not every question will be required). On the other hand, the player poll probably requires an hour+ of work coming up with the list. It's not a perfect method, but if 80 people vote and 25 are from the midwest, that's still a good 55 voters able to vote for players in the midwest. I'm not really sure I'm capable of creating a form that excludes candidates on the basis of "are you friends with ______," and it's the quizbowl community, so everyone already kinda knows each other pretty well at the top level. I'm still open to suggestions to fix this process, though.

Also (sorry), I would appreciate holding off on promoting people for awards until after the nominations roll in. Anybody can get nominated, and there's not really much point in plugging people right now, anyway.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by gimmedatguudsuccrose »

Victor Prieto wrote: I came up with excluding players in the same region as the voter because I wanted to prevent players in mega-clubs like Berkeley or Chicago from getting 20 votes from their own teammates, and because I'm going to try to make it easy to finish the ballot in less than 10 minutes (not every question will be required). On the other hand, the player poll probably requires an hour+ of work coming up with the list. It's not a perfect method, but if 80 people vote and 25 are from the midwest, that's still a good 55 voters able to vote for players in the midwest. I'm not really sure I'm capable of creating a form that excludes candidates on the basis of "are you friends with ______," and it's the quizbowl community, so everyone already kinda knows each other pretty well at the top level. I'm still open to suggestions to fix this process, though.
Personally, I think that amending the region requirement to just excluding votes from people at one's current institution would be a good compromise.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by A Dim-Witted Saboteur »

Victor Prieto wrote: Upset of the Year (submitted as the "Liberty defeats Penn" award): awarded to the team that pulled off the most notable upset of the year. Examples from last year would include McGill taking a top bracket spot from Columbia at ICT or Northwestern making a run to the ICT finals. If this is included, I will probably choose to make it a specific game.
I may be somewhat biased, but I advise people to consider MSU beating Chicago A at Regionals for this. One of these teams went on to win Nats. One of them notably did not. Another good choice would be NYU making top bracket at ICT.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by Maxwell Sniffingwell »

Victor Prieto wrote: Upset of the Year (submitted as the "Liberty defeats Penn" award): awarded to the team that pulled off the most notable upset of the year. Examples from last year would include McGill taking a top bracket spot from Columbia at ICT or Northwestern making a run to the ICT finals. If this is included, I will probably choose to make it a specific game.
I'd also propose MIT over Northwestern at ICT, twice.

Northwestern wasn't exactly Chicago A... but MIT wasn't exactly MSU, either.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by Fado Alexandrino »

Both WUSTL and McGill played the role of Liberty at ICT.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by gimmedatguudsuccrose »

An Economic Ignoramus wrote:
Victor Prieto wrote: Upset of the Year (submitted as the "Liberty defeats Penn" award): awarded to the team that pulled off the most notable upset of the year. Examples from last year would include McGill taking a top bracket spot from Columbia at ICT or Northwestern making a run to the ICT finals. If this is included, I will probably choose to make it a specific game.
I may be somewhat biased, but I advise people to consider MSU beating Chicago A at Regionals for this. One of these teams went on to win Nats. One of them notably did not. Another good choice would be NYU making top bracket at ICT.
Surely, then, one should consider Chicago A's loss to Chicago C by a larger margin at the same tournament!
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by Aaron's Rod »

Victor Prieto wrote:Upset of the Year (submitted as the "Liberty defeats Penn" award): awarded to the team that pulled off the most notable upset of the year. Examples from last year would include McGill taking a top bracket spot from Columbia at ICT or Northwestern making a run to the ICT finals. If this is included, I will probably choose to make it a specific game.
Since we're already shilling, don't let Big Chicago games distract you from the fact that Minnesota beat Penn at ACF Nationals, Penn's first loss of the tournament. The only other teams that held Penn to under 200 points at Nats were Columbia and Berkeley. Minnesota isn't a bad team or anything, but they're probably not in the same class as any of them.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by Daedalus »

I think Yale B (Moses Kitakule, James Wedgwood, Hasna Karim, Michael Kearney) beating Columbia A (Rafael Krichevsky, Ben Zhang, Gerhardt Hinkle, Daniel Shao) 310-235 at Regionals should be in the conversation for upset of the year.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by Muriel Axon »

In the North circuit: While we're talking about things related to Minnesota and Penn (thanks for the shout-out, Alex!), one notable upset was a Wayzata team ("Thinkery") beating a UMN A team with me and Sam Bailey by more than 100 points (330 -- 210) at Penn Bowl. I'll post about my favorite neg (from Andrew Marell of UMN) once SMT is clear.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by vengefulsweatermensch »

Victor Prieto wrote:A few people have submitted suggestions for awards so far, but not very many. At the very least, there's some submissions that I'd like to highlight as inspiration for others, including some very goofy ones that I love. If you have any ideas (inspired by below), I'd encourage you to submit them here. If you can, try to match the style of the description of the two I put in the original post, in terms of preciseness of language.

The ones that I like so far:

Most Improved Player: player who has improved the most since the previous year.

Upset of the Year (submitted as the "Liberty defeats Penn" award): awarded to the team that pulled off the most notable upset of the year. Examples from last year would include McGill taking a top bracket spot from Columbia at ICT or Northwestern making a run to the ICT finals. If this is included, I will probably choose to make it a specific game.

Best Neg Award (submitted as specific to player, but I changed it to specific negs): awarded to the funniest neg story from this year. Examples included in the submission included Willa Catheters (I really like this one), Strom Gurmond, and the Chinese Communist Kuomintang Party.

Best Easy Tournament: awarded to the best easy tournament of the year. Neither "best" nor "easy" was defined in the submission.

I came up with excluding players in the same region as the voter because I wanted to prevent players in mega-clubs like Berkeley or Chicago from getting 20 votes from their own teammates, and because I'm going to try to make it easy to finish the ballot in less than 10 minutes (not every question will be required). On the other hand, the player poll probably requires an hour+ of work coming up with the list. It's not a perfect method, but if 80 people vote and 25 are from the midwest, that's still a good 55 voters able to vote for players in the midwest. I'm not really sure I'm capable of creating a form that excludes candidates on the basis of "are you friends with ______," and it's the quizbowl community, so everyone already kinda knows each other pretty well at the top level. I'm still open to suggestions to fix this process, though.

Also (sorry), I would appreciate holding off on promoting people for awards until after the nominations roll in. Anybody can get nominated, and there's not really much point in plugging people right now, anyway.
Not sure if you're still accepting nominations for awards, but what about a Question of the Year award? And/or a Writer of the Year award?

Will Nediger probably deserves to win both, if only for that "Leon getting larger" tossup at the beginning of Musical Elements.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by Victor Prieto »

gimmedatguudsuccrose wrote:Personally, I think that amending the region requirement to just excluding votes from people at one's current institution would be a good compromise.
This still requires a bunch of legwork on my end, but it's a reasonable compromise (I hope nominees are from less than 20 institutions, because having so many sections slows down the page).
vengefulsweatermensch wrote:Not sure if you're still accepting nominations for awards, but what about a Question of the Year award? And/or a Writer of the Year award?

Will Nediger probably deserves to win both, if only for that "Leon getting larger" tossup at the beginning of Musical Elements.
Still accepting award ideas, and these are both great ideas. I'll include both of them in some fashion (perhaps Question of the Year will be defined as the question that was the most entertaining to you, the voter). The sets that are clear can be found on the archive - do not submit questions from sets that are not clear, like Historature or ICT.

I'm really confused why people keep posting in this thread and are not using the suggestions box. Anyway, the criteria of these awards is still basically at my whim unless you submit clear wording. Nominations open Sunday. If you don't like how the criteria for an award is worded or have some input about the process, then please do so by Sunday.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by tempohouse1729 »

I'm going to admit to possessing a certain amount of bias here, but I think Warwick A's 310-215 win over Cambridge A (Jason, Ewan, Ellie and Ephraim) at ACF Regionals should be in contention for Upset of the Year. One of those teams finished 5th at Nats whereas the other team didn't even finish in the Top 5 at Regs!

My major memory of the game is the general feeling of 'what the hell is happening?' that I had as we just kept beating them to tossups and increasing our lead, and the eventual realisation around TU 15 that we were actually going to beat the all-conquering Cambridge A. A bizarre, baffling and brilliant 30 minutes.

(Post-Script: We rectified this major destabilisation of the space-time continuum later in the day by losing to Oxford C).
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by Majin Buu Roi »

tempohouse1729 wrote:I'm going to admit to possessing a certain amount of bias here, but I think Warwick A's 310-215 win over Cambridge A (Jason, Ewan, Ellie and Ephraim) at ACF Regionals should be in contention for Upset of the Year. One of those teams finished 5th at Nats whereas the other team didn't even finish in the Top 5 at Regs!

My major memory of the game is the general feeling of 'what the hell is happening?' that I had as we just kept beating them to tossups and increasing our lead, and the eventual realisation around TU 15 that we were actually going to beat the all-conquering Cambridge A. A bizarre, baffling and brilliant 30 minutes.

(Post-Script: We rectified this major destabilisation of the space-time continuum later in the day by losing to Oxford C).
You just beat me to posting exactly this (or something to this effect). I'd also like to, with reference to the above, nominate Joe Crowther for the "Chris Ray Award For Single-Handedly Upsetting People" that I just made up.

While I'm posting in this thread I'd also like to nominate the inimitable Ephraim Jacob Jacobus Levinson for 4th Scorer of the year. American quiz bowl has not quite gotten to experience Ephraim's non-sensical poetry/philosophy/literary theory/literary theory-adjacent things dominance first-hand, but let's just say that it makes him the quiz bowl equivalent of the Dos Equis guy: he doesn't always buzz, but when he does, it's on the first bloody clue. His Penn Bowl stat-line of 11/5/1 in ten rounds (it should in fact have been 12/5/0; he negged with an answer that was added to the answer-line in the version of the set uploaded to the database!) might be the most obscene thing I've ever seen in quiz and should by itself strongly suggest him for the 4th scorer title.
Last edited by Majin Buu Roi on Mon May 07, 2018 8:28 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by Victor Prieto »

Nominations are now live. Nominations will be open until May 7th.

This list of awards is reproduced below. A full description of each award can be found in the form, after clicking through to that award.

4th Scorer of the Year
Best Newcomer of the Year
Best Set of the Year
Best Wrong Answer of the Year
Most Improved Player of the Year
Nicest Person of the Year
Question of the Year
Rookie of the Year
Upset of the Year
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by Victor Prieto »

Nominations are still open for a few more days. Pretty healthy number of nominations for most awards, but only two for newcomer of the year and one for best wrong answer of the year.

In addition, I messed up the form for question of the year and wrong answer of the year, and didn't include a field for the set it came from. If you already submitted a nomination, it would be great if you could resubmit it with the set it came from as well. If I can't find the set it came from, I'll assume it was from a set that's not yet posted, and will not be including it on the ballot.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by Mike Bentley »

What's the date range for considering best set/question of the year? Does it extend back to last summer, or only since September?
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by Victor Prieto »

Mike Bentley wrote:What's the date range for considering best set/question of the year? Does it extend back to last summer, or only since September?
Sorry I never responded to this - I was counting only sets since September.

Nominations will close tonight, ballots for voting will be posted sometime tomorrow.

Only one (valid) nomination for Newcomer of the Year. For the question based awards, there's nominations from SMT, WAO 2, and DI ICT. Will SMT be clear after this Saturday? Is ICT clear? When will WAO 2 be clear? There's a couple nominations for tossups I think are from Historature but I'm not certain, and that set is not clear yet. Sorry for messing up the form for those awards, it'll be better next year.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by Important Bird Area »

Victor Prieto wrote:Is ICT clear?
ICT is not clear; at a minimum, it is being used for several high school tournaments the weekend of May 19-20.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by Dantooine is Big! »

Victor Prieto wrote:
Mike Bentley wrote:Will SMT be clear after this Saturday?
Yes, SMT will be clear after the last three mirrors/uses this Saturday.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

Historature is not clear.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by Nabonidus »

Victor Prieto wrote:When will WAO 2 be clear?
WAO2 is clear for discussion purposes but isn't uploaded yet as we're doing a close read in the Discord (https://discordapp.com/channels/2752793 ... 8336210944) to help us fix some remaining issues.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by Victor Prieto »

Voting is now open. I waited for SMT to be clear first, questions submitted from SCT or ICT were not included in the ballot as they are still in use.

I decided to dispense with the plan of excluding votes from the same region or affiliated institutions. It just got very complicated, although I will still collect information on how many people from which institutions voted. Almost all awards will have multiple checkboxes for voters to select candidates, and the ones with the most votes will win.

Please feel free to use this thread for discussion of the awards.

________________

4th Scorer of the Year

Awarded to the best player who scored the lowest number of points on any team that competed at ICT or ACF Nationals. "Best" is defined as most valuable at securing wins for their team compared to the other players on the ballot.

Newcomer of the Year

Awarded to the best collegiate player who had not participated in any pyramidal quizbowl tournament prior to this year.

Set of the Year

Awarded to the best tournament of the year announced at a difficulty level below Nationals.

Wrong Answer of the Year

Awarded to the funniest wrong answer from this year, whether it was a tossup or a bonus.

Most Improved Player of the Year

Awarded to the player who has improved the most since the previous year.

Nicest Person of the Year

Awarded to the kindest person who brightens people's day at tournaments that we should all try to emulate.

Question of the Year

Awarded to the tossup or bonus that was most entertaining to players hearing the question. Do NOT submit questions from sets that have not yet been cleared.

Rookie of the Year

Awarded to the best collegiate player who had not competed in any collegiate tournament prior to September 2017 (collegiate or open tournaments played as a high school or dual-enrolled student are excluded from this definition).

Upset of the Year

Awarded to the team that pulled off the most notable single game upset of the year.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by Judson Laipply »

Image


I’m aware we are the big evil cabal, but as far as I know there’s still only one Chicago institution.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by bradleykirksey »

I'm basically out of the circuit at this point, especially at the national level, so maybe my opinion is worthless. But, if anyone is curious about the South East...

4th scorer of the year, on a national level, has to be Adam Fine, right? But 16 points per game on 2 negs at ICT on the way to a national championship is pretty intense!

Set of the year? I personally loved Regs this year. It's sort of like voting for LeBron, but...

Nicest person would be, I think Jonathen Settle, at least in the south east. I can't speak for any other circuit, but you should all say hi to Jonathen next time you go to a tournament. It'll probably weird him out a little, which will be funny.

For question of the year I'm very partial to Penn Bowl, round 2, question 9.

"A portion of this project codenamed Hammertong was transported by operatives disguised as the Tonnika sisters. A tripartite architecture for this structure was designed by Raith Sienar. Qwi Xux performed research on this project without realizing its end goal; her prototype was built at Maw Installation. Another engineer on this system was forcibly recruited by (*) Orson Krennic before escaping with his wife and child. That man’s kyber crystal-based plans were stolen from a base on Eadu by Cassian Andor and Jyn Erso, whose father Galen left an intentional womp rat-sized weakness in it. That small thermal exhaust port leading to its main reactor made this installation vulnerable to a well-placed proton torpedo. For 10 points, name this superweapon developed by the Empire which was blown up by Luke Skywalker in A New Hope.

ANSWER: the first Death Star [or DS-1 Orbital Battle Station; do NOT accept or prompt on “Death Star II” or “Second Death Star” or “Starkiller Base”]"

And then Jakob Myers looks, statically, to be the best rookie, right? Like, is there something I'm missing, or is this a gimme?
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by Victor Prieto »

Fucitol wrote:Image

I’m aware we are the big evil cabal, but as far as I know there’s still only one Chicago institution.
Oops. Google actually automatically fixes it, so I'm not going to mess with it and accidentally delete data. It doesn't matter which Chicago is selected.

Voting is open until May 20th, I did not mention that before.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by Victor Prieto »

Today is the last day to submit votes. We've had an impressive number of responses - I'll post the results tomorrow.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by Victor Prieto »

Congratulations to all the winners!

4th Scorer of the Year: Alston Boyd - Chicago
Awarded to the best player who scored the lowest number of points on any team that competed at ICT or ACF Nationals. "Best" is defined as most valuable at securing wins for their team compared to the other players on the ballot.

Newcomer of the Year: John Connor - Virginia
Awarded to the best collegiate player who had not participated in any pyramidal quizbowl tournament prior to this year.

Set of the Year: Cal's Mid-Spring Tournament
Awarded to the best tournament of the year announced at a difficulty level below Nationals.

Wrong Answer of the Year: Sodom: "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children"
Awarded to the funniest wrong answer from this year, whether it was a tossup or a bonus.

Most Improved Player of the Year: Taylor Harvey - Florida
Awarded to the player who has improved the most since the previous year.

Nicest Person of the Year: Jason Golfinos - Cambridge
Awarded to the kindest person who brightens people's day at tournaments that we should all try to emulate.

Question of the Year: 2018 Musical Elements - Leon getting larger
Awarded to the tossup or bonus that was most entertaining to players hearing the question. Do NOT submit questions from sets that have not yet been cleared.

Rookie of the Year: Jakob Myers - Michigan State
Awarded to the best collegiate player who had not competed in any collegiate tournament prior to September 2017 (collegiate or open tournaments played as a high school or dual-enrolled student are excluded from this definition).

Upset of the Year: McGill A 365, Penn A 145 at ICT
Awarded to the team that pulled off the most notable single game upset of the year.

Full vote totals can be viewed here.

Voting totals by institution (note that alumni were permitted to either self-identify as alumni or their former institution):

1 vote: Auburn, UC Berkeley, Boston, Carnegie Mellon, Colorado, Cornell, DePaul, Duke, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, McGill, Oklahoma, Oxford, Oxford Brookes, Penn State, Princeton, Queen's, Tennessee, UCF, Waterloo

2 votes: Minnesota, Penn, Toronto

3 votes: Maryland, Michigan, Michigan State, Northwestern, NYU, Warwick, Yale

4 votes: "alumni," Cambridge, Florida

8 votes: Chicago

Total number of voters: 67
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by theMoMA »

This is cool, and it's good to see that many people were interested in voting on ways to recognize their peers. I hope that continues. My suggestion might be, in the future, to hold a panel discussion for nominations instead of (or perhaps in addition to) an open call. The only real issue I see with this year's version was that some of the categories seemed to be missing worthy nominees. (I can't imagine that SCT and Regionals were not worthy of at least a nomination for "set of the year," for instance.) Having a discussion would allow people to bring up the various worthy candidates for the honors in conversation, as opposed to hoping in a vacuum that everyone worthy of nomination is put forward, and would also possibly enable people to come up with other categories for recognition as well.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by nycaqb1999 »

Any plan to do this again this year?
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by Victor Prieto »

Yes. I was considering waiting until Chicago Open, but it's all the way in August. Sometime after ACF Nationals, for sure.
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Re: Players Choice Awards

Post by Victor Prieto »

This year's edition of the Players Choice awards will take place after the last mirror of FST on May 11th, at which point all collegiate sets from the year should be clear (unless the online ILLIAC tournament takes place the following weekend, in which case it'll be pushed back another week).
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