2024 MSPAINT (nationwide MS solo tournament, 2 June, online)

[CPiGuy]

I am excited to announce the 2024 edition of the Middle School Players' Academic Individual National Tournament (MSPAINT), an individual middle school tournament to be held Sunday, 2 June, 2024. I will be directing.

Eligibility

This is an individual tournament. It is open to any player in eighth grade or below (or the equivalent in other countries, I suppose) for the 2023-24 school year (even if they have finished school by June 2nd).

Logistics Information

The tournament will start at 10:30am Eastern / 9:30am Central / 7:30am Pacific on Sunday, June 2nd. The format will depend on the number of players; it will likely consist of some number of group matches followed by one or more rounds of playoffs. This was the format used last year.

This tournament will take place using Discord's voice/video call feature, and using buzzin.live to buzz. We will also use Discord for communication throughout the tournament.

Players should expect to be required to have both their hands visible at all times while playing, whether by using multiple cameras or by using a mouse, phone, or external controller to buzz.

Because of the nature of this tournament, we will be using some adjustments to the gameplay rules to accommodate the individual format.

This tournament will be using the CARD question set. To my knowledge, almost no current middle school players have seen this set. This set is a "regular difficulty" high school set; it is comparable in difficulty to NAQT IS sets, MSNCT playoffs, and the (now-defunct) MS IPNCT.

Players are also reminded that they may avail themselves of the quizbowl misconduct form and that they will be expected to abide by the PACE Code of Conduct. Players, coaches, and other tournament participants may also contact me directly if they have any concerns about their safety or comfort at the event.

Asynchronous Seeding Rounds (unique to this tournament!)

Past individual tournaments, such as the NAQT IPNCT, have used multiple non-elimination seeding rounds in order to fairly seed players for the elimination rounds. We will not have a sufficient number of packets to run full seeding rounds with no direct impact on tournament standings, but we still want to ensure that players are seeded fairly. As such, we will be running bonus-only seeding rounds in the weeks before the tournament.

Around three weeks before the tournament (likely shortly after MSNCT), all registered players will be contacted to choose a time slot for their seeding round. Seeding rounds will be played over Zoom, will likely take around a half hour, and will consist of the player being read some number of bonuses (probably 60). All players will be read the same bonuses for seeding. Players can have coaches/parents/etc. present for their seeding round, but otherwise spectators will not be permitted for question security reasons.

Seeding rounds will not be used to eliminate players or otherwise change players' ability to advance in the tournament. They will, however, affect what rooms/groups/brackets players are placed in, so a poor performance in the seeding round will likely result in a player receiving a more difficult schedule during the tournament.

Fees and registration

The registration fee for this tournament will be $50 per player.

To register, please fill out this form.

Staffing

Staffers will be paid $30 for staffing the tournament. Staffers will also be paid $2.50 per seeding round they read. If you are interested in staffing, please fill out this form.

Current field

As of May 6:

Kavin Anreddy (Churchill MS, Carmichael, CA)
Aditya Aras (Crossroads North MS, Monmouth Junction, NJ)
Sheehan Banka (River Trail MS, Johns Creek, GA)
Jeffrey Kirkendall (Sycamore School, Indianapolis, IN)
Ethan Minton (Churchill MS, Carmichael, CA)
Eleanor Shore (Howard MS, Atlanta, GA)
Evan Ting (Sycamore School, Indianapolis, IN)