2020 Canadian Circuit Player Poll

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2020 Canadian Circuit Player Poll

Post by cwasims »

I am pleased to announce the 2019-20 iteration of the Canadian circuit player poll! Although the season has been cut short, most of the tournaments we would normally consider in this poll have happened normally and the criteria will be similar to last year. Although this will not include national tournaments, as in previous years, given the amount of time on people’s hands these days I figured it made sense to do it now as opposed to later in the year. There are a number of different ballots below, but you may submit as many or as few as you want.

In order to be eligible for the main poll, a player must attend a university that primarily plays on the Canadian circuit. Players are automatically eligible for the main poll if they played the Toronto sites of 2020 ACF Regionals or 2020 SCT. If they did not play either of those tournaments, they can gain eligibility by playing two regular-difficulty tournaments (EFT/MWT and higher) in Canada.* The online mirror of Terrapin Open will count for establishing eligibility for the main poll since there was no Canadian site and many Canadian teams played, but no other online mirrors will count. Open players are not be eligible, but feel free to include open players where you think they belong in the ranking. Please put 25 players on your ballot. High school players are not eligible.
*The tournaments that count towards this are the Canadian sites of 2019 Oxford Open, 2019 NASAT, 2019 EFT, 2019 Penn Bowl, Fall Open, MWT, and WORKSHOP.

As in the last several years, we will have a rookie ballot, which is for players in their first year of university QB playing and who played one of ACF Regionals or SCT or at least two tournaments (not including Toronto Novice). A list of eligible rookies is found below – please contact me if I’ve missed anyone. Please put 10 players on your ballot.

British Columbia: William Dawson, Max Gedajlovic, Brian Ning
Carleton: Colin Mandeville, Andrew Wilson
McGill: Cormac Beirne, Hannah Billings, Taylor Conn, Kevin Fan, Nabhaan Farooqi, Kais Jessa, Ekin Kiziltan, Minh-Tuan Phung, Allan Wei, Jasper Zarkower
McMaster: Tomas Jakovac, Mohammed Jalloh, Murad Taher, Adrian Wong
Ottawa: Gabriel Clark, Hertek Gill, Connor Haines, Matthew McGoey, Abbey Wilson
Queen’s: Andrew McCowan, Jonah Moore, Andrea Withers, Alex Wodzicki
Toronto: Ian Chow, Kevin Downey, Marcus Forbes-Green, Parth Jagtap, Jonathan Kleiman, Jacky Liu, Seth McGregor, Samir Mechel, Malhaar Moharir, Angus Paterson, Martin Profant, Lucas Smith, Wenying Wu, Amy Zhang
Waterloo: Jared Cubilla, Thomas Mennill, Joel Woods, Ben Woodward
Western: Tony Chen

New this year is an open player ballot, which includes high school players who played open tournaments. All players who are ineligible for the main poll are eligible for the open poll . Please put 10 players on your ballot.

Finally, we will be having a trash ballot for the last two years. Anyone who has played a full trash tournament in the last two years is eligible, although you are welcome to consider side events in your ranking. Please include 25 people on your ballot.

EDIT: Since Henry appears to be about to submit one, I guess we can add a community/staffer ballot to the ever-growing list. Put the 10 people you think have contributed the most to the circuit from a non-player perspective over the last year.

As always, commentary is encouraged although not required. I will accept ballots until at least May 2nd given the large number of ballots people can participate in, but may push the deadline back if people would like more time. If you do not post your ballot on the forums, please email it to me at [email protected] or DM on Facebook Messenger.
Last edited by cwasims on Mon Apr 06, 2020 9:29 pm, edited 4 times in total.
Christopher Sims
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Re: 2020 Canadian Circuit Player Poll

Post by weebyjeebys »

Hello all. I've come up with my trash player poll based mostly on statistics. Since I've only attended one tournament and a handful of side events, I don't have much colourful commentary for most of these players. I look forward to participating in more trash events next season! EDIT: New considerations have moved some players around.

1. Drew Scheeler
2. Steve Oppenheim
3. Aaron Dos Remedios
4. Craig Moysey
5. Christine Irwin
6. Derek So
7. Simone Valade
8. Erik Christensen
9. Nick Penner
10. Adam Swift
11. Henry Atkins
12. Isaac Renert
13. Talia Fan
14. Aayush Rajasekaran
15. Rein Otsason
16. Paul Kasinski
17. Ian Greig
18. Rodrigo Morante
19. Russell Valerio
20. Jenny Mao
21. Milan Fernandez
22. Jay Misuk
23. Andrew Yim
24. Marcus Forbes-Greene
25. Jacky Liu
Last edited by weebyjeebys on Sun Apr 12, 2020 3:08 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: 2020 Canadian Circuit Player Poll

Post by Gene Harrogate »

Comment presented at my discretion. Unfortunately, familiarity affects my judgement. There are more players in the circuit I'd like to include than made it.
  1. Derek So
  2. Rein Otsason
  3. Jay Misuk
  4. Chris Sims I barely outscored Chris at Penn Bowl and the Terrapin Open mirror, while he barely outscored me at Regionals while playing on a better team. I'll rank Chris ahead of me and Daniel because of what I noticed while playing with him for the first time at TO: a surprisingly high number of his 10s come in the clue or two after power. Well rounded player and good teammate.
  5. Henry Atkins I played well at EFT, pretty well at Penn Bowl, quite poorly I think at Regionals, and was shadowed hard at SCT by Derek. I did manage to outscore Chris, Akhil, and Daniel on the same team at TO Online though. I think this is a good place for me but I can see the argument for being ranked a spot or two or five lower. I ask rankers to give me some slack on summer tournaments, I was coming from a year off.
  6. Daniel Lovsted Draft 1 of this poll had him above me, but he said I should put him lower. Be careful what you wish for Daniel.
  7. Akhil Garg Lost our CO 1v1 so clearly worse.
  8. Paul Kasinski I was delighted to find out he is still around this spring!
  9. Colin Veevers Very good at low levels.
  10. Jack VN Holy Hell those SCT D2 power numbers. Seems to drop off a bit at higher levels.
  11. Peter Wang Big stats, but generally weaker teams than the ones ahead of him. Needs more data.
  12. Raymond Chen
  13. Ryan Hamilton History Akhil or something.
  14. Minh-Huy Phung Very good history specialist.
  15. Sheena Li Led McGill B at powers in SCT and was our second scorer during EFT prelims, but had a bit more of an uneven year than Minh-Huy outside that. Cluing a mistress of a European historical figure is an automatic buzz for her. Generally better at bonuses than tossups.
  16. Sam Hauer High power to get ratio. Speaks in tongues.
  17. Kevin Fan Narrowly edged out Tony as winner of my forthcoming rookie ballot thanks to playing on better teams and outpowering him substantially at EFT. Came in as a stellar history player and is improving every week (to the point where he seems to have the easy lit canon down now). Good facial expressions too.
  18. Tony Chen Only 3 powers at EFT, so obviously has improved a lot. Also needs more data.
  19. Simone Valade Extremely hard to place player, but brings valuable consistency and unexpected powers while asked to fill some pretty difficult roles.
  20. Zhenglin Liu Drops a lot thanks to only playing one tournament. Allegedly still exists.
  21. Lucas Smith Now that I've gotten to this point I actually can't believe I'm only putting Lucas at 21st, but I just can't bring myself to knock down some of these other names. Easily the most improved player from EFT to Regionals, and I'm pretty confident in saying he's a future top 10 player.
  22. Sky Li
  23. Kevin Lei Another hard to rank player. Gets good history buzzes.
  24. Wenying Wu Glad she snuck in thanks to open players getting cancelled. Always gets good literature buzzes against us and is, by my count, 3-1 against various iterations of McGill A.
  25. Emmett Blanchett Apparently got every world history tossup he heard at Regionals. Adrian is also good.
Rookie and open ballots to come.
EDIT:
Rookie Ballot.
  1. Kevin Fan A strong future player on the circuit, and could probably be a useful history player at a nationals level tournament right now if he had to be. Beat me on discord 5 minutes ago.
  2. Tony Chen I'm projecting a little from what I've seen from discord practices, but excellent command of literature and science. Would like to see how he does playing on a team that's not just him and Peter/
  3. Lucas Smith A lot of good upcoming lit players, which is a nice change.
  4. Wenying Wu Speaking of which
  5. William Dawson Did good stuff at SCT.
  6. Andrew McCowan
  7. Adrian Wong
  8. Ian Chow
  9. Minh-Tuan Phung The neg king himself.
  10. Jonah Moore Mystery player who shows up to Penn Bowl and does things.
I'd also like to shout-out some McGill rookies who deserve some attention: Cormac, who is Irish and also my dark horse contender for next year's player-with-solid-fundamentals-and-bad-high-school-program-who-takes-a-huge-step-forward; Kais Jessa, who powers every music question below Regionals difficulty; Hannah and Allan, who drove overnight to MWT and slept in the parking lot; and Nabhaan Farooqi who comes to every practice and still can't say "soccer" correctly.

Open ballot:
  1. Aayush Would be number one on the closed poll too.
  2. Ian Dewan Hasn't been around since June but terrifying generalist when present.
  3. Dennis Beeby Not the highest amount of first buzzes at TO, but put down some solid scoring. Likes sports.
  4. Gareth Thorlakson Spritely history specialist who I've met, once or twice.
  5. Erik Christensen Orb specialist.
  6. Aaron Dos Remedios Probably the second or third best player on this list as HSNCT level, but I'm knocking him down a bit for lower power numbers at Penn Bowl and (especially) TO online.
  7. Tamara Vardomskaya Dominant at one summer tournament, a little less so at the other. Strikes me as a very good humanities player who has been around a while.
  8. Cameron Amini Played Penn Bowl and crushed the history. Haven't seen him much other than that.
  9. Joe Su Patron saint of Canadian quizbowl and actual tournament-eligible player.
  10. Jerry Wang Highschooler who someone told me was basically picked up off the street last year and put into their starting lineup. Jesus.


I'm doing this as a community ballot, so including more broadly-considered circuit contributions:
  1. Joe Su Stats god who has kept the Ottawa circuit going under some rough circumstances
  2. Chris Sims
  3. Aaron Dos Remedios
  4. Joshua Lane
  5. Brian/Leslie I know they're different people but I'm not really sure how to justify ranking one above the other
  6. Erik Christensen I wanna give Erik some credit here not just for staffing things, but also for writing and editing. I consider making Hybrid happen a pretty important community contribution.
  7. Rico
  8. Meghan Torchia
  9. Dennis
Last edited by Gene Harrogate on Wed Apr 22, 2020 6:14 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: 2020 Canadian Circuit Player Poll

Post by ArnavS »

Unfortunately I'm not familiar enough with everyone on the circuit to submit a full 25-person ballot. But a few things:

- Rein Otsason tops my staffer poll (not sure if this formally exists, but Henry mentioned it). Notably for having a screwdriver, prying open a broken buzzer, and un-breaking it.

- I remember being really impressed with some of Akhil Garg's buzzes at SCT. And Sky Li's, and Paul Kasinski's. In general, McGill A was a very fun team to share a room with.

- This might be a bit biased, but I think William Dawson had an excellent SCT and would encourage people to check him out for the main poll. To place 5th in a competitive DI SCT field as a freshman is awesome. (Although it doesn't qualify for eligibility per se, the stats from the Vancouver ACF Regs site can be found here).

- As an aside, I do appreciate that the name of the poll was updated to reflect last year's discussion, and the emerging Western Canada circuit.
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Re: 2020 Canadian Circuit Player Poll

Post by cwasims »

And... a slightly more Toronto-leaning ballot than Henry's, although we agree on many placements. I've noted approximately where I'd place open players.

MAIN BALLOT
1. Derek So. Derek barely played, and definitely seems to fallen a bit from his peak last year, but I think he still edges out Rein given his dominant SCT performance. Aayush would definitely be ahead of Derek if we were including open players here.

2. Rein Otsason. It’s been great to have Rein as a teammate these past three years and hearing him very authoritatively explain physics concepts to me and chatting with me about the analytic philosophy we both like. I tend to be about 6-8 PPG behind him on teams where we play together, and his buzzes tend to be somewhat earlier.

3. Jay Misuk. I’d say Jay and I are pretty similar stats-wise: certainly at Fall Open we had very similar performances, especially in terms of site-wide first buzzes, although his 34 negs remains a truly awe-inspiring feat of something. I’m giving him the edge over me mostly because he had a pretty similar CO performance while playing on a somewhat better team. If we were ranking open players here, I’d put Ian Dewan between Rein and Jay.

4. Chris Sims. I am pretty explicitly comparing myself to the other people in this vicinity so there’s not too much to say. I have gotten a bit better this year in large part through actually doing some question writing.

5. Daniel Lovsted. Daniel did a bit better than me at Penn Bowl but I did a bit better than him playing on the same team at Terrapin Open. I am inclined to give a performance on the same team somewhat more weight, but I could definitely see an argument for the reverse ordering.

6. Henry Atkins. After a good but not stellar return to the scene at HSNCT, Henry has capably led a very good McGill A. I was constantly impressed by his excellent literature buzzes at Terrapin Open, where he performed admirably. However, weaker performances like Penn Bowl (only 6 site-wide first buzzes) and a decent although not outstanding Regionals puts him a peg below the other players here. If we included open players, I’d probably put Erik Christensen and Dennis Beeby somewhere between Daniel and Henry.

7. Paul Kasiński. Much as he likes to say that he only covers 3/3 or 4/4 of the distribution, Paul performed very well at both ACF Regionals and SCT. He and Colin held Toronto A to a very close game at Regs. It would’ve been nice to see him play a few more things, which would’ve helped in ranking him relative to the others here. Did a bit worse than Colin at Regs playing on the same team but quite a bit better at SCT, so I’m pretty comfortable ranking him higher. I’m glad he’ll finally be able to attend Nats this year!

8. Colin Veevers. It’s a bit tough to rank Colin: he had an outstanding Regionals, a somewhat lacklustre Fall Open, but did well at Penn Bowl, Workshop, and MWT, all of which suggests he’s great at regular difficulty (whatever that means) but struggles a bit to scale up to higher difficulties. Still, most people lower down also seem to struggle in scaling up, so I don’t think’s functionally much of a strike against him. He’ll almost certainly be the best undergrad next year and probably for the rest of his degree.

9. Akhil Garg. While Akhil did better than Colin at SCT, I think Colin’s better performances at Penn Bowl and Regs make me comfortable ranking him here. Akhil was wonderful to play with at Terrapin Open (and he certainly found a way around the lack of reacts on the Discord server quickly enough…) and is one of the strongest specialists in the circuit.

10. Jack Van Nostrand. Amazing performance at SCT and very solid ones at Regionals and Workshop. I hesitate to rank him higher than this because he doesn’t really have a track record of playing tournaments above regular difficulty. Hopefully the Queen’s squad will finally make ICT next year…

11. Peter Wang. This was the breakout year for Peter, and he led a strong Waterloo squad to qualify for non-ICT. His high power count at MWT makes me think I should rank him higher than this, but I’m not sure he’s quite demonstrated the prowess that would warrant a higher ranking.

12. Sam Hauer. Despite only playing for a bit over two years, Sam has established himself as a very solid history-based generalist that was still able to provide solid support to noted history-based generalist Dennis Beeby on the Fall Open-winning team. Putting him ahead of Raymond because he substantially outscored him while playing on the same team at both MWT and ACF Regionals. Hopefully he keeps playing at UBC Law School.

13. Raymond Chen. My erstwhile teammate has continued to improve in his categories of lit and science, although his self-deprecating manner can sometimes mask how good he actually is. Shout-out for doing such a great job running novice practices this year!

14. Zhenglin Liu. It’s pretty tough to rank Zhenglin this year considering he barely played. His ACF Regionals performance shows he’s still quite a good player, though, even if he only beat me to one classical music tossup all day. If he played more I would probably rank him higher, but one tournament isn’t really enough to justify that.

15. Ryan Hamilton. It feels a bit odd to be ranking him lower than Sam and Raymond, but I think that while Ryan is a very valuable specialist he is not as strong a player overall as either Sam or Raymond. His history and current events knowledge is excellent and has saved me more than one embarrassing neg, although he doesn’t tend to get much outside of those categories. Still have no idea where his accent is from.

16. Sky Li. It’s easy to underestimate Sky given his pretty quiet demeanour and sometimes vaguely-defined categories. Although his power numbers aren’t eye-popping, he tends to do well on good teams, aided by the ability to buzz on score clues and a history major that I didn’t know he was doing until a month or so ago. Gets the nod over Minh-Huy for generally doing better or the same while playing on better teams.

17. Minh-Huy Phung. We end a long list of Toronto players (maybe I’m biased) with an up-and-coming history player who played well on McGill A at ACF Regs, albeit in a completely different niche from Akhil, who he was replacing. A key member of McGill’s outstanding Division 2 squad this year.

18. Lucas Smith. Not sure I should be ranking Lucas higher than some of McGill’s D2 players, but he had a great ACF Regionals and has generally performed quite well at all the tournaments he’s played this year and has displayed marked improvement thanks to being, like, the only player at Toronto who studies for QB.

19. Sheena Li. Sheena did very well at D2 SCT, although less well at other tournaments this year. I end up covering a lot of her categories in games against whatever McGill team she’s on, but seeing her in action at SCT was very impressive. Drops below Lucas for a fairly weak ACF Regionals.

20. Kevin Fan. I first realized how good Kevin was from his eye-popping 11 powers at EFT, which is exceptional for a first year. Definitely a player to look out for in the future.

21. Tony Chen. Hard to rank Tony since he does really well playing with Peter Cordeiro but hasn’t played with any other teammates. Had a low power count at EFT, but did very well at ACF Regionals against a pretty strong field. Hopefully Western can play more next year.

22. Emmet Neheli. McMaster has seen massive improvement since last year, in part aided by the influx of several excellent first-years. Emmet did great at ACF Regionals and quite well at SCT—hopefully Mac can make a D2 run one of these years.

23. Simone Valade. Simone provides solid support to a McGill team that already has quite a few players in her main categories. Quite a consistent player according to her stats.

24. Kevin Lei. I'm glad I introduced Kevin to QB back when he was in Grade 12 - he did very well at SCT and Penn Bowl, and especially at SCT given his overlap with Jack.

25. Wenying Wu. Wenying has been great at this sort of thing since at least 2016, when she played with me in the Reach national finals as only a ninth-grader. Since then, she’s become a formidable literature player who is capable of taking tossups off even very experienced players.

Honourable mentions to Will Dawson, Luc Foster, and Adrian Wong.
(EDIT because I realized I made a slight mistake in my rankings.)

Other ballots forthcoming, although probably not imminently.
EDIT: Community ballot added.

COMMUNITY BALLOT
1. Joe Su. I'd agree with Joe's assessment here - he's definitely been very helpful with stats and running a very well-attended ACF Fall in Ottawa. It's my job to run tournaments and the Toronto club, but it isn't his to do the same.

2. Chris Sims. That being said, I do think I've done a lot for the circuit this past year, most notably TD'ing or playing a large role in organizing 6/10 academic tournaments and the only trash tournament.

3. Rico Catibog. Awesome and very dedicated staffer - drove our juniors to Ottawa for Fall and brings his two sets of buzzers to almost every tournament in Canada. Cookies are a huge plus.

4. Aaron Dos Remedios. Basically TD'ed ACF Regs and has helped out so much this past year. Toronto is really lucky to have him around.

5. Leslie Newcombe and Brian Luong (tied). Almost always willing to staff events in southern Ontario and help drive people further afield sometimes.

7. Isaac Thiessen. Really key to making things happen in Waterloo and getting them out to tournaments, which he usually helps staff. MWT always ran very smoothly.

8. Dennis Beeby. Has helped out at a number of tournaments, including driving to Queen's for Penn Bowl in his Smart car. One of the best readers on the circuit.

9. Josh Lane. Did a great job running SUN for a first-time TD. Looking forward to seeing what he'll do as president next year!

10. Adam Swift. He didn't come as much this year as in the past, but he's usually willing to come to Toronto tournaments when he's not needed elsewhere, which is especially commendable given the distance involved.

EDIT: Added rookie ballot and open ballot

ROOKIE BALLOT
1. Lucas Smith. I think it’s a pretty close competition between the top three rookies, but Lucas has definitely shown that he can perform well at higher difficulties to a greater extent than the other three. I could see his ranking changing in the future though, since Kevin Fan has had higher power counts at several tournaments.

2. Kevin Fan. His ranking is definitely hurt relative to Lucas by not playing any of the main regular or regular+ tournaments this school year, but he still did very well at the tournaments he did play.

3. Tony Chen. Not really much to add to my discussion in the main poll - did very well playing doubles in fairly tough fields.

4. Wenying Wu. I am somewhat doubting my ranking her ahead of some of these other rookies, but especially at tournaments like Penn Bowl she showed that she can add quite a bit to a team.

5. Will Dawson. Tough to rank him considering he hasn’t played alongside any of the other players on this list, but he did very well at D1 SCT and maybe better than any of these other players would’ve done.

6. Adrian Wong. I remember being very impressed seeing Adrian play during the first round of collegiate novice back in September. He scored almost the same as Emmet on McMaster A at SCT, and provided good support at ACF Regionals. Pretty tough call between him and Ian, but performing slightly better on slightly better teams gives him the edge.

7. Ian Chow. Definitely an underrated player on previous polls - although Toronto D suffered some upsets early at D2 SCT, they were a very strong team in large part due to Ian. He has consistently put up high PPGs playing with fairly strong teams but not generally the top team, meaning his performances might be less noticeable.

8. Thomas Mennill. I agree with Peter that Thomas has generally been fairly under ranked as well. He performed very well on a strong Waterloo A team at SCT, and has consistently put up respectable performances at more difficult tournaments like Regs and WORKSHOP.

9. Andrew McCowan. Good to see Queen’s gaining some good rookies this year. Performing as well as Jack at Regs is pretty impressive, especially considering how well Jack did soloing at WORKSHOP later in the term. Not sure what his categories are since I haven’t seen him play much, but obviously seemed to complement a history-heavy team.

10. Jonah Moore. Difficult to rank him against Andrew, and I probably would’ve rather just left this as a tie. Since Jonah is a science/music player, I imagine Andrew is shadowed more on Queen’s A, so their near-identical PPGs at Regs would lead me to conclude that Andrew is slightly better.

OPEN BALLOT
1. Aayush Rajasekaran. His Penn Bowl and Terrapin Open stats should leave no doubt that he is definitely the best player in Canada now. He’s improved a ton over the last few years - hard to believe only two years ago I scored the same as him at Nats. That wouldn’t happen these days...

2. Ian Dewan. Playing Fall Open doubles with Ian was one of my favourite QB experiences of the last year. A very good science player with a lot of deep literature knowledge - hopefully he’ll play again when/if he starts a PhD.

3. Dennis Beeby. His slightly higher power counts than Erik and somewhat greater generalism (at least in my eyes) puts him slightly ahead, but it’s a really close call - both had the same number of first buzzes at Fall Open, and while Dennis did better at Terrapin Open, he was playing on a much weaker team.

4. Gareth Thorlakson. Feels a bit odd to put someone who’s closed on another circuit here, but this probably best fits how he ends up playing in Canada. Did very well at MWT and at HSNCT last summer. Hard to say how he fits into the history triumvirate in places 3-5, but I think this is about right.

5. Erik Christensen. Generally did quite well playing open for a second year now and seems to complement Aayush to an acceptable degree when they play together.

6. Aaron Dos Remedios. A strong generalist as ever, but he can’t really compete with the people above him when it comes to specialization. No powers and only 9 first buzzes at Fall Open and probably did somewhat worse at Terrapin Open, but he can still contribute a good number of buzzes in a lot of situations.

7. Cameron Amini. This is just based on Penn Bowl - he did very well there, showing a high power count and a lot of impressive buzzes. Didn’t play any of the opens, which makes it a bit difficult to compare him with others.

8. Milan Fernandez. Not an open player for very much longer, but he’s definitely shown a lot of growth as a lit and visual arts specialist over the past year. Definitely a contender for a spot on Toronto A next year.

9. Joe Su. Still showed off his high-level knowledge by making decent contributions on a strong team at Terrapin Open. Hasn’t played much else this year, though.

10. Leslie Newcombe. Still able to put up decent performances at opens both during the school year and with her typical team at the HSNCT mirror.
Last edited by cwasims on Sat May 09, 2020 4:23 pm, edited 5 times in total.
Christopher Sims
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Re: 2020 Canadian Circuit Player Poll

Post by Fado Alexandrino »

No player poll unfortunately, I didn't go to enough tournaments this year to really get a sense of how all the players, especially the rookies and sophomores, are doing.

Rookie Ballot

1) Kevin Fan - close race. Edged out Tony because Kevin is a lot deeper at his areas.
2) Tony Chen
3) Lucas Smith
4) Wenying Wu - I hope I didn't step on her head too hard at fall.
5) Andrew McCowan - Unable to play SUN because of the Coronavirus or SCT because of VIA Rail. Projected to have a higher W.A.P than that other kid from Glebe.
6) Adrian Wong - Nice to see McMaster finally be unwaste.
7) William Dawson - Nice to see a UBC player make the list. Had a good showing at Fall and SCT. Glad they came over, but I sadly I don't know how sustainable this would be especially since next year they have a legit shot at D2 ICT and would be going to more tournaments.
8) Ian Chow
9) Minh-Tuan Phung - Needs to rein in his negs. See what I did there?
10) Gabriel Clark - Ottawa's on the map again!

Staffer Ballot

1) Joe Su - I only went to two tournaments this year but I think I did put a lot of work in.
2) Chris Sims - directed a lot of tournaments in the largest club in the circuit by far.
3) Josh Lane - nice to see Toronto have a successful chain of command. Will be healthy as we continue in the 2020s.
4) Aaron Dos Remedios - a reliable, responsible, reader. None of you got this reference, but that's OK.
5) Leslie - Higher than Brian since she was the one to drive to Fall.
6) Brian
7) Rico - Brings cookies even if he's late due to a TTC closure
8) Meghan
9) Milan
10) Dennis


Honorable mentions go to Tamara and Scott, retired alumni from Ottawa who still help out.
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Re: 2020 Canadian Circuit Player Poll

Post by Triton of the Minnows »

1. Derek So
2. Rein Otsason
3. Jay Misuk
4. Chris Sims
5. Daniel Lovsted
6. Henry Atkins
7. Paul Kasiński
8. Akhil Garg
9. Colin Veevers
10. Jack "Science God" van Nostrand
11. Peter Wang
12. Sam Hauer
13. Raymond Chen
14. Ryan Hamilton
15. Lucas Smith
16. Minh-Huy Phung
17. Zhenglin Liu
18. Sheena Li
19. Sky Li
20. Kevin Lei is Underrated :chip:
21. Kevin Fan
22. Simone Valade
23. Tony Chen
24. Wenying Wu
25. Emmet Neheli
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Re: 2020 Canadian Circuit Player Poll

Post by sheenali13 »

1. Derek So
2. Rein
3. Jay
4. Chris Sims
5. Daniel Lovsted
6. Henry Atkins
7. Akhil Garg
8. Paul Kasinski
9. Colin Veevers
10. Raymond Chen
11. Jack van Nostrand
12. Peter Wang
13. Sam Heuer
14. Zhenglin Liu
15. Ryan Hamilton
16. Kevin Fan
17. Minh-Huy Phung
18. Sheena Li
19. Sky Li
20. Tony Chen
21. Lucas Smith
22. Kevin Lei
23. Simone Valade
24. Emmet Neheli
25. Jonah Moore

Rookie Ballot
1. Kevin Fan
2. Tony Chen
3. Lucas Smith
4. Jonah Moore
5. Wenying Wu
6. William Dawson
7. Thomas Mennill
8. Ian Chow
9. Adrian Wong
10. Minh-Tuan Phung
Last edited by sheenali13 on Sat Apr 25, 2020 12:08 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: 2020 Canadian Circuit Player Poll

Post by tonychen »

Based mainly on Regionals, cuz I attended that one. Looked at other stats as well.

(0. Gareth Thorlakson)
1. Derek So
2. Rein Otsason
3. Jay Misuk Me SUCC
4. Chris Sims
5. Daniel Lovsted
6. Henry Atkins
7. Akhil Garg
8. Paul Kasinski
9. Colin Veevers
10. Peter Wang Buzzes on all the same stuff as me. BRUH
11. Jack Van Nostrand ? Did he take QUIZBOWL-ENHANCING DRUGS between regionals and SCT? Ungodly.
12. Sam Hauer
13. Raymond Chen
14. Zhenglin Liu Even though he only attended one tournament, he was pretty powerful at that one. More than half of his buzzes were site-wide first buzzes?
15. Minh-Huy Phung
16. Ryan Hamilton
17. Tony Chen haha who's this
18. Lucas Smith I place myself above Lucas based on Regionals. Wish I could've attended SCT.
19. Sheena Li Knows a lot about medieval women or whatever
20. Kevin Fan Bleeding >:( 17-20 are all really close tbh. Hope to play against him more in the future.
21. Emmet Blanchett Popped off at Regionals. Underrated. Watched McMaster get dangerously close to beating Toronto A in round 1 of regionals
22. Sky Li
23. Simone Valade
24. Jonah Moore I think this guy is also underrated.
25. Adrian Wong Looking forward to what McMaster does next year.
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Re: 2020 Canadian Circuit Player Poll

Post by MordecaiRickles »

Wasn't going to do one of these, but crazy things happen during pandemics. I didn't play many tournaments, and I wouldn't recognize a good quizbowl player if one cheated against me at an online TO mirror, so I apologize if my judgement is a tad impaired; I'm going mostly off stats for people I don't really know — for better or for worse. For worse, I assume.

Rookie Ballot:
1. Kevin Fan - Top notch at non-American history, also increasingly good at everything else (except maybe FA, and Phil/SS) — even good at science at easy levels, anyway. The rest of the McGill first-years have excluded him from all of our fun rookie activities out of jealousy.
2. Tony Chen - Very Good, and these top three places seem almost arbitrary. Henry once called him frightening. Like, in a good way. If I had to put my money on one of them for a 1v1, I'd definitely choose Kevin, though.
3. Lucas Smith - Also seems very good, outscoring Kevin at Fall and SCT, but both times having the notable advantage of not being on the same team as Minh-Huy, Sheena, and Tim. Did markedly less well than Kevin at EFT, where their roles were reversed.
4. William Dawson
5. Adrian Wong - Put up very slightly better scores than Ian
6. Ian Chow - Has done consistently well at every tournament. Seems underrated on other ballots. But he lost to me on Learned League.
7. Wenying Wu - Maybe I'm wrong to put her this low, but she gets fewer points than everyone above her at tournaments, so here we are
8. Andrew McCowan
9. Minh-Tuan Phung - Would be higher on this list if he negged less. But would he really be Minh-Tuan if he negged less?
10. Thomas Mennill - He might be better than I'm giving him credit for.

If the ballot was longer I would probably include Gabriel Clark, Jonah Moore, Kevin Downey, and Samir Mechel. And then maybe myself? I don't know the field well enough to say - I'm sure other people are better than me. Oh and then Kais, who is really rather good at music.

If I excluded anyone good on my ballot or my little spiel at the end, it's only because I don't know they exist. Sorry about that. No hard feelings.

Edit: Moved Thomas Mennill onto the ballot after looking at his stats again. Thanks Peter Wang. Sorry Gabriel Clark.
Last edited by MordecaiRickles on Wed Apr 29, 2020 3:51 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: 2020 Canadian Circuit Player Poll

Post by 31august »

Just a thought I had reading the thread, but if you compare Thomas's ppg just to the other rookies:
  • EFT (4th at 43.18 ppg)
  • ACF Fall (4th at 40ppg)
  • MWT @ Waterloo (4th at 34.55 ppg)
  • ACF Regionals (7th at 18.50 ppg)
  • SCT DII (10th at 33.64 ppg)
  • WORKSHOP (4th at 20 ppg)
It seems silly to be leaving him off of a rookie ballot when he is consistently outscoring half of it! Anecdotally, I think we also matched up quite well against the other rookies in head-to-head win/loss throughout the season although I haven't collated that data.

I also think Ben should get a nod because he had a great SCT and plays the specialist role very well for us. From the games we played I think he is the best at geography out of the rookies.
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Re: 2020 Canadian Circuit Player Poll

Post by MMSANCHEZ »

Like Arnav I haven't really seen enough to put together a main poll submission, but here's my two cents on the rookie ballot.
1. Lucas Smith
Statistically this is very close, but I've got to give Lucas the edge for leading a very strong Toronto undergraduate team in scoring so comfortably. Strong power numbers at SCT, which shows a lot of growth.
2. Kevin Fan
3. Tony Chen
4. William Dawson
Will has become shockingly good, very quickly. He lead UBC in scoring at ACF Fall about a month after he learned quizbowl was a game. Since then he has not only deepened as a history specialist but has become liable to snipe tossups across the entire distribution, all the while negging at a microscopic rate. I believe his strong performance at SCT is only the beginning, I expect him to develop into a top 10 player during his Undergraduate Degree.
5. Wenying Wu
My first experience playing a quizbowl tournament I teamed with Wenying, posted a 1/0/4 line in the finals, and still won by 300 points. Very deep literature knowledge and clearly subject to a large shadow effect playing with Lucas. Props for keeping the negging under control at SCT, and saving Toronto C from the infamy of having all 4 players with double digit negs.
6. Adrian Wong
7. Ian Chow
8. Thomas Mennill
Not much to add, but yeah his numbers clearly warrant inclusion on this list.
9. Andrew McCowan
10. Minh-Tuan Phung

As an aside, I'd like to thank Toronto Quizbowl for putting on amazing SCT that was definitely the highlight of UBC's quizbowl season (even if Div 1 was above our paygrade). We are optimistic about being able to come back to Toronto next year for SCT and potentially ACF Regionals as well.


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Re: 2020 Canadian Circuit Player Poll

Post by cruzeiro »

Player Poll (Top 25 + Top 5 Open players)

Open 1 - Aayush Rajasekaran
1. Derek So
2. Rein Otsason
3. Jay Misuk
4. Chris Sims - I thought about putting Chris third, given his consistency, ability to grab in multiple categories at a high level, and Jay’s wild variability due to his penchant for the -5.
Open 2 - Ian Dewan - has done me proud since I left Ottawa.
5. Daniel Lovsted - I’ve always struggled with how to rank the non-scientist McGill players, in large part because most of the time I’ve seen Daniel (and Henry, below) it’s been while getting blown away by Derek.
Open 3 - Dennis Beeby
Open 4 - Erik Christensen
6. Henry Atkins
Open 5- Aaron DR
7. Akhil Garg
8. Colin Veevers - definitely someone whose stock has increased in my view this year
9. Paul Kasinski
10. Zhenglin Liu - ranked here more on reputation given his minimal play this year, but still terrifying at all difficulties in his categories, as his first buzz stats attest.
11. Sam Hauer
12. Raymond Chen - have to plug my Fall Open teammates here…
13. Jack VN - my protegé and successor at Queen’s. As many have pointed out, terrifying at lower difficulties. That said, I put a pretty high value on higher difficulty work, and he scales atrociously (see ACF Regionals), which is why I have him lower than everyone else.
14. Ryan Hamilton
15. Peter Wang
16. Minh-Huy Phung
17. Tony Chen
18. Sky Li
19. Sheena Li
20. Lucas Smith
21. Emmet Blanchett / Neheli - one man, two names, how confusing for us all, but always scoring points.
22. Andrew McCowan - looks to be the next great hope at Queen’s. I’m lower on Jack than the consensus, but outscoring him at Regionals is still impressive for a first year.
23. Kevin Lei - a history specialist who has spent his career on teams with other history types (myself and Jack)
24. Wenying Wu
25. Kevin Fan
HM: Peter Cordeiro, eternal McMaster President, who, by his own admission always plays better when I’m reading for him.
Insufficient data: Anyone from Ottawa, who I saw play 11 tossups total, and anyone from UBC, who I did not see given I read D2 at SCT, though it certainly seems like William Dawson should be here somewhere. I have not ranked Gareth Thorlakson as I’ve only seen him play a year and a half ago, and he’s obviously improved massively since, but I have no reference point for how much other than online practices, which I’m not comfortable relying on.

I will punt on a rookie ballot and a trash ballot.

Community Poll
1. Joe Su - will be sorely missed next year. The everything of the circuit behind the scenes for close to a decade.
2. Erik Christensen - head editing Canada’s signature quizbowl production deserves the recognition.
3. Chris Sims - the incredible strength in numbers at UT this year, in terms of club size, attendance at tournaments, and running tournaments, is a credit to his organizational skills.
4. Aaron DR - as ever, my favourite reader on the circuit.
5. Rico - always there, always bringing the joy with the snacks and the techie scoreboard
6/7. The Brian/Leslie Borg Apparatus
8. Adam Swift - coming in from Rochester as he often does is a hike, and also kudos for working to get things moving in Upstate NY.
9. Isaac Thiessen - as others have noted, a very good TD.
10. Rachel Bentley - the unseen (to most) reason everything gets done at Queen’s (and my replacement as club driver)
HM: I don’t know if there’s any one person to single out for this, which is why it’s in the HM instead of the ballot, but everyone at Ottawa who has put the other alma mater back on the map, much to my joy.

Edited because I didn't realize Milan wasn't in school this year
Dennis Beeby
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Re: 2020 Canadian Circuit Player Poll

Post by cwasims »

People have expressed to me that they would like an extension on the various polls. I'll give everyone another week, so please send in your ballots by midnight Pacific time on May 9.

At this point, the open and trash polls may not happen due to lack of interest - I won't be publishing the results if less than 4 ballots are submitted, so please get those in/encourage your friends to get those in if you would like to see those results.

Another note (which I think I forgot to mention earlier) - if you would like to change your ranking, you are welcome to do so until the deadline. Please let me know if you've done so, though.
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Re: 2020 Canadian Circuit Player Poll

Post by MMSANCHEZ »

1. Derek So
2. Rein Otsason
3. Chris Sims
4. Jay Misuk
5. Henry Atkins
6. Daniel Lovsted
7. Paul Kasinski
8. Akhil Garg
9. Colin Veevers
10. Peter Wang
11. Raymond Chen
12. Jack van Nostrand
13. Sam Hauer
14. Ryan Hamilton
15. Sky Li
16. Lucas Smith
17. Minh-Huy Phung
18. Sheena Li
19. Kevin Fan
20. Tony Chen
21. Zhenglin Liu
22. William Dawson
23. Emmet Neheli
24. Simone Valade
25. Wenying Wu

HM: Arnav Sood, I've heard a silent majority of people have advocated for his presence here.

Also a shout out to Lia Rathburn. Lia is not eligible for this Poll, but if she was would top my rookie and rank very highly on my main poll. Lia's Quizbowl debut was at ACF Regionals where she lead UBC in scoring. Unfortunately, she was not able to attend SCT in Toronto with us, but she has posted legitimately elite power numbers at the 2019 Terrapin scrimmage and the Closed WORKSHOP discord mirror. Lia is also the only UBC player from this year who can scale up to Nats difficulty effectively. Definitely a player to watch, particularly on the ACF distro.
Last edited by MMSANCHEZ on Wed Dec 23, 2020 5:18 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 2020 Canadian Circuit Player Poll

Post by kanenguyen9 »

Main Poll
1 . Derek So (MCGILL)
2 . Rein Otsason (TORONTO)
3 . Jay Misuk (TORONTO, BUT MAC BY HEART!)
4 . Chris Sims (TORONTO)
5 . Henry Atkins (MCGILL)
6 . Daniel Lovsted (CARLETON/MCGILL)
7 . Paul Kasinski (TORONTO)
8 . Akhil Garg (MCGILL)
9 . Colin Veevers (TORONTO)
10 . Peter Wang (WATERLOO)
11 . Sam Hauer (TORONTO)
12 . Raymond Chen (TORONTO)
13 . Jack Van Nostrand (QUEEN'S)
14 . Zhenglin Liu (TORONTO)
15 . Ryan Hamilton (TORONTO)
16 . Minh-Huy Phung (MCGILL)
17 . Tony Chen (WESTERN)
18 . Sheena Li (MCGILL)
19 . Lucas Smith (TORONTO)
20 . Sky Li (TORONTO)
21 . Emmet Blanchett (MAC)
22 . Kevin Fan (MCGILL)
23 . Kevin Lei (QUEEN'S)
24 . Simone Valade (MCGILL)
25 . Wenying Wu (TORONTO)

Rookie Poll
1 . Tony Chen (WESTERN)
2 . Lucas Smith (TORONTO)
3 . Kevin Fan (MCGILL)
4 . Wenying Wu (TORONTO)
5 . William Dawson (UBC)
6 . Adrian Wong (MAC)
7 . Andrew McCowan (QUEEN'S)
8 . Thomas Mennill (WATERLOO)
9 . Ian Chow (TORONTO)
10 . Jonah Moore (QUEEN'S)
Honourable mention to Cormac Beirne (MCGILL), I'm a big fan of his work and election speech.
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Re: 2020 Canadian Circuit Player Poll

Post by Protean »

I spent way too long on this. I'm aware that as the years go by my write-up has become more and more self-indulgent but let me have my fun. Rankings generally with regular difficulty in mind, though this breaks down a bit in the latter half. Like all the other ballots, probably contains a healthy amount of bias towards players who go to my own school, whom I get to see in practice every week. As ever, all questions, comments, complaints can be directed to Meghan Torchia.

1. Derek So. Still exists, supposedly. As mysterious as ever. I have no idea where he is or what he does. He wasn’t as overwhelming as I remember him being but then again his team wasn’t one ill-advised neg away from grailing me this year. Part of that is probably rust but I think it also speaks to how much Henry has improved. I think he lived in Vancouver this year and still somehow managed to attend more McGill practices than Zhenglin has attended Toronto ones.

2. Rein Otsason. Still exists, supposedly. Had a really busy year mastering the entirety of science and all but I wish he could have come out to play more stuff. Sadly grad school education isn’t very useful for quizbowl – that with his inactivity has turned him into Rust Otsason, though he is still the strongest player at Toronto. I’m not allowed to make fun of him about not knowing the difference between transcription and translation anymore. I hope he’ll come out more next year now that he’s basically a doctor living in a sweet new bachelor pad, but if I had to choose between that and him finally – finally – getting a haircut, well ... snip snip motherfucker.

3. Christopher Sims. Toronto had one Esteemed ATC President for three years straight, and then I showed up and the president has left at the end of each of the three years I’ve been here. Coincidence? Yes, but don’t let that distract you from Chris’ exceptional tenure (highlights: successfully hosting a 20-team tournament; implementation of dedicated novice practice; sending no fewer than four teams to every single regular-difficulty and below tournament, including one in Ottawa) and don’t let that distract you from Chris’ exceptional playing career as a strong history-based generalist, though it’s taken a bit of a back seat to the TDing. His numbers are always impressive when he does play, especially when you consider he always plays with very strong teammates. The first of several strong Toronto players on this list to scatter into the four corners of the earth as he will be pursuing multiple fancy degrees at Northwestern.

4. Jay Misuk. After a prolific and somewhat controversial whirlwind tour of quizbowl last year, Jay seems to have scaled back on it a bit this year. This doesn’t mean he isn’t still one of the best in Canada, especially in geography and Other, though ultimately I put him below Chris for his variability and affinity for the neg regardless of category. Fun fact: Jay’s first quizbowl tournament was in 2005, a point at which most of this year’s rookies were entering kindergarten.

5. Daniel Lovsted. The fight for this spot between Daniel and Henry was very close, but based on his physical characteristics I ended up calling it in favour of Daniel even though Daniel’s inactivity and Henry’s improvement throughout the year (culminating in outdoing Daniel at Terrapin Open) made this difficult for me. His long history of being ridiculously good while playing with Derek doesn’t hurt. Daniel is also very mysterious to me. Why is everyone who goes to McGill mysterious?

6. Henry Atkins. In 2018 I wrote “until somewhat recently Henry and Austen had always just been one big McGill B conglomerate in my mind, but they had always been a conglomerate that was very good at quizbowl. I can now confidently say that they are, in fact, two individual people who are very good at quizbowl.” I am now convinced that Henry has consumed Austen and absorbed his quizbowl capabilities, making them once again just one conglomerate who is even better at quizbowl. Henry is possibly the best non-Derek collegiate literature player in the country and he’s also really good at other stuff that I care less about (history?????????????) He once accidentally sent me what I think were his notes to a polisci midterm and they were also very impressive.

7. Paul Kasinki. Paul only played the two flagship tournaments this year, but he destroyed them and finished in the top 3 in individual scoring in both. It’s too bad we didn’t see him a bit more in his last year but he was just as impressive as I remember and I’m glad I got to play one last tournament with him as a Toronto team. A top history player who also knows a lot of social science and other (e.g. geography) to go along with one of the highest “quizbowl IQs” in the game, he’ll also leave behind a legacy of having presided over the club during its unprecedented expansion over the last few years.

8. Zhenglin Liu Y’all are sleeping on Zhenglin, even if he is a MOST SHAMEFUL TRAITOR and British corporate-lawyer-shill-to-be who only did the literal bare minimum to qualify for this poll and then forgot that he did. While Zhenglin “Imperfect Pitch” Liu is empirically worse than most people in canqb at music (indeed, he doesn’t seem to know the difference between a half noted and a quarter note), he is somehow still the best opera player in the country and can get points on any music questions. He’s also a threat on so many random things like lit or religion or every single word that's ever been printed in the Guardian or the personal lives of anyone who has ever even been in contention for a Rhodes Scholarship, as shown by his very impressive performance at online Workshop. Just don’t leave Zhenglin alone in a room with a Whismur.

(Interlude: Now that I think about it, all three of my D2 teammates from my first year at Toronto are graduating this year. I wanted to take a quick moment to say that prepping for and competing at ICT with you all that year was a phenomenal and unforgettable experience, so thank you, Paul, Chris, and Zhenglin for letting me come along for the ride.)

9. Akhil Garg. I hate playing Akhil. Okay, he’s actually super fun to play and just about the most pleasant person you’ll ever find playing quizbowl, but like, get this, he’s good at buzzing on the stuff I supposedly buzz on. I know, right? He’s the worst. Akhil is the consummate specialist, the specialist’s specialist, capable of getting early buzzes on all the sciences up to the highest levels of the game. And now with a dash of classical music and (I think) social sciences! Alas, Dr. Garg is moving on from collegiate quizbowl to “help people” and “save lives” or something idk.

10. Colin Veevers. Somehow keeps sleeping through round 1 or something. Colin has consistently drawn comparisons to Rein (it’s a compliment, I swear) in that he’s a physics-based (but also ecology-based) science player with both deep pockets of knowledge outside his specialties as well as strong generalism to go with a bit of a propensity for negging. Fitting that Akhil just edges him out, seeing as the time Akhil came to a Toronto practice he administered a dementia test to Colin “Mild Cognitive Decline” Veevers, who uh didn’t kill it.

11. Jack van Nostrand. Dude put up 43 powers at SCT on a team that was one slot away from qualifying for ICT en route to winning the scoring title by over 30 PPG. It’s been said he doesn’t scale up as well, but while he had a bit of a weaker (not weak) Regionals, his power numbers while soloing at Workshop were strong. I can’t say I know him well, but he seems to take things in good humour and it’s always been a pleasant experience playing against him. I hope he gets to go to ICT next year – maybe if he makes the score go up, instead of down ... just a thought.

12. Peter Wang. Like a bolt from the blue, man. After apparently taking the last year off playing quizbowl (maybe a coop thing?), Peter loudly proclaimed both his return and his arrival. His banner year included leading a suddenly strong Waterloo club to the UG title at ACF Regionals as well as a Div II ICT qualification. To be honest, I’m not really sure what his categories are except that he’s pretty good at lit (and we don’t really have any advanced stats this year to help me out) but his eye-popping scoring numbers (albeit sometimes on weaker teams) and strong power numbers indicate he has strong generalism as well.

13. Sam Hauer. Ay, I fink dis Sam eez preety goud at da kweezbowl, no? I have no idea what accent that is supposed to be, as is usually the case whenever I’m in Sam’s presence. After having never played with Sam, I played every tournament except EFT this year with him and let me tell you, watching him whip out a giant 2 litre thermos of tea to replenish his mug while pulling out wild buzzes on music and history and thought and basically everything else I don’t know is a 10/10 experience would recommend. Toronto will miss him greatly as he will be starting law school at UBC, where he will greatly bolster what appears to be an up-and-coming team. I’m still not convinced he’s not actually Marc Evan Jackson.

14. Ryan Hamilton. Look, we both know you’re not here for an analysis about Ryan’s quizbowl ability. You’re here because I have the unfettered, 100% true origin story behind Ryan Hamilton’s Accent. The truth is ----- what, who -----------what are you doi----- wait, no please, stop -----------
------------------------ Ryan Hamilton is the best current events player on the circuit as well as one of the strongest history players, though his generalism outside his areas have room for improvement. That is a normal accent. Move on, find a new slant.

15. Raymond Chen. To be honest, I’m flattered but surprised by where most people are putting me. I think Ryan’s a bit deeper in his specialties than I am in mine which provides higher marginal value and Sam usually outdoes me when we play together. I’m a decent lit player up until about regular and I think I’m about as good as Akhil at biology, but am pretty garbage at the other sciences. I’m really just here to roast people. #FGT

16. Sky Li. Alright, raise your hand if you knew our 100% Canadian was doing a history major. Not you, Gareth, you don’t count anymore. Sky is the generalist’s generalist, capable of generating a correct buzz in pretty much every category, but is also one of the stronger fine arts players in the game. He can apparently parse score clues, though, which is basically cheating. He’s quite fun to play with, especially because looking at him and saying “save us, Sky” on bonus parts you don’t know actually works a lot of the time. I like to think that Sam, Sky, and I made a good team.

17. Minh-Huy Phung. McGill B makes a roaring return to the scene, with this iteration being led by Minh-Huy to a Div II SCT win and an internationally competitive D-value. Regionals is the only tournament harder than regular-minus that he played but he did quite well on it playing next to Henry. Based off the fact that I can’t remember his categories, I suspect that he is a history player. Another disciple of the Neg.

18. Lucas Smith. I staffed the high school Toronto Novice Tournament last year, where I watched first-hand as some kid named Lucas Smith led the unheard-of Toronto Montessori School to two consecutive upsets over UTS and Westmount. What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was witnessing a portent to the arrival of Toronto’s top rookie. Lucas is a literature-based generalist and all-around nice guy, but his most promising skill is his willingness to study. He’s already very capable, but he’s also full of potential as well the dedication and enthusiasm to make good on that potential – watch out for him in the coming years.

19. Sheena Li. She didn’t play much before this year, but her increased presence has really helped apply a fresh sheen (ha!) to McGill, the D2 team especially. She seems to have specific deep pockets of history knowledge and an appreciation for visual fine arts but more importantly she is a life scientist and gets many extra points for that. Had a really impressive SCT, with 21 powers and a 5.25 power/neg ratio on the winning team.

20. Kevin Fan. Another strong young McGill player. The size of Toronto’s club is often mentioned but I think McGill’s youth movement is overlooked. Putting up 11 powers at EFT and 14 powers as a third scorer behind Minh-Huy and Sheena is no joke, especially for a first year playing with and against older players. Appears to be another hard worker so I’m looking forward to seeing him duke it out with Lucas for the next couple years.

21. Kevin Lei. It’s Kevins all the way down. Kevin nicely fits the mould of “Queen’s history player” who, like Jack, doesn’t often play anything harder than regular. He's a little hard to rank, seeing as he spends his life getting shadowed by Jack (plus Dennis last year), but he is definitely a good player in his own right, putting up 13 powers at SCT despite Jack deciding he was just going to double everyone’s power counts nbd.

22. Tony Chen. A remarkable debut from a player that was perhaps overlooked at first due to his school’s history of inactivity. Like Kevin, he was a bit hard to rank but for the opposite reason: he’s only ever had one teammate, so it’s unclear how much stock to put into raw PPG over just two tournaments. Regardless of that, putting up 50+ points as a first year at both EFT and Regionals is undoubtedly worthy of his inclusion on this list. Hopefully we see him a bit more next year, and maybe even with a true Western team?

23. Emmet Blanchett Neheli. At long last, for the first time since the hot mess that was the 2016 poll, it appears that a McMaster player will make it in earnest (i.e. while they actually still go to Mac). A life science student (woo) who also happens to be a strong history (boo) player, Emmet led the McMaster team to strong results this year, including an ACF Fall win at the RIT site and a close fifth-place finish at a top-heavy Div II SCT field. Between him and promising rookie Adrian Wong, it’ll be interesting to see how far Mac will go in their re-emergence next year.

24. Simone Valade. The rare University of Toronto export, Simone has really come into her own as a quizbowler over the course of her master’s. While her numbers don’t necessarily pop out at you like they do for some of her McGill teammates, her floor is high and she provides solid, consistent scoring performances from tournament to tournament. Her main specialties are life science and terrorizing mice, but she also has smatterings of deep knowledge across the distribution (e.g. religion, psych). Also provides a much-needed steady administrative hand to the chaos of McGill Quizbowl.

25. Wenying Wu. Apology for poor English. Where were you when Wenying is kill? I was looking at ACF Fall stat when phone ring. “Wenying is head step by Joe Su” “no” Another talented Toronto first year rounds out this year’s list. Being a lit player, playing with Lucas more often than not leads to a bit of conflict and shadowing of each other, but they’ve made it work somehow. She seems to read a lot, and a result appears to have mostly – get this – “real knowledge”, whatever that is. Usually manages to impress me with some quick buzz at most tournaments I’ve played her at. I think we have a very nice and wholesome crop of firsties this year. I even bet that none of them will abscond to Columbia or anything because haha what kind of terrible person would do that?

Honourable Mentions:
26. Luc Foster
27. Josh Lane
28. Adrian Wong
29. Jonah Moore
30. Thomas Mennill
N/R. William Dawson

Luc and Josh get lost in the huge shuffle of Toronto players, but Luc puts up strong numbers with a lot of Thought buzzes (I think he would’ve raised his stock at ICT if it didn’t get cancelled and he didn’t become a wanted criminal) and Josh is a valuable and consummate fourth scorer who knows a lot about myth and history (though the latter can get obscured by playing with teammates like Sam and Paul). Adrian absolutely kills lower level quizbowl and takes McMaster to D2 contender status. Jonah impressed me with his science knowledge at Penn Bowl and actually slightly outscored Jack at Regionals. Thomas provides important scoring support as a first year to a Waterloo team that qualified for ICT and capably led teams at EFT and MWT. William had a really impressive (Div I!) SCT performance against the best competition we have to offer, but I didn’t feel comfortable trying to rank him relative to others on the main poll based on one tournament.

Rookie Poll
1. Lucas Smith
2. Kevin Fan
3. Tony Chen
4. Wenying Wu
5. Adrian Wong
6. Jonah Moore
7. Thomas Mennill
8. Ian Chow
9. William Dawson
10. Minh-Tuan Phung


And lastly, I know this thing is already a billion words long, but I wanted to shout out the Toronto novices. This game is stupidly hard and sticking it out because you like learning and knowing things is beyond impressive. It has been especially fun for me to watch the novices that have been consistently coming out since the beginning – Seth, Parth, Jonathan, Monica, Zoe, Ava, Martin (I’m probably forgetting someone, forgive me) – play and get better at the game over the course of the year.

See you all next year if quizbowl doesn’t get killed by the plague.
Raymond Chen
McMaster University, 2017
University of Toronto, 202x
CadenPetrosian
Lulu
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Re: 2020 Canadian Circuit Player Poll

Post by CadenPetrosian »

God trash is so hard to make sense of. I've opted to include some players who have only played one tournament if I've seen them play or at least know something about them. Craig Moysey, Nick Penner, and Miran Trzic meet neither of these criteria so while I don't doubt they're quite good (Especially Craig who actually won the one tournament he played) I'm going to exempt them from the list because it feels weird ranking morsels of data devoid of contextual knowledge next to players I know fairly well. Also frees me up to talk about more people.

I should not have left this half complete until there was only an hour left until the deadline. Sorry for the lack of an academic ballot.

Trash Player Poll:

1. Drew Scheeler
2. Steve Oppenheim

How much pop culture do you have to consume to be as good as these guys? Jesus...

3. Aaron Dos Remedios

Gets tons of sports content despite not watching sports? Absolutely murders pop music questions? Has a negsplosion at least one game a tournament? Yeah, that's Aaron. In addition to all these things Aaron is also just fun. Fun in the funnest sense of the fun word "fun". Fun.

4.Christine

She’s still absurdly good.

5.Derek

Movie guy. His list of favourite comics in Quizpolling Purposes is a treasure trove of good recs.

6.Erik

Meme player. Stop being so good at film.

7. Adam

Sports! and country music?

8 Simone

If she hasn't seen an episode of it, she's at least heard of it. Peter Cordeiro may study trash but only Simone has subjected herself to the entirety of Family Guy for Trash. An endeavour that has rewarded her with gets on "that chicken guy".

9 Henry

Sports! and David Mamet movies? (idk if that's actually true but he did power that Glengarry Glenn Ross TU against my team at Ohio Trash 2019 plus I need some specificity for my jokes to sound even remotely amusing)

10 Brendan McKendy

He should play more stuff! It's always nice getting to see him when visiting Ottawa. Very low neg rate and pretty much gets stuff everywhere in the distro. Would have loved to see him play any of the film side events since I know he’s an avid film -watcher as well.

11Rein

Similar to Ian Grieg but perhaps a bit more coverage thanks to irl Mario Kart expertise. vroom vroom

12 Paul

Sports! and Godspeed? and !? and you? and black? and emperor? (not even I will find this funny after getting some sleep)

EDIT: Apparently Paul really likes Harry Potter. Never seen him get any content on it but I’m sure he does. Also I need more stuff to add to this entry if I’m going to keep that stupid Godspeed joke there.

13. Aayush

The second best at pop music after Aaron I think.

14 Isaac

The Trash-studying Albertan Vancouverite in St.Catharines. Isaac basically does everything in the distro minus sports. He only shows up in the stats as having played Ohio Trash in 2020 (which he absolutely killed at but he also played Reel Knowledge and Screen Test (for which the stats have been lost sadly) which he also did exceptionally well at. Admittedly these are more academic sets but there's some overlap for sure. Discord readings of random trash packets I've seen him play help me solidify my belief that Ohio Trash wasn't just a fluke. Gives the best music recommendations.

15 Ian Grieg

A pop culture knowledge base existing somewhere between zoomer and boomer. There's a word for this right? Maybe starting with an m? Hmm. Anyway, expect him to get Oscar movies and classic rock.

16 Jenny Mao

Sport(s)! Hmm American Trash seems to spell it without the s. Jenny’s Olympics knowledge is pretty much unrivaled in the circuit. Has a deep appreciation for bad movies ala Cool Cat Saves the Kids and Birdemic.

17 Talia

Sports!! and uhh what else? I think I’ve seen her get movie content before. Sorry Talia, I don't actually know anything else about you. Incredible stats for a high schooler though.


18. Rodrigo

Sport! I think it’s basketball. Knows a lot of celebrity culture too.

19. Jacky Liu

Seems to be the strongest of the Toronto rookies. 13 powers at Ohio Trash is pretty good. Also reads comic books which is a plus.

20. Milan

Took me way too long to realize the movies I watch don’t really come up in trash. I think I’m okay at Television and Trash Literature in addition to like Oscars stuff.

21Andrew Yim

Erik described his taste as like American/Indie cinema of the past 40 years. Seems accurate. Great at visual tournaments. Might have the funniest anecdotes in the Canadian circuit.

22Marcell Maitinsky

These Westmount kids are really good at trash huh? Oh I forgot to continue my sport joke. Sports! The soccer ball kind.

23 Luc Foster

Originally made this ballot just so I could talk about Luc Foster. Underrated sports player with some good hip-hop and film knowledge. Also the first friend I made in quizbowl! Thanks for introducing me to the addictive substance known as protobowl.

24 Jay Misuk

Still knows about video games I guess. I hope I get to have a rematch with him on another soundtrack auditory tournament.

25 Russell Valerio

Did well at Ohio Trash next to Derek. Don’t really know what he’s good at though. Cool name though?
Milan Fernandez
University of Toronto ?
Niagara College 2024
There are zero B-1s in a fully grown watermelon
cwasims
Wakka
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Re: 2020 Canadian Circuit Player Poll

Post by cwasims »

Sorry for the delay in getting the results out, but voting is now over for (most of) these polls. We didn't have enough trash or open ballots for me to feel comfortable reporting them officially, so I guess those can just stay open and if people want to submit they can.

Main Poll
We had 10 ballots for the main poll from Henry Atkins, Jack Van Nostrand, Kevin Fan, Tony Chen, Sheena Li, Dennis Beeby, Max Gedajlovic, Kane Nyugen, and myself.

1. Derek So (250, unanimous #1)

2. Rein Otsason (240, unanimous #2)

3. Jay Misuk (228, median #3, max #3, min #4)

4. Chris Sims (222, median #4, max #3, min #4)

5. Daniel Lovsted (207, median #5, max #5, min #6)

6. Henry Atkins (203, median #6, max #5, min #6)

7. Paul Kasiński (185, median #7, max #7, min #9)

8. Akhil Garg (182, median #8, max #7, min #9)

9. Colin Veevers (171, median #9, max #8, min #10)

10. Jack Van Nostrand (149, median #11, max #10, min #13)

11. Peter Wang (147, median #11, max #10, min #15)

12. Raymond Chen (136, median #12.5, max #10, min #15)

13. Sam Hauer (135, median #12, max #11, min #16)

14. Ryan Hamilton (116, median #14, max #13, min #16)

15. Zhenglin Liu (111, median #14, max #8, min #21)

16. Minh-Huy Phung (100, median #16, max #14, min #17)

17. Sheena Li (81, median #18, max #15, min #19)

18. Sky Li (75, median #18.5, max #15, min #22)

19. Lucas Smith (72, median #18.5, max #15, min #22)

20. Tony Chen (65, median #20, max #17, min #23)

21. Kevin Fan (59, median #20, max #16, min #25)

22. Simone Valade (33, median #23, max #19, min unranked)

Tied-23. Emmet Blanchett (29, median #23, max #21, min unranked)

Tied-23. Kevin Lei (29, median #23, max #20, min unranked)

25. Wenying Wu (11, median #25, max #24, min unranked)

Great to see four rookies on the list! Honourable mentions go to Will Dawson (6), Andrew McCowan (4), Jonah Moore (3), and Adrian Wong (1).

Rookie Poll
We had ballots from Henry Atkins, Joe Su, Kevin Fan, Cormac Beirne, Max Gedajlovic, Kane Nguyen, Raymond Chen, and myself. Interestingly the top three are not in the same order as in the main poll.

1. Kevin Fan (74, median #2, max #1, min #3)

Tied-2. Tony Chen (71, median #2, max #1, min #3)

Tied-2 Lucas Smith (71, median #2.5, max #1, min #3)

4. Wenying Wu (51, median #4, max #4, min #7)

5. Will Dawson (45, median #5, max #4, min #9)

6. Adrian Wong (41, median #6, max #5, min #7)

7. Ian Chow (27, median #8, max #6, min #9)

8. Andrew McCowan (22, median #8.5, max #5, min unranked)

9. Thomas Mennill (16, median #8.5, max #7, min unranked)

10. Minh-Tuan Phung (9, median #10, max #9, min unranked)

Honourable mentions go to Jonah Moore (8) and Gabriel Clark (5).

Community Poll
We had ballots from Joe Su, Henry Atkins, Dennis Beeby, and myself.

1. Joe Su (40, unanimous #1)

2. Chris Sims (35, median #2, max #2, min #3)

3. Aaron Dos Remedios (29, median #4, max #3, min #4)

4. Leslie Newcombe (23, median #5, max #5, min #6)

5. Brian Luong (22, median #5.5, max #5, min #6)

6. Rico Catibog (21, median #6, max #3, min #8)

7. Josh Lane (17, median #6.5, max #3, min unranked)

8. Erik Christensen (13, median #9, max #2, min unranked)

9. Isaac Thiessen (6, median #10, max #7, min unranked)

Tied-10. Meghan Torchia (5, median #10, max #8, min unranked)

Tied-10. Dennis Beeby (5, median #10, max #8, min unranked)

Honourable mentions go to Adam Swift (4), Milan Fernández (2), and Rachel Bentley (1).

Thanks to everyone for voting!
Christopher Sims
University of Toronto 2T0
Northwestern University 2020 - ?
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Gene Harrogate
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Re: 2020 Canadian Circuit Player Poll

Post by Gene Harrogate »

Thanks for running this Chris. I was especially interested in the Tony-Kevin-Lucas battle for ROTY. I'm happy my teammate won the dedicated poll, but I can see the argument for any of them.

I wasn't going to make a trash poll it's so much more difficult to quantify player skill with the tournament-to-tournament variability that comes without a set canon. For instance, if you care to dig up side event stats Rein was the clear #1 at one visual film tournament tournament, SHAWARMA 2, followed by me. At a different, more highbrow visual film tournament I got by ass handed to me by Erik and Isaac. I'd hate to see Isaac and Milan's poll-making efforts go to waste, however, so I'm going to make one. In the interest of consistency my metric will be an impressionistic judgement who I think would perform the best on ACRONYM/Super ACRONYM style "mainstream trash". I will be looking at almost no stats. Many more arbitrary choices will determine player order.
  1. Aaron Dos Remedios
    While I think Aaron is the clear #1, the rest of this top 10 is pretty coin-flippy.
  2. Christine Irwin
  3. Simone Valade Helped out by my arbitrary choice of what kind of trash to use as a baseline. On a dark and snowy drive back from Regionals we 1v1d like 6 full ACRONYM sets while stuck behind plows going 45 km/h (she won most of them): that's the kind of commitment I wanna see in my #3 trash player.
  4. Adam Swift Sports is 4/4 people! Gets other things too. Only person in this country who knows things about NCAA football.
  5. Erik
  6. Henry I won Look at this Photograph against a good field, but I was pretty lame at Ohio Trash this year, the only full trash tournament I've played in a while (which in my defense seemed to have replaced a sports distribution with a meme distribution). My tastes are pretty mainstream, but skew older. Given history---it wasn't that long ago I somehow bamboozled my way into a #2 finish in this poll---I'm comfortable putting myself in this tier.
  7. Derek Hurt by my arbitrary choice of criteria and never playing things. Possibly the best at very difficult trash though.
  8. Paul We're talkin' baseball.
  9. Brendan
  10. Rein Won the aforementioned SHAWARMA II. Seems to like the same kind of movies as me.
  11. Aayush
  12. Nick Penner
  13. Ian Grieg
  14. Isaac Renert I have a lot of respect for Isaac, who has very high fidelity and an insane amount of knowledge of indie music, hip hop, and foreign film. His fairly niche knowledge, however, hurts him a lot within the criteria I set for myself at the beginning of this poll. Sorry Isaac.
  15. Jenny Mao
  16. Rodrigo Morante
  17. Jay Misuk
  18. Milan Fernandez Really chill guy.
  19. Julien Bosse Hurt by my criteria. Sorry Jules.
  20. Russell Valerio
  21. Andrew Yim
  22. Jacky Liu
  23. Nadia Dakdouki
  24. Abbey Wilson
  25. Marcus Forbes-Green
    HM: Nabhaan Farooqi, who probably has an x/0/x lifetime trash statline.
Henry Atkins
ex-McGill
simulationone
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Re: 2020 Canadian Circuit Player Poll

Post by simulationone »

Hey everyone, here’s my trash ballot! I have obtained these rankings through a combination of the stats, my personal impressions, and just a hint of haruspicy to decide between closely-ranked players. In true Simone fashion I wrote a little something about everyone, so it's a bit verbose.

1. Aaron Dos Remedios
#1 trash player in the stats and in my heart. Was basically my trash mentor at U of T, and hopefully I’m continuing his legacy at McGill :) Wrote this ballot while watching ATLA with him.

2. Christine Irwin
While Christine was somewhat up and down in the stats this past year-ish, she is undisputably a highly skilled trash player – in almost every tournament I’ve played her team has been in the finals, if not winning, largely thanks to her encyclopedic pop culture knowledge.

3. Derek So
This was hard since he played so few tournaments, but that combined with his rare appearances at McGill trash practice puts him at third. Frequently powers stuff that surprises me, but then again he’s so mysterious and knowledgeable that you never really know…

4. Erik Christensen
If I could tie myself and Erik, I would, since in the past year we have had very close PPGs multiple times (especially when playing on the same team). However, I put him ahead of me due to his greater experience and many trash writing contributions, which are always super fun to play.

5. Simone Valade
I think Erik, Adam, Henry and I (and maybe even Derek) are all somewhat close so this ranking is a bit arbitrary. Slightly disappointed that I was robbed of a chance to hit #1 scorer with the cancellation of the Ottawa ACRONYM mirror, since none of the people above me were attending.

6. Adam Swift
I’ve played with Adam several times and I always appreciate that he completely covers my absolute worst category, sports, with good contributions in most other areas of the distro too.

7. Henry Atkins
Henry is my biggest competition at McGill trash practices, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. His biggest strengths in sports, film, and music (primarily dad rock) make him a good complement for me as a teammate, and I hope we get a chance to play something better than Ohio Trash together in the future.

8. Brendan McKendy
Might rank him higher if he was able to play more tournaments.

9. Rein Otsason
Excellent film and music knowledge. Always appreciated his defense of my band shirts against Aayush’s classic “BOOOOO!”

10. Paul Kasinski
Great sports player, and I really hope he enjoyed the immense baseball content at this year’s SCT because our team sure didn’t.

11. Aayush Rajasekaran
Best pop music player in the circuit next to Aaron. Love that his enthusiasm for the trashiest of trash matches mine.

12. Isaac Renert
While he may be new on the scene, he was second overall scorer at his first trash tournament and continually impresses at McGill discord trash pracs despite his knowledge being a bit niche.

13. Talia Fan
A proper trash generalist that can outscore the best of the olds despite still being in high school. Bonus points for attending my alma mater.

14. Ian Grieg
Good film player, but I don’t have a good sense of that since I sit out every film side event.

15. Jenny Mao
Has the strongest knowledge of sports outside the big 4 in the whole circuit, especially Olympics. Also a good film player, and a really nice teammate in general.

16. Rodrigo Morante
Another sports player, which I obviously can’t judge super well.

17. Milan Fernandez
Chillest person in Can QB with super deep film knowledge; a great person to play trash (or any tournament) with.

18. Julien Bosse
I think non-McGillians sleep on Jules due to his scant tournament attendance, but his skill is evident from film side event stats.

19. Jay Misuk
One of the best video game players on this list, especially at the harder tournaments that skew towards his age range.

20. Jacky Liu
Seems like the strongest Toronto novice at trash this year, succeeding my title from two years ago.

21. Russell Valerio
Did quite well at Ohio Trash, impressive considering he was playing with Derek.

22. Andrew Yim
Good film player who is also quite mysterious.

23. Nadia Dakdouki
Good TV and pop music knowledge. A driving force behind engendering a love of trash into the McGill novices every year.

24. Abbey Wilson
Another strong trash rookie, with similar skill set to Nadia and I.

25. Leslie Newcombe
Puts up solid stats at every trash tournament she plays; knows a bit of every category except for sports (a woman after my own heart).
Simone Valade
University of Toronto 2018
McGill University 2021 (hopefully)
cwasims
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Re: 2020 Canadian Circuit Player Poll

Post by cwasims »

The results are now in from the trash ballot. There were four ballots from Isaac Renert, Milan Fernández, Henry Atkins, and Simone Valade.

1. Aaron Dos Remedios (96, median 2, max 1, min 3)

2. Christine Irwin (91, median 3, max 2, min 5)

3. Derek So (83, median 5.5, max 3, min 7)

Tied-4. Simone Valade (81, median 6, max 3, min 8)

Tied-4. Erik Christensen (81, median 5.5, max 4, min 8)

6. Adam Swift (77, median 6.5, max 4, min 10)

7. Henry Atkins (71, median 8, max 6, min 11)

8. Rein Otsason (59, median 10.5, max 9, min 15)

9. Paul Kasiński (58, median 11, max 8, min 16)

10. Aayush Rajasekaran (55, median 12, max 11, min 14)

11. Isaac Renert (52, median 13, max 12, min 14)

12. Brendan McKendy (51, median 9.5, max 8, min unranked)

13. Drew Scheeler (50, median 13.5, max 1, min unranked)

14. Steve Oppenheim (48, median 14, max 2, min unranked)

15. Ian Greig (45, median 14.5, max 13, min 17)

16. Jenny Mao (38, median 15.5, max 15, min 20)

17. Rodrigo Morante (36, median 17, max 16, min 18)

18. Talia Fan (35, median 15, max 13, min unranked)

19. Nick Penner (31, median 19, max 9, min unranked)

20. Milan Fernández (28, median 19, max 17, min 21)

Tied-21. Craig Moysey (22, median unranked, max 4, min unranked)

Tied-21. Jay Misuk (22, median 20.5, max 17, min 24)

23. Russell Valerio (19, median 20.5, max 19, min 25)

24. Jacky Liu (18, median 21, max 19, min 25)

25. Andrew Yim (17, median 21.5, max 21, min 23)

Honourable mentions go to Julien Bossé (15), Nadia Dakdouki (6), Marcell Maitinsky (4), Abbey Wilson (4), Luc Foster (3), Marcus Forbes-Green (3), and Leslie Newcombe (1). Thanks to everyone who submitted a ballot!
Christopher Sims
University of Toronto 2T0
Northwestern University 2020 - ?
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