Player Poll 2019

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warum
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by warum »

Aaron's Rod wrote: Mon Apr 22, 2019 11:59 am I'm surprised that Rahul Keyal has not gotten more discussion on here. He lead a team to T-7 at ICT, ahead of teams like MSU and Penn, and with a better PPB to boot. I'm bad at remembering categories, but I read for him at both ICT and Nats and he was a force to be reckoned with at both. You should move him way up on your overall list. Also, much as a lot of the super-talented undergrads are now, he's a certifiably Very Good Kid™.
Rahul is a great generalist and should definitely go up in the rankings compared to last year. He has incredibly solid knowledge at every difficulty in basically all non-science categories.

James Malouf deserves your consideration for visual arts, and seems to be successfully developing into a generalist as well.
Last edited by warum on Sun Apr 28, 2019 2:52 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by The Favourite »

I'm not as active anymore, but I do get to see teams from my part of the world a bit. I'm going to shill for Finn Bender to be on whichever set of rankings includes Myth and NAQT stuff, because he's really good at those things. He didn't get to play much this year, but he did lead Oklahoma to some decent wins when he did. I'm willing to bet that had he been able to play more this year, some others would be talking about him somewhere.

Also, Caleb Kendrick is really good at quizbowl. Probably top 5 good, and number one in "thought."

I haven't seen him play, but looking at some advanced stats tells me that Dinis Trinidade is a top history player.
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by Judson Laipply »

TeammateShilling.exe


Halle Friedmann is really good at visual arts. Underrank her at your own peril especially if you're playing CO, she will still be able to get things ahead of you there.

Olivia Kiser knows a shit-ton of random myth and history things. I recall at one point Olivia told me that he would buzz on any female name in a myth tossup. Now while olivia did not get 100% of them right, he almost always buzzed on the first female name and probably got like 80% of them right. Oh and lets not forget the ability to buzz on those random english/other european kings that I cannot even begin to differentiate. Definitely deserves a spot on your history ballot.

Tim Morrison is the best math player (sorry Samir and Naomi, you're a close second/third) and also the best film player. His generalist skills can't be doubted either, leading a Chicago B team to top-of-second bracket finishes at both nationals.

Ben Miller is the history player that has been the missing piece that has haunted ACF Nats Chicago Bs of years past (not counting last year with Luke). He has incredibly deep knowledge that scales up to Nats and, based on practices, beyond. As he said himself, if you are tossing up a person and describe things the person did in pyramidal order, he will get the tossup, especially if it is an american. Unfortunately he is a Washington Nationals fan. Do with that information what you will.

Grant Li was able to win us several games basically on his own at ACF Nats. I feel like in a couple years his floor is being a Charles Hang-like player where, if he hits a packet, can basically beat any team in the country but is still able to play any team close otherwise. He also had some very good vis-arts buzzes and probably deserves a spot on your vis-arts ballot.


EDIT: While not teammate shilling, Lederberg co-writer shilling is now a thing and Geoffrey Chen should be the #1 on your science ballot. I'm torn between Kai and Adam for 2/3, but in either order they should be your 2 and 3 with Stephen Eltinge as a clear #4 (or higher, do what you want, you're mostly adults here).
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by Good Goblin Housekeeping »

Fucitol wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2019 2:17 pm Tim Morrison is the best math player (sorry Samir and Naomi, you're a close second/third) and also the best film player. His generalist skills can't be doubted either, leading a Chicago B team to top-of-second bracket finishes at both nationals.
I would like to ditto tim morrison stanning
if you have claimed your teammate is the best film player and your teammate isn't tim (or maybe like derek so?) you are ignorant or a liar
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by A Dim-Witted Saboteur »

Banned Tiny Toon Adventures Episode wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2019 3:24 pm
Fucitol wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2019 2:17 pm Tim Morrison is the best math player (sorry Samir and Naomi, you're a close second/third) and also the best film player. His generalist skills can't be doubted either, leading a Chicago B team to top-of-second bracket finishes at both nationals.
I would like to ditto tim morrison stanning
if you have claimed your teammate is the best film player and your teammate isn't tim (or maybe like derek so?) you are ignorant or a liar
Counterpoint: Evan Suttell
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by Tippy Martinez »

Fuddle Duddle wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2019 7:27 pm
Banned Tiny Toon Adventures Episode wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2019 3:24 pm
Fucitol wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2019 2:17 pm Tim Morrison is the best math player (sorry Samir and Naomi, you're a close second/third) and also the best film player. His generalist skills can't be doubted either, leading a Chicago B team to top-of-second bracket finishes at both nationals.
I would like to ditto tim morrison stanning
if you have claimed your teammate is the best film player and your teammate isn't tim (or maybe like derek so?) you are ignorant or a liar
Counterpoint: Evan Suttell
does Evan win this title just by knowing who Kenneth Anger is
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by Smuttynose Island »

To help me with my ballot, I assembled a spreadsheet with Nats and ICT stats for a number of players, as well as Visual Arts stats for various other players. In case it helps others, you may find it here.

If you would like to edit this spreadsheet, perhaps by adding other subject area stats, please get in touch with me (preferably via a PM)!
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by vinteuil »

Smuttynose Island wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2019 8:08 pm To help me with my ballot, I assembled a spreadsheet with Nats and ICT stats for a number of players, as well as Visual Arts stats for various other players. In case it helps others, you may find it here.

If you would like to edit this spreadsheet, perhaps by adding other subject area stats, please get in touch with me (preferably via a PM)!
This is really helpful, especially for voting by subcategory! It's fantastic to learn about clearly very good players (like Isaac Brown and Ganon Evans) from distant circuits/who aren't active posters/don't have active teammates to stan them. And it's good to be reminded how good Rafael and Chris are!

EDIT: Daniel, what criteria did you use to pick the players for the VFA sheet? Strange to not see John Lawrence, among others.
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by Auroni »

Smuttynose Island wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2019 8:08 pm To help me with my ballot, I assembled a spreadsheet with Nats and ICT stats for a number of players, as well as Visual Arts stats for various other players. In case it helps others, you may find it here.

If you would like to edit this spreadsheet, perhaps by adding other subject area stats, please get in touch with me (preferably via a PM)!
Thanks for putting this together, I'll be using it as a quick and dirty "quality control" for overall poll ballots.
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by Smuttynose Island »

vinteuil wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2019 8:28 pm EDIT: Daniel, what criteria did you use to pick the players for the VFA sheet? Strange to not see John Lawrence, among others.
I looked through the advance stats for Terrapin, EFT, and Regionals, selecting players who appeared high (roughly top 5-10 at a given site) on the Paintings/Sculpture subcategory lists (this is why some people are marked at the bottom as "Also Consider - Other Arts" - this is non-exhaustive). I originally omitted players that I already planned on ranking highly (such as John Lawrence). I tried to backfill these omissions (as well as including some strong Other Art players) before going public, but obviously left off John (although again, you really don't need this spreadsheet to tell you that John Lawrence is a top 15 VFA player).
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by John Ketzkorn »

A name that should be on your top 15 religion list. Bradley McLain. In addition to studying the bible, he's read the thing 6 times (he also won the Illinois Summer Open RAPTURE mirror). When he didn't neg himself out of it, he ended up picking up a majority of the religion / myth at ACF Nats (and ICT). He's a huge reason Illinois was a top 15 team this year.
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by vinteuil »

Smuttynose Island wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2019 8:53 pm
vinteuil wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2019 8:28 pm EDIT: Daniel, what criteria did you use to pick the players for the VFA sheet? Strange to not see John Lawrence, among others.
I looked through the advance stats for Terrapin, EFT, and Regionals, selecting players who appeared high (roughly top 5-10 at a given site) on the Paintings/Sculpture subcategory lists (this is why some people are marked at the bottom as "Also Consider - Other Arts" - this is non-exhaustive). I originally omitted players that I already planned on ranking highly (such as John Lawrence). I tried to backfill these omissions (as well as including some strong Other Art players) before going public, but obviously left off John (although again, you really don't need this spreadsheet to tell you that John Lawrence is a top 15 VFA player).
Makes sense! (I'm very impressed in any case with Kai getting 4 VFA tossups at Regionals sitting next to John!!)
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by nycaqb1999 »

Smuttynose Island wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2019 8:08 pm To help me with my ballot, I assembled a spreadsheet with Nats and ICT stats for a number of players, as well as Visual Arts stats for various other players. In case it helps others, you may find it here.

If you would like to edit this spreadsheet, perhaps by adding other subject area stats, please get in touch with me (preferably via a PM)!
hey apparently I'm top 15 at vfa according to this, vote for me for that since I don't think I'm good enough for top 25 this year yet, also I'm good at OFA, PIANO stats clearly show I know who Kenji Mizoguchi is kind of.

Also, stanning some people who I've seen mentioned very briefly/not at all: Kevin Wang is a legit science specialist who generalizes super well and led his team to a bunch of regional victories this year in the Northeast, Thomas Gioia is a very legit lit and arts player who only gets better as he scales (see Harvard B's ACF Nats performance), Jack Lewis and Vishwa are both obv amazing and deserving of votes, Jakob Boeye is a fellow crusader for LACs and deserves recognition for helping revamp Carleton's team and his excellent humanities generalism, and Doug Simons and Jonathan Tran are both great at history on the circuit. Ofc vote for Jacob R, John L, Jakob M, Geoff etc.
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by heterodyne »

Here are some facts about my teammates that will hopefully make you rank them higher.

John Lawrence deals with some of the most overlap of any top scorer in the field. Matthew and I are buzzing on lit, I am buzzing on philosophy, Kai is buzzing on music and art, all of us doing so pretty well (but save most of that for later.) In spite of ICT not favoring his categories, he tied for the most powers in the prelims. He is exceptionally good at lit, music, and thought and quite good at visual art. He has more generalism than some think - don't forget his ability to play solo and do respectably in 2013. While some of that generalism has rusted away, he retains quite a bit of it.

Matthew was our top scorer at regionals, Penn Bowl, and Sun God. He had more difficulty scaling than the rest of us, empirically, but he was still a killer player at higher difficulty- note that only ten people had more powers in the ICT prelims, and two of those people were John and Kai. In addition, Matthew has a lot of literature knowledge that does not show up when playing on a team with two other lit players.

Kai has, over the course of two years, turned himself into a lethal science player, while retaining a lot of arts knowledge and pockets of depth in religion. He tore up Lederberg playing with an incredibly strong team. He tied for the second most powers in the ICT prelims. If you look at Oxford Open or Spartan Housewrite, you can see that in John's absence Kai is incredibly prepared to act as a team-leading generalist at regionals difficulty as well. I think Kai should be in serious consideration for a spot in or near your top ten - he's just that good. All this is without noting that he's a top 5 music player playing with one of the only two players in the field capable of shadowing him out of music - and he still gets some at high difficulties! (Please consult the CMST advanced stats for confirmation.) If you're interested in value added to a team, Kai is incredibly high utility on basically any existing team, and in fact likely adds *more* value at any other school, where he can more effectively leverage his generalism and deep music knowledge. I think placing Kai in at least your top 15 is the right move.
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by jsingh »

Here to shout out some teammates, both current and former.

Playing next to Ryan Humphrey for science, visual arts, and thought is a huge relief at higher difficulties. Having a team with three freshmen has its downsides, and we're just beginning to see all of the wacky places nationals-level answerlines can go. Ryan's experience is the main reason we placed as high as we did at both nationals. He completely locks down biology and his generalism came in clutch several times, helping us pull off some great wins at both nationals this year (5-1 against Yale A at Nats and 5/0 against McGill at ICT). His breadth really comes in handy on the harder answerlines (Lewis Binford anybody?), and if there's something whack in bio/arts/thought, chances are he's pulling it. He should certainly be considered for your top 25 poll, as well as your science, visual arts, and thought polls.

Another guy who hasn't gotten enough love is Thomas Gioia from Harvard. Playing in DII and somehow being left off of Harvard A at Nats means he hasn't received a lot of attention, but Thomas should definitely be on your literature poll. Don't let his negs at Nats fool you: playing without a history player meant he was forced to buzz on those tossups often, leading to an artificially high neg rate. He's a dangerous lit/arts/thought player who has incredibly deep knowledge on the core canon, and his studying over the last year has really propelled him to a different level, especially on literature. He led his team to victories over UVA (going 3/1 on lit against Jack) and beating us in a clutch performance at Nats. Thomas has been overlooked this year because of his presence on Harvard B and in DII at ICT, but he will be a dangerous player for Harvard at future nationals.
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by AGoodMan »

jsingh wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2019 2:54 am Another guy who hasn't gotten enough love is Thomas Gioia from Harvard. Playing in DII and somehow being left off of Harvard A at Nats means he hasn't received a lot of attention, but Thomas should definitely be on your literature poll. Don't let his negs at Nats fool you: playing without a history player meant he was forced to buzz on those tossups often, leading to an artificially high neg rate. He's a dangerous lit/arts/thought player who has incredibly deep knowledge on the core canon, and his studying over the last year has really propelled him to a different level, especially on literature. He led his team to victories over UVA (going 3/1 on lit against Jack) and beating us in a clutch performance at Nats. Thomas has been overlooked this year because of his presence on Harvard B and in DII at ICT, but he will be a dangerous player for Harvard at future nationals.
Definitely look out for Thomas Gioia for literature/thought/visual art. Dude studies a ton and will only get better.

People should definitely be thinking about Walter Zhao for myth, who went 6-3-0 in that category at Terrapin.

Sameer Apte seems to be a top auditory arts player, consistently ranking near the top for PPG/powers in the category.

Boyang Jiao, Doug Simons, Jas Singh, Jonathan Tran, Nitin Rao, and Matthew Lehmann are all excellent history players.
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by justinduffy »

I'll pub some of my Harvard teammates:
jsingh wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2019 2:54 am Another guy who hasn't gotten enough love is Thomas Gioia from Harvard. Playing in DII and somehow being left off of Harvard A at Nats means he hasn't received a lot of attention, but Thomas should definitely be on your literature poll. Don't let his negs at Nats fool you: playing without a history player meant he was forced to buzz on those tossups often, leading to an artificially high neg rate. He's a dangerous lit/arts/thought player who has incredibly deep knowledge on the core canon, and his studying over the last year has really propelled him to a different level, especially on literature. He led his team to victories over UVA (going 3/1 on lit against Jack) and beating us in a clutch performance at Nats. Thomas has been overlooked this year because of his presence on Harvard B and in DII at ICT, but he will be a dangerous player for Harvard at future nationals.
Can't say it much better than this. Thomas should no doubt be on the literature, arts and thought poll - he scales incredibly well and is definitely a top player in those areas, as stats will reveal. Thomas covers half of the distro by himself and was instrumental to our team's successes this year. In addition to the aforementioned categories, Thomas usually pulls a few deep science and history tossups and bonus parts each tournament.

Another great lit player from Harvard is Ricky Li. Harvard A averaged around 7 points per lit tossup at ACF Regs and 8 points per non-American lit tossup at Terrapin, mostly due to Ricky. He constantly takes notes to study and will only continue to get better.

Kelvin Li is deadly on biology and chemistry and scales extremely well on both; he can also pull deep answers in astro and physics.

Michael Yue is seriously good at auditory FA; he parses score clues better than anyone else I've ever seen. He also has deep pockets of knowledge in other FA, physics, lit, and phil.
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by Smuttynose Island »

I have updated my spreadsheet with some science statistics. I do plan on adding SGI stats soon.
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by krollo »

A few people from Cambridge who might have slipped under the radar:

Richard Freeland - In addition to reliably getting any Old Testament, and most New Testament, content early on, he has excellent coverage on essentially all of myth, possibly the best in the UK. He's also terrifyingly good at classical music, being one of the few people I've seen buzz consistently on score clues, and will beat almost anyone on musicals content. This year I've been perhaps most impressed by his decision last summer to sit down and basically learn all of chemistry from scratch, which has been a remarkable improvement to watch. Furthermore, he's a sight better at quizbowl maths than I am, and is also very good at hoovering up questions from anywhere in the distro when it gets towards the end. He has a wonderful ability to succinctly explain stuff in interesting ways, and is one of the best novelty packet writers I've ever seen (for instance his classical music elements packets, which I'd love to read on the Discord at some point).

Marius Posa - in addition to being a lovely guy, another really improved player this year. He absolutely destroyed World History at Regs, especially central/east Asian stuff, rattling off thirties like it was nothing, all while keeping a near-lockdown on biology and a much cleaner neg rate than previously. Also underrated is his knowledge of 20th-century lit (with the sad exception of his compatriot Ionesco).

Yanbo Yin - alas claims to be semi-retired from student quizbowl to focus on his degree, but when he does come to tournaments we soon remember how good he is. After Oli, comfortably the second-best at classics in the UK, and can cover most of bio/chem/phys well. Excellent at East Asian stuff too, and capable of insane buzzes on much of the European historical tradition. His knowledge is entirely real to the point where I doubt he's opened a packet outside of practice, and if he decides to learn the grimy game skills he would be up there with the best.

Sam Cook - a stalwart of CUQS, not without good reason. Somewhat unusually for Cambridge he negs quite a bit, but he makes up with it for his ability to blithely power questions as though it were the most obvious thing in the world while the rest of us have no idea what's going on. His gameplay style can sometimes thus err on the side of lateralling and trying to see through the question, but he's honed it to a degree that the expected value is highly positive. He also has excellent knowledge of medieval history and geography, and will pretty invariably get anything tangentially related to earth science. He still stands by his claim that he would win a game of him versus the rest of QB on Tolkien questions, which I would love to see tested.

Ephraim Jacob Jacobus Levinson - not a frequent player, but behind his perhaps unassuming PPG lies one of the safest 1/1s on the circuit. He seemed to be second-lining most of British lit, and has very good coverage on American stuff too.

And, I suppose, me - my main interests are 20th-century lit, pre-1800ish VFA, maths, theoretical physics, postwar history, and popular music, though I like to think I can anchor a team as a reasonable generalist up to Regs+. I have essentially zero metagame skills and should neg a bunch more than I do. I often feel like I'm the only writer in this game who consistently gets told their questions are too easy, so make of that what you will.
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by Good Goblin Housekeeping »

My sources lead me to believe that wolfram poh of Ucla 30d a bunch of science bonuses at nats And should be consideration for your science ballot so
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by Carlos Be »

Banned Tiny Toon Adventures Episode wrote: Tue May 07, 2019 12:57 am My sources lead me to believe that wolfram poh of Ucla 30d a bunch of science bonuses at nats And should be consideration for your science ballot so
can confirm that wolfram is very good at science
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by kearnm7 »

I know it’s late, but Adam Fine should be in your top 25. Not only does he bench 195, but he also put up 48 playoffs PPG at ICT (2nd scoring to Jacob) and outscored Stephen during Nats prelims.
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by gimmedatguudsuccrose »

kearnm7 wrote: Tue May 07, 2019 6:40 pm I know it’s late, but Adam Fine should be in your top 25. Not only does he bench 195, but he also put up 48 playoffs PPG at ICT (2nd scoring to Jacob) and outscored Stephen during Nats prelims.
I can't comment on how much Adam Fine can bench press, but by my calculation his PP20TUH was actually 25 in the playoffs (still very impressive!).
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by Daedalus »

gimmedatguudsuccrose wrote: Tue May 07, 2019 6:53 pm
kearnm7 wrote: Tue May 07, 2019 6:40 pm I know it’s late, but Adam Fine should be in your top 25. Not only does he bench 195, but he also put up 48 playoffs PPG at ICT (2nd scoring to Jacob) and outscored Stephen during Nats prelims.
I can't comment on how much Adam Fine can bench press, but by my calculation his PP20TUH was actually 25 in the playoffs (still very impressive!).
The calculation was based on my games in playoffs and vs Penn, the other team in our prelims bracket to make playoffs; based on these 6 games I put up 41.13 PP20. I am aware I did not put up similar numbers in superplayoffs. Also I probably can't bench 195 right now.
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by John Ketzkorn »

kearnm7 wrote: Tue May 07, 2019 6:40 pm Not only does he bench 195
Relevant info that may sway your deision: I believe we are talking max here and not a 5 rep or 8-12 rep marker.

But regardless of his bench, he's definitely top 25 since he was already crazy good back at CO 2016 and 2017
(he had a crazy game at CO 2016 where he was picking Science off Mukherjee).
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by wolfram »

Banned Tiny Toon Adventures Episode wrote: Tue May 07, 2019 12:57 am My sources lead me to believe that wolfram poh of Ucla 30d a bunch of science bonuses at nats And should be consideration for your science ballot so
I wish this were true, but I believe "a bunch of science bonuses" was actually one (1) bonus on microbiology... the others weren't science and Justin was nice enough to supply the answers to the easy parts that I didn't know :razz:
I did hear some other science bonuses I would have 30'd, but we didn't get those bonuses, to my great displeasure (why don't we have bouncebacks?)
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by Auroni »

The end of this Sunday (4 days away) is the deadline for getting these in. I have a backlog of polls to acknowledge receipt/scan over, which I'll clear tonight.
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by Auroni »

Here are the results:

Overall:

1. Jacob Reed, Yale (473, 18 first place votes, lowest 3rd)
2. Jakob Myers, MSU (439, 1 first place vote, lowest 5th)
3. John Lawrence, Chicago (436, highest 2nd, lowest 6th)
4. Rafael Krichevsky, Columbia (433, highest 2nd, lowest 5th)
5. Chris Ray, Ohio State (397, highest 4th, lowest 6th)
6. Shan Kothari, Minnesota (365, highest 4th, lowest 9th)
7. Adam Silverman, Northwestern (364, highest 4th, lowest 12th)
8. Caleb Kendrick, Maryland (346, highest 7th, lowest 9th)
9. Derek So, McGill (322, highest 6th, lowest 15th)
10. Stephen Eltinge, Yale (268, highest 9th, lowest 19th)
11. Kai Smith, Chicago (235, highest 10th, lowest 20th)
12. Rahul Keyal, Berkeley (226, highest 10th, lowest 25th)
13. Taylor Harvey, Florida (222, highest 9th, lowest unranked)
14. Clark Smith, Ohio State (200, highest 11th, lowest unranked)
15. Alston Boyd, Chicago (179, highest 10th, lowest unranked)
16. Charles Hang, WUSTL (155, highest 10th, lowest unranked)
17. Natan Holtzman, Stanford (149, highest 10th, lowest unranked) & Charlie Dees, Columbia (149, highest 10th, lowest unranked)
19. Matthew Lehmann, Chicago (122, highest 14th, lowest unranked)
20. Kevin Wang, Amherst (89, highest 14th, lowest unranked)
21. Eric Xu, Virginia (85, highest 11th, lowest unranked)
22. Aidan Mehigan, Penn (66, highest 13th, lowest unranked)
23. Geoffrey Chen, Minnesota (65, highest 14th, lowest unranked) & Ben Zhang, Columbia (65, highest 17th, lowest unranked)
25. Sam Bailey, Minneosota (60, highest 13th, lowest unranked)

Also receiving votes: Weijia Cheng (48), Adam Fine (36), Jaimie Carlson (29), Evan Lynch (23), Tracy Mirkin (22), Graham Reid (21), Eric Wolfsberg (20), Joseph Krol (17), John Stathis (14), Joey Goldman (10), Jaskaran Singh (9), Justin French (5), Robert Chu (4), Rein Otsason (2), Tim Morrison (2), Nitin Rao (1), Kevin Koai (1), Oliver Clarke (1)

Voters: Jaskaran Singh, Will Alston, Ben Miller, Austin Foos, Conor Thompson, Jakob Myers, Moses Kitakule & Michael Kearney, Tracy Mirkin, Ryan Humphrey, Daniel Hothem, Kevin Wang, Matthew Lehmann, Jack Mehr, John Lawrence, Jason Golfinos, Ryan Rosenberg, Kai Smith, Jacob Reed, Jonathen Settle & Taylor Harvey

Literature:

1. John Lawrence, Chicago (120, all first place votes)
2. Derek So, McGill (99, highest 2nd, lowest 7th) & Jack Mehr, Virginia (99, highest 2nd, lowest 6th)
4. Jacob Reed, Yale (89, highest 2nd, lowest 12th)
5. Jaimie Carlson, Penn (81, highest 2nd, lowest 12th)
6. Rahul Keyal, Berkeley (75, highest 3rd, lowest 13th)
7. Caleb Kendrick, Maryland (60, highest 6th, lowest 10th)
8. Clark Smith, Ohio State (50, highest 7th, lowest unranked) & Alston Boyd, Chicago (50, highest 3rd, lowest unranked)
10. Matthew Lehmann, Chicago (45, highest 5th, lowest unranked)
11. Jakob Myers, Michigan State (44, highest 7th, lowest unranked)
12. Taylor Harvey, Florida (38, highest 3rd, lowest unranked)
13. Shan Kothari, Minnesota (22, highest 5th, lowest unranked)
14. Aayush Rajasekaran, Toronto (20, highest 8th, lowest unranked)
15. Justin French, UCLA (15, highest 11th, lowest unranked)

Also receiving votes: Adam Silverman (12), Mitch McCullar (11), Nick Collins (8), Joey Goldman (8), Kevin Koai (5), Thomas Gioia (3), Tim Morrison (3), Justin Nghiem (1), Moses Kitakule (1), Jack Lewis (1)

Voters: Jaskaran Singh, Jakob Myers, Moses Kitakule & Michael Kearney, Matthew Lehmann, Jack Mehr, John Lawrence, Ryan Rosenberg, Jonathen Settle & Taylor Harvey

History:

1. Jakob Myers, Michigan State (178, 11 first place votes, lowest 3rd)
2. Jonathan Tran, Cornell (153, highest 2nd, lowest 6th)
3. Chris Ray, Ohio State (147, highest 2nd, lowest 8th)
4. Matthew Lehmann, Chicago (138, highest 2nd, lowest 8th)
5. Charles Hang, WUSTL (124, highest 3rd, lowest unranked) & Jaskaran Singh, Texas (124, 1 first place vote, lowest 13th)
7. Tracy Mirkin, Florida (80, highest 6th, lowest unranked)
8. Stephen Eltinge, Yale (79, highest 6th, lowest 13th)
9. Nitin Rao, Penn (75, highest 4th, lowest unranked)
10. Weijia Cheng, Maryland (59, highest 5th, lowest unranked)
11. Oliver Clarke, Oxford (47, highest 3rd, lowest unranked)
12. Ben Miller, Chicago (34, highest 8th, lowest unranked)
13. Dinis Trinidade, Missouri (29, highest 7th, lowest unranked)
14. Boyang Jiao, Amherst (22, highest 7th, lowest unranked)
15. Austin Foos, Michigan (20, highest 8th, lowest unranked)

Also receiving votes: Doug Simons (19), Eric Wolfsberg (19), Hari Parameswaran (18), Jacob Reed (17), Jack Lewis (15), Eric Chen (13), Rafael Krichevsky (7), Cole Timmerwilke (5), James Malouf (4), Ryan Bilger (4), Sam Bailey (3), Nick Collins (2), John Lawrence (2), Eric Xu (1), Daniel Lovsted (1), Robert Chu (1)

Voters: Jaskaran Singh, Will Alston, Ben Miller, Austin Foos, Conor Thompson, Jakob Myers, Tracy Mirkin, Ryan Humphrey, Matt Lehmann, Jack Mehr, Jason Golfinos, Ryan Rosenberg

Science:

1. Geoffrey Chen, Minnesota (176, 8 first place votes, lowest 2nd)
2. Adam Silverman, Northwestern (160, highest 2nd, lowest 4th)
3. Kai Smith, Chicago (158, 4 first place votes, lowest 6th)
4. Stephen Eltinge, Yale (152, highest 2nd, lowest 4th)
5. Kevin Wang, Amherst (114, highest 5th, lowest 9th)
6. Graham Reid, Maryland (97, highest 6th, lowest 12th)
7. Ben Zhang, Columbia (82, highest 5th, lowest 13th)
8. Rafael Krichevsky, Columbia (77, highest 4th, lowest unranked)
9. Rein Otsason, Toronto (74, highest 6th, lowest 15th)
10. Evan Lynch, Southampton (72, highest 5th, lowest unranked)
11. James Lasker, Chicago (68, highest 6th, lowest unranked)
12. Adam Fine, Yale (58, highest 5th, lowest unranked)
13. Vishwa Shanmugam, Maryland (31, highest 10th, lowest unranked)
14. Matt Mitchell, Colorado (22, highest 9th, lowest unranked)
15. Jonathen Settle, Florida (18, highest 10th, lowest unranked)

Also receiving votes: Rohin Devanathan (11), Natan Holtzman (11), Shan Kothari (10), Ryan Humphrey (10), Jacob Robertson (8), Robert Chu (6), Joelle Smart (4), Victor Prieto (4), Kelvin Li (3), Samir Khan (3), Rohan Narayan (3), Akhil Garg (3), Wolfram Poh (2), Anishka Bandara (1), Tim Morrison (1), Paul Lee (1)

Voters: Ben Miller, Conor Thompson, Moses Kitakule & Michael Kearney, Ryan Humphrey, Daniel Hothem, Kevin Wang, Matt Lehmann, Jason Golfinos, Ryan Rosenberg, Kai Smith, Jacob Reed, Jonathen Settle & Taylor Harvey

Visual Arts:

1. Jacob Reed, Yale (73, 3 first place votes, lowest 2nd)
2. John Lawrence, Chicago (68, 1 first place vote, lowest 5th)
3. Rafael Krichevsky, Columbia (55, highest 3rd, lowest 8th)
4. Ryan Bilger, Gettysburg (53, highest 3rd, lowest 10th)
5. Derek So, McGill (39, 1 first place vote, lowest unranked)
6. Joseph Krol, Cambridge (34, highest 3rd, lowest unranked) & Aidan Mehigan, Penn (34, highest 6th, lowest unranked)
8. James Malouf, Berkeley (32, highest 6th, lowest 14th)
9. Daniel Hothem, Oregon (30, highest 4th, lowest unranked)
10. Tracy Mirkin, Florida (19, highest 9th, lowest unranked)
11. Chris Ray, Ohio State (17, highest 7th, lowest unranked)
12. Evan Suttell, Michigan State (16, highest 11th, lowest unranked)
13. Taylor Harvey, Florida (15, highest 4th, lowest unranked) & Rahul Keyal, Berkeley (15, highest 6th, lowest unranked)
15. Clark Smith, Ohio State (13, highest 7th, lowest unranked)

Also receiving votes: Shan Kothari (11), Isaac Brown (11), Halle Friedman (11), Evan Lynch (9), Jaimie Carlson (8), Max Shatan (7), Kai Smith (6), Thomas Gioia (5), Kevin Wang (5), Justin French (5), Daniel Lovsted (5), Nick Collins (3), Hari Parameswaran (1)

Voters: Tracy Mirkin, Daniel Hothem, Kevin Wang, Jason Golfinos, Jacob Reed

Auditory Arts:

1. Jacob Reed, Yale
2. John Lawrence, Chicago
3. Kevin Koai, Columbia
4. Kai Smith, Chicago
5. Shan Kothari, Minnesota
6. Rafael Krichevsky, Columbia
7. Sameer Apte, Carnegie Mellon
8. Michael Yue, Harvard
9. Natan Holtzman, Stanford
10. Clark Smith, Ohio State
11. Charlie Dees, Columbia
12. Eric Chen, Berkeley
13. Joe Su, McGill
14. James Malouf, Berkeley
15. Benji Reade Malagueño, Stanford

Voter: Kai Smith

Thought:

1. Jacob Reed, Yale (57, 3 first place votes, lowest 4th)
2. Alston Boyd, Chicago (51, highest 2nd, lowest 5th) & John Lawrence, Chicago (51, highest 2nd, lowest 6th)
4. Caleb Kendrick, Maryland (49, highest 3rd, lowest 4th)
5. Eric Chen, Berkeley (37, highest 2nd, lowest 10th) & Sam Bailey, Minnesota (37, highest 5th, lowest 8th)
7. Shan Kothari, Minnesota (34, 1 first place vote, lowest unranked)
8. Marianna Zhang, Stanford (29, highest 8th, lowest 11th)
9. Chris Ray, Ohio State (26, highest 5th, lowest 12th)
10. Clark Smith, Ohio State (24, highest 6th, lowest unranked)
11. Rafael Krichevsky, Columbia (16, highest 9th, lowest unranked)
12. Joey Goldman, City, University of London (11, highest 5th, lowest unranked)
13. Charlie Dees, Columbia (8, highest 12th, lowest unranked)
14. Kevin Koai, Columbia (7, highest 9th, lowest unranked) & Jack Mehr, Virginia (7, highest 9th, lowest unranked)

Also receiving votes: Natan Holtzman (6), Jakob Myers (5), Daniel Lovsted (5), Derek So (5), Ryan Rosenberg (3), John Marvin (3), Taylor Harvey (3), Rahul Keyal (2), Bradley McLain (2), Eric Xu (1), Eric Wolfsberg (1)

Voters: Will Alston, Matt Lehmann, John Lawrence, Ryan Rosenberg

Religion:

1. Weijia Cheng, Maryland
2. Eric Wolfsberg, Delaware
3. John Marvin, Chicago
4. Jon Suh, Harvard
5. Nour Hijazi, Wright State
6. Moses Kitakule, Yale
7. Aidan Mehigan, Penn
8. Chris Ray, Ohio State
9. Bradley McLain, Illinois
10. Natan Holtzman, Stanford
11. Lauren Onel, Kenyon
12. Michael Kearney, Yale
13. Conor Thompson, Michigan
14. Hasna Karim, Yale
15. Nathan Fredman, Illinois

Voter: Conor Thompson

Miscellaneous:

1. Jakob Myers, Michigan State (60, all first place votes)
2. Chris Ray, Ohio State (47, highest 2nd, lowest 6th)
3. Michael Coates, Berkeley (43, highest 2nd, lowest 12th)
4. Jay Misuk, Toronto (34, highest 2nd, lowest unranked)
5. Natan Holtzman, Stanford (31, highest 5th, lowest 14th)
6. Conor Thompson, Michigan (26, highest 3rd, lowest 14th)
7. Matthew Lehmann, Chicago (25, highest 3rd, lowest unranked)
8. Tracy Mirkin, Florida (23, highest 3rd, lowest unranked)
9. Stephen Eltinge, Yale (19, highest 9th, lowest 13th)
10. David Song, Rutgers (15, highest 7th, lowest unranked)
11. Charles Hang, WUSTL (13, highest 3rd, lowest unranked)
12. Michael Kearney, Yale (12, highest 4th, lowest unranked) & Vincent Doehr, Georgetown (12, highest 4th, lowest unranked)
14. Oliver Clarke, Oxford (10, highest 6th, lowest unranked) & Boyang Jiao, Amherst (10, highest 6th, lowest unranked)

Also receiving votes: Sam Rombro (9), Alston Boyd (9), Aayush Rajasekaran (8), Ryan Rosenberg (8), Ryan Bilger (7), Sam Bailey (7), Adam Silverman (7), Kevin Wang (6), Evan Suttell (5), Taylor Harvey (5), Eric Chen (5), Alex van der Poel (5), Hari Parameswaran (4), Emmett Laurie (4), Pranav Padmanabhan (3), Derek So (3), Jaskaran Singh (2), Rudra Ranganathan (1), Shan Kothari (1), Tim Morrison (1)

Voters: Austin Foos, Conor Thompson, Jakob Myers, Ryan Rosenberg
Last edited by Auroni on Tue May 21, 2019 2:03 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by ryanrosenberg »

Auroni wrote: Mon May 20, 2019 8:22 pm 7. Shan Kothari, Minnesota (34, 1 first place vote, lowest unranked)
I somehow forgot about Shan, sorry Shan! Everyone should imagine me ranking Shan top 10 and him being in 5th.
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by Smuttynose Island »

Thanks for putting in the work to make this happen! I thought that this year's iteration of the player poll was much more fun than previous iterations. Although it was a little disappointing, yet understandable to see some categories only get one voter, I had a blast filling out my subject ballots and feel like they are a worthwhile addition to the poll. At a minimum, it was enjoyable reading everyone's write ups about various subject specialists, many of whom I never would have known about otherwise!

Is there any chance that individual ballots (perhaps with personal information redacted) will be released?
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by ryanrosenberg »

Smuttynose Island wrote: Mon May 20, 2019 8:45 pm Is there any chance that individual ballots (perhaps with personal information redacted) will be released?
Here's my ballot(s), along with the general tier criteria I used to think about how to rank people. Rankings within tiers are very rough, and there are many people who are in the noteworthy tier who were excluded to trim the list to 25 or 15.

Image

Besides forgetting Shan, I've been told that I ranked Jacob Reed too high in lit (by Jacob himself), which seems plausible, although Jacob is very good at lit and it's a highly contested category, as evidenced by the multitude of players in top tiers. I also ranked people on the overall poll using a relatively pure generalism metric, which some other voters seem not have done.
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by vinteuil »

Historical Results
Auroni wrote: Mon May 20, 2019 8:22 pm Visual Arts:

5. Derek So, McGill (39, 1 first place vote, lowest unranked)
I'm shocked and saddened that I was the only person to put Derek at #1 here. There's a reason that dude got the most superpowers (among other things) at Jordaens.

More broadly: I love the idea of recognizing specialists, but I have serious doubts that the poll format is a good way to do it:
  1. We have no up-to-date detailed stats information on higher-difficulty questions (yes, I didn't help with this). As we know, it's difficult to predict which players scale well, and it seems that some voters may have over-weighted detailed stats from Terrapin and EFT—aside from (with a huge pinch of salt) power count, these stats tell you practically nothing about ICT and Nats.
  2. The detailed stats we do have, it seems, went either unused or extremely selectively used. Derek going unranked on a visual arts ballot means that some voters must have either not looked at any stats, or simply decided that Canadian stats were either highly discountable or not worth checking.
Again, I admire Auroni's vision for the poll, and would like to build on its tangible successes. The biggest success, to me, was the increased discussion of less well-known specialists.

So why don't we just encourage more of that and forget the poll? Sort of like a more organized version of the science poll from years past, I guess I would propose a thread (or threads) where people are encouraged to post personal (open-ended) rankings, with rationales, questions, and requests for feedback.

The idea being to attempt to build some kind of consensus in the open, with information being shared and theoretical justifications laid bare. After all, the reason I reread some classic player poll/ranking threads (e.g. 2010) is precisely because people share thoughts on what makes players great to begin with.

(And maybe this is a good direction to take the overall poll as well.)
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by excessive dismemberment »

Auroni wrote: Mon May 20, 2019 8:22 pm Rudra Raganathan (1)
I appreciate the vote, but my last name is spelled "Ranganathan"

Edit: thanks Auroni, mods please delete
Last edited by excessive dismemberment on Mon May 20, 2019 11:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by vinteuil »

A small point: I find it counter-intuitive to continue reading to the side for the "& ...." when there's a tie—I missed a few players the first time for this reason. At least one other person I've talked to has had the same issue; would recommend putting everybody in the same column.
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by Auroni »

vinteuil wrote: Mon May 20, 2019 9:09 pm So why don't we just encourage more of that and forget the poll? Sort of like a more organized version of the science poll from years past, I guess I would propose a thread (or threads) where people are encouraged to post personal (open-ended) rankings, with rationales, questions, and requests for feedback.
The status quo, as I understood it, with respect to recognizing specialists was basically this: haphazard, informal discussion that happens sometimes, but ultimately without the kind of energy or attention or consistency that it deserves. Essentially, as with any other thing in quizbowl, people every year are like "wouldn't be nice if we had _______" but nobody will take the initiative to actually address the unmet need. The benefit of forcing everyone to participate in at least two category rankings is to bring a sort of immediacy to this issue so that it's taken seriously. The biggest flaw this year to me, as the person organizing the poll, was simply the lack of ballots in certain categories. I wanted to see where the chips fell before intervening and requesting more, ie, religion and auditory arts ballots. It was serendipitious that we eventually ended up with full coverage without me having to lift a finger. Future pollrunners may want to take a stronger guiding hand.
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by vinteuil »

Auroni wrote: Mon May 20, 2019 9:27 pmThe biggest flaw this year to me, as the person organizing the poll, was simply the lack of ballots in certain categories.
Maybe more ballots would balance things out, but I really do see the biggest problem as 1) a lack of pertinent information 2) bad interpretations of that information.

Ryan has mentioned forgetting a player, something that's all too easy to do.
I've been told by one submitter that they based their voting in a subcategory ballot on every.buzz awards for the parent category.

This is the kind of thing that could be solved by more provisional rankings being out in the public eye first. So maybe one solution would be to encourage people to post theirs—or even require people to post one of their three ballots in the thread. (Nobody could possibly be certain about all three!)
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by Carlos Be »

Dropping the highest and lowest rank usually does a good job of making up for silly mistakes like forgetting Shan, although obviously this requires more votes.
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by Auroni »

vinteuil wrote: Mon May 20, 2019 9:38 pmRyan has mentioned forgetting a player, something that's all too easy to do.
This is something that I policed like a hawk for the overall poll, but was purposefully laxer about for the subject polls (given your cited lack of consensus), but is not an intractable problem; someone can easily monitor the average ranking a snubbed person has been getting and then use their judgment to determine whether or not to force a ballot revision.
Last edited by Auroni on Mon May 20, 2019 9:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by Mnemosyne »

I like the subject polls, and I think they will be a little better/more accurate next year. The player poll would be horrible if there was no poll from the previous year to modify, and now that we have "base polls" for all the other categories, these should improve too. I look forward to a year of hype surrounding them, such as "I want to move into the top 10 of [category]-poll!" and "Can [person] finally become a top 5 [category] player?"

Personally, I spent a ton of time during the season looking at detailed stats (checking category leaders, looking at actual buzz points to see the sickest buzzes, etc.) and could've easily worked on polls all year or helped organize and collect category data. But when I tried to work on this last week, I just didn't have the motivation to go back and rehash all the data from 4-8 months ago. Assuming these polls continue, I'll just make some running polls at the beginning of the year and adjust them after each tournament.
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by Smuttynose Island »

vinteuil wrote: Mon May 20, 2019 9:38 pm
Auroni wrote: Mon May 20, 2019 9:27 pmThe biggest flaw this year to me, as the person organizing the poll, was simply the lack of ballots in certain categories.
Maybe more ballots would balance things out, but I really do see the biggest problem as 1) a lack of pertinent information 2) bad interpretations of that information.
In addition to publicly posting ballots, which can have negative consequences, I can think of at least two other ways alleviate the impact of the lack of pertinent information. The first is having more tournaments that use advance stats. When putting together my (imperfect) visual arts ballot, I began by looking at the subcategory scoring breakdown for players at EFT, Terrapin, ACF Regionals, and Sun God. Paying special attention to PPTUH and Powers per Game, I assembled a rough list of about 25 players who I thought merited consideration. I then added in players who performed well at Jordaens as well as those I knew were good Other Visual Arts players. After doing so, I looked over various players' actual buzzes at EFT, Regionals, and Sun God* to improve my ballot. This last step, I think, is crucial in putting together a reasonable ballot. You can see if a player is making early buzzes at lower levels, buzzes that should translate into pre-FTP buzzes on Nats level questions. It is obviously an incomplete picture, but I do think that it is a "good enough" picture for the purposes of the poll. Of course, it would be helpful if every tournament used advance stats. Someone's buzz distribution at PIANO is a better indicator of their performance on Nats level questions than their buzz distribution at EFT.

The other idea is to do a better job centrally compiling subcategory stats. Centrally compiling stats for all of the subject polls would make it a lot easier for people to compile their preliminary "rough ballot" before digging into the advance stats and finalizing their ballots. Unfortunately, I only had time to compile science and visual arts subcategory stats this year. I feel awful knowing that someone may have left Derek So off of their Visual Arts ballot because I didn't have time to include Other Arts buzzes on my list. Next year, it be nice if a few people came together to compile subject area stats for each area. Or, if the subject polls are guaranteed to come back, someone could keep a running compilation of subject area stats as the season progresses.

*and Penn Bowl
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by vinteuil »

Smuttynose Island wrote: Mon May 20, 2019 10:17 pmI began by looking at the subcategory scoring breakdown for players at EFT, Terrapin, ACF Regionals, and Sun God.
Why not Penn Bowl?
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by Smuttynose Island »

vinteuil wrote: Mon May 20, 2019 10:17 pm
Smuttynose Island wrote: Mon May 20, 2019 10:17 pmI began by looking at the subcategory scoring breakdown for players at EFT, Terrapin, ACF Regionals, and Sun God.
Why not Penn Bowl?
I initially intended to compile Penn Bowl data (and SGI data for science), but ultimately decided that the data I had already compiled was "good enough" and that my time would be better spent studying for my PhD oral exams. Like I said, making this a group effort or compiling stats as the year progresses are the best ways to tackle this in the future.

I did look at Penn Bowl buzz points before finalizing my list though.
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Re: Player Poll 2019

Post by Amizda Calyx »

Something I've been wondering about the last few years is whether the lack of anonymity in ballot submission turns off many potential voters. I realize having the organizer looking at each person's ballot can basically eliminate troll/insincere submissions, but I feel like it can also make sincere people uncomfortable, especially those who aren't themselves great players. There's always the fear of judgment, even with a neutral organizer. If there was some way to deidentify ballots before manually compiling results, maybe there would be more voters?
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