2023 ACF Nationals: April 22-23, MIT

[ryanrosenberg]

I am pleased to announce 2023 ACF Nationals, to be held the weekend of April 22-23, 2023 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in scenic Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The head editor of 2023 ACF Nationals is Taylor Harvey; Caroline Mao (American and World Literature), Will Nediger (British Literature, Philosophy, Social Science), William Golden (European Literature, Other Fine Arts), Grant Peet (American and World History), Michael Kearney (European and Other History), Hasna Karim (Biology, Religion), Adam Silverman (Chemistry), Jonathen Settle (Physics, Other Science), Sameer Apte (Music), Taylor Harvey (Religion, Mythology, Painting and Sculpture), and Ganon Evans (Other) are subject editing. I, Ryan Rosenberg, am the tournament director.

Eligibility
Information on who is eligible to play ACF tournaments can be found here.

Qualification
Information on qualification for ACF Nationals can be found here.

Fees and Discounts
Base fee: $325
Buzzer discount: -$10 per functioning buzzer system (with eight functioning buzzers).
Staffer discount: -$100 for each staffer capable of reading a round in ca. 35 minutes.
Packet discounts are listed below.

Teams will owe half the registration fee if they drop from the field with less than four weeks to go before the tournament and the full registration fee if they drop from the field with less than two weeks to go before the tournament.

Packet Submission
The editors of ACF Nationals are planning on writing 13 packets this year, with 11 packets being produced from team submissions.

Unlike recent years, packet submission for 2023 ACF Nationals will be mandatory. However, teams will only be required to submit half-packets. Teams should request a half-packet distribution by emailing [email protected].

Finalized tossups for 2022 ACF Nationals will be capped at 8 lines in 10 point Times New Roman. However, this cap does not apply to submissions; submitting teams are allowed and encouraged to submit longer tossups.

The packet deadlines are:

• -$100 packet submission discount (-$150 for a full packet): packet submitted by Sunday, November 27.

• -$50 packet submission discount (-$100 for a full packet): packet submitted by Sunday, January 1.

• -$25 packet submission discount (-$50 for a full packet): packet submitted by Sunday, January 22.

• -$0 packet submission deadline (-$25 for a full packet): packet submitted by Sunday, February 12.

• +$25 packet submission deadline: packet submitted by Sunday, March 5.

• +$50 packet submission deadline: packet submitted by Sunday, March 26.

• Later packet submissions will be charged $10/day late.

Additionally, if you submit a packet before registering for the tournament and subsequently do not attend ACF Nationals, whether because you do not qualify or because you choose not to attend, that packet can still be used for ACF Nationals. The discount the packet would have earned will roll over to the next ACF tournament that the school sends a team to. If the discount is greater than $70 (ACF's share of tournament fees), it can be spread among multiple teams from the same school, or the difference between $70 and the amount of the discount can be rolled over to a further tournament. Rolling over a discount does not preclude submitting a packet for the next ACF tournament, should that be required.

All packet submission deadlines are at 11:59 P.M. Central Time on the given day to [email protected]. We will continue to offer an additional $50 dollar discount to any team that submits a packet with almost all questions usable with little to no editing.

More details about field size and staffing will be available in the coming months.

[ryanrosenberg]

The above post has been updated to reflect additional discounts for writing a full packet, as well as a deadline for hosting bids.

[ryanrosenberg]

ACF Nationals will be held the weekend of April 22-23 at MIT, pending the confirmation of room reservations. ACF expects to be able to confirm room reservations by the end of December; until the rooms are confirmed, we strongly suggest teams hold off on booking non-refundable travel to or lodging in the Boston area.

[ryanrosenberg]

ACF is pleased to announce that room reservations at MIT have been confirmed! We are excited to see you all in Cambridge in April.

Regionals hosts and teams with a Regionals editor should be on the lookout for an email from me with details on how applying for hosting/editing bids will work this year -- it will be broadly the same as last year.

[ryanrosenberg]

The field cap for 2023 ACF Nationals has been set at 48 teams. 12 hosting/editing bids have been awarded to British Columbia, Claremont, Cornell, Florida, Imperial, McGill, Minnesota, Northwestern, Rutgers, Texas, Vanderbilt, and Yale; thus, there will be 36 spots available for teams to qualify for at Regionals.

[ryanrosenberg]

The A-Values from 2023 ACF Regionals, and which teams have currently qualified for ACF Nationals, are available here. Games involving Imperial A and Texas A were not counted in the calculation of A-Values, since players on those teams had already received a bid to ACF Nationals through the host bid process. Due to emergency circumstances, Texas A was counted as a team for the purpose of meeting the four-team requirement for a site.

Teams may accept their bid for ACF Nationals, or sign up for the waitlist, by filling out this form. Teams have until Tuesday, February 14th at 11:59pm Pacific to accept their bid, after which bids will be given to teams on the waitlist in order of A-Value.

[ryanrosenberg]

A note that the ACF Nationals field cap this year is 48 teams and will not be expanding.

[ryanrosenberg]

A reminder that today is the last day for teams to accept outstanding bids to ACF Nationals. After today, bids will be released to teams on the waitlist in order of A-value. The teams that have not yet accepted bids are: Oxford A+B, Cambridge A, Washington B, and Houston.

[ryanrosenberg]

Teams that have accepted their bids should fill out this form to register for ACF Nationals: https://forms.gle/ibABJF5Kz6X63RLe7.

Teams that drop from ACF Nationals after April 1st will be required to pay 50% of the registration fee. Teams that drop from ACF Nationals after April 8th will be required to pay the full registration fee.

[ryanrosenberg]

After deliberation and considering the low level of community transmission of COVID in Boston and the vast majority of the US, ACF has revised its mask policy for 2023 ACF Nationals. Players and staff are strongly encouraged to wear a well-fitting N95 mask if they choose, but masks will not be required.

I would also like to remind teams of ACF's vaccination policy for players:

ACF’s definition of “fully vaccinated” will be the CDC’s definition on April 1, 2023, so players may be required to receive boosters if CDC guidelines decide it appropriate. ACF will send a separate email detailing instructions on how to submit proof of vaccination shortly after April 1. Access to players' vaccination records will be limited to the ACF Nationals Tournament Director (Ryan Rosenberg) and the ACF Treasurer (Ganon Evans). ACF will delete players' vaccination records within 90 days of the tournament's conclusion.

The CDC's definition of "fully vaccinated" includes having received a primary series of COVID-19 vaccines, but does not include the bivalent booster. However, ACF encourages all players to get the bivalent booster if eligible.

Team contacts should just have received an email specifying how to submit vaccine information to ACF; if you did not get it, please let me know here or at [email protected].

[ryanrosenberg]

The prelim brackets are posted at https://acf-quizbowl.com/schedule.

[ryanrosenberg]

Georgia Tech A (Matt Bollinger, Arya Karthik, Alex Li, Hari Parameswaran) defeated Chicago A (Adam Fine, Matt Jackson, Claire Jones, Ned Tagtmeier) in the second game of a disadvantaged final, after defeating Cornell A (Geoffrey Chen, Jonathan Tran, Raymond Wang, Nathan Zhang) in a playin game. Congratulations to Georgia Tech and all teams that played!

[ryanrosenberg]

A fuller recap post now that I'm back from the tournament:

Thank you to all the teams, staff, and spectators who came out to ACF Nationals! This tournament was a joy to see, and I'm so glad we were able to deliver a quality ACF Nationals experience. I also want to recognize MIT as a host, it was great to be back in Boston and the facilities were really nice.

Congratulations to our winners: Georgia Tech A took home the overall championship; Yale A (Arthur Delot-Vilain, Michał Gerasimiuk, Daniel Ma, Daniel Sheinberg) cleared the UG field over Brown A; and WUSTL B (Neal Joshi, Henry Lytle, Vedul Palavajjhala, June Yin), who survived a tense finals sequence to win the Division II title.

ACF used MODAQ at Nationals and plans to release detailed stats in the next couple of weeks. We also recorded the finals between Georgia Tech and Chicago and are planning on editing together a YouTube video, but that will take longer than a couple of weeks.

During the first game of the finals, we realized that the trophies had actually been left at the staff hotel, and that I was the only person with a car who was not staffing the finals. I ran to my car, picked up the trophies, dropped them off, parked and walked back, and got there just as Michael was preparing to award Georgia Tech the tournament title. Being able to leave for an hour during the finals and come back and the tournament was wrapping up smoothly makes me so proud of the infrastructure ACF has built up and so glad that it's in capable hands for the future. This Nationals was a full-circle moment: my first ACF logistics role was at 2018 Nationals at MIT, and now, five years later, this is my last logistics role.

Thank you all for coming to 2023 ACF Nationals and I hope to see you again next year!

[Whiter Hydra]

Stats with finals, tiebreakers, and corrections can be found at https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/8188/stats. If you notice any issues, please email or PM me.

[theMoMA]

This spreadsheet contains "quick-and dirty" player-ranking stats from Nationals calculated in accordance with the framework described in this thread.

The basic idea of this stat is to answer the questions "how good was Team X at getting tossups, and how important was Player Y to Team X's tossup-getting ability?" on the theory that the answers are a decent measure of who performed best at a particular tournament. The key in the spreadsheet describes the calculation in slightly more detail. I haven't seen this stat used in a while and thought it might be interesting for Nationals players to look at.

[ThisIsMyUsername]

Here’s a counterpart to Andrew’s. Instead of squaring Team PPG and Max team PPG without any logical justification whatsoever, I raised them to the 1.5 power without any logical justification whatsoever. The results are similarly revelatory.

[Tippy Martinez]

Here’s a counterpart to Andrew’s. Instead of squaring Team PPG and Max team PPG without any logical justification whatsoever, I raised them to the 1.5 power without any logical justification whatsoever. The results are similarly revelatory.

Ranks Caleb higher so it's definitely more accurate.

[Good Goblin Housekeeping]

here's an actual objective ranking with a methodology i refuse to release as it could be too powerful

[ryanrosenberg]

Audio recordings and detailed stats (buzzpoints, bonuses) from 2023 ACF Nationals are now available.

[SourSheep]

For those interested, I've compiled the tossup and bonus data into (rather rudimentary) tables by category. Note that for tossups, I ran under the assumption that for sufficiently many buzz points, the highest value corresponded to the end of a tossup (and thus the tiebreaker and finals rounds are not included). If people see errors in the calculations, let me know.

[Adventure Temple Trail]

Be on the lookout for more advanced things from the UChicago Analytics Lab soon, but for now enjoy this spreadsheet of best buzzes by tossup, also featuring a histogram (binwidth=10 words) and by-team and by-individual leaderboards. Be aware that in some rounds played only in one room or a few rooms (tiebreakers, finals), the best buzz may be outlier-ish-ly late if the tossup was negged early. (h/t Amogh Kulkarni an anonymous friend of Amogh Kulkarni's, who did most of the work)

[ryanrosenberg]

Audio recordings and detailed stats (buzzpoints, bonuses) from 2023 ACF Nationals are now available.

The detailed stats have been updated to include two missing games (GT A-Cornell A R10, and Brown-Chicago A R14). There's still one game that we're waiting on the scoresheet from (Cornell A vs. Virginia A R4).

[ryanrosenberg]

Audio recordings and detailed stats (buzzpoints, bonuses) from 2023 ACF Nationals are now available.

The detailed stats have been updated to include two missing games (GT A-Cornell A R10, and Brown-Chicago A R14). There's still one game that we're waiting on the scoresheet from (Cornell A vs. Virginia A R4).

This game has been added.

[ValenciaQBowl]

Sorry, it was my first day!!!!!

[Jem Casey]

I've deployed a simple app for viewing the Nats buzz and bonus data here. Thanks to Caroline Mao for supplying all the good ideas for the ui (if you don't like something it's safe to assume I came up with it).

[ryanrosenberg]

A few more recordings (from the Braintree and Everett brackets) have been added to the Drive folder.