Newsletter 1.4 (LONG) ACF West Coast Newsletter March 2 Gaius Stern First a welcome to new subscribers in Colorado, Snow College, and Fresno State. If you know anyone who would like to get this newsletter, please forward their address to pinax1@garnet.berkeley.edu. If anyone knows how to reach Joe Richer by e-mail (?? currently at U Wyoming?), please send his e-mail address through. ACF REGIONALS set at Five Sites ACF Regionals will be held at five sites this year. All rounds have been written by various participants and then sent to the ACF Regionals Mastereditor, Jim Dendy (Ga Tech). Jim then sent back all the edited rounds to the Tournament directors. There should be enough games that each team will sit out the game it wrote while all other teams play. In some regions it may be possible to hold the packets submitted by local teams so that everyone will play every game. The following teams are scheduled to play at the Midwest Region at Chicago: Bowling x3 Chicago x 2 Illinois x 2 Iowa State Michigan x 5 Pittsburgh Western Michigan TOTAL: 15 The following teams are scheduled to play at the Southwest Region in Norman, OK at the University of Oklahoma: Arkansas Midwestern State Oklahoma (Filler) Texas A&M Missouri-Rolla Rice TOTAL: 8 Texas Christian Wichita State The following teams are scheduled to play at the West Coast Region at the Univ of CA at Berkeley: Fresno Brigham Young x3 Chico State Stanford Berkeley x3 or 4 TOTAL: 10 CORRECTION TO AN ARTICLE LAST ISSUE The newsgroup for quizbowl was erroneously referred to without the hyphen. If anyone tried and could not subscribe to the newsgroup, please use the instructions from last issue again, but this time try typing g alt.college.college-bowl after you get into TRN. If your computer system does not use TRN, ask a computer center worker how to subscribe to newsgroups. DO YOU NEED MANY FREE QUESTIONS? If your club needs new material, there is a simple and free way to get almost unlimited questions through the ftp site from your computer. You only need to pay the printing if your school makes you. Dave Dixon has offerred these instructions: Here is how to get on the FTP site 1. type "ftp ftp.pitt.edu" 2. at login prompt, type "anonymous" 3. at password prompt, type in your email address 4. to get to the college bowl archives type "cd group" and then "cd college_bowl" 5. the questions are in the Questions directory.. type "cd Questions" 6. type "ls" to get a listing of question directories (ACF_Reg_93, etc.) pick one.. "cd " 7. "ls" gives you a list of files (packets) To get one, type "get " To get several, type "mget " To get all of them, type "mget *.*" Some files have been compressed beforehand. They should automatically uncompress before they're transferred. If they don't, just type "uncompress " from your main directory once you're done 8. Type "quit" to quit VANDERBILT WINS THE CARDINAL CLASSIC V Two weeks ago, Vanderbilt University flew in three teams to Palo Alto and won the Fifth Annual Cardinal Classic with victories over BYU and Berkeley in single-elim semi-finals and final round. The participants were: Vandy A,B,C Stanf FILLER GA State BYU A, B, C Fresno A, B Michigan CAL Berk A,B,C UC Davis A, B TOTAL: 16 At the end of the fourteen preliminaries, the rankings were: Berkeley A 14-1 (lost to Michigan) BYU A 14-1 (lost to Berk A) Vanderbilt A 12-3 (lost to Berk A, Berk C, and BYU A) Berkeley B 11-4 (lost to Berk A, BYU A, and Vandy A) Berkeley C 10-5 (lost to Berk A, Vandy B, BYU A, Berk B, Stanf) Stanford 8 -7 (lost to top 4, Fresno B, Vandy B, BYU C) In single elim play-offs, Vandy defeated BYU and CAL A defeated CAL B. Then Vandy defeated CAL A by a wide margin. This brings up an issue of single-elim playoffs to be discussed below. (Additional comments by Doug Bone of Stanford) 1. Berkeley A 14-1 lost to Michigan 305-150, beat BYU A 235-165 on the tournament's hardest packet, beat Cal B 245-225 Most of this team will not play at the CBI RCT. I don't know what their plans are for ACF regionals. 2. BYU A 14-1 lost to Cal A; beat Vandy A 290-270 in RR; scored 690 against Davis A; beat Cal B 215-205 3. Vandy A 12-3 lost to BYU A, Cal A, and Cal C Vandy looked good but not great when I moderated for them in the round robin, but they looked very impressive in the playoffs defeating BYU A 305-160 in the semifinal and then beating Cal A fairly substantially to win the tournament. 4. Berkeley B 12-3 lost to Vandy A, BYU A, Cal A (the three top teams) 5. Berkeley C 11-4 lost to BYU A, Cal A 215-365, Cal B 175-225, and Stanford; Berkeley has an incredibly deep program and dominated the tournament as a school; they also placed three teams in the top three of their own tournament 6. Stanford 8-7 lost to Cal A, Cal B, BYU A, Vandy A, Vandy B, FILLER BYU C, and Fresno B. This team was a random assortment of players Comments: BYU A and Cal A were the class of the round-robin portion of the tournament. Cal B was almost as good, as was Vandy A. Vandy A looked much more impressive in the playoffs. These four teams are of roughly equal ability and I wouldn't be surprised to see any one of them win a specific game. Cal C is almost as good as the other four, though they seem a definite notch lower. That team would also be a threat to win any tournament. The drop off to the next teams is a bit severe. Michigan and Stanford finished just above .500, each beating one higher team (Michigan defeated Cal A and Stanford defeated Cal C). Our actual regional team will be substantially better, though I don't know to what extent. I don't know who Michigan will be sending to regionals. The 7-8 teams {Fresno B, Vandy B, and Georgia State} beat none of the top five teams and knocked off Stanford twice and Michigan once. Georgia State seemed to be having trouble with neg fives, perhaps as our questions were atypical for them. BYU B beat Michigan and BYU C downed Stanford; otherwise, the remaining teams lost to all .500 + teams. Many of these teams played quality games, the most extreme example being Davis B's close loss to fourth-place Berkeley B. Gerard M did most of the editing for the CCV and he is to thank for the efficient fashion in which the tournament ran. STANFORD WINS AT COLLEGEBOWL, BUT RTC WAS A DISASTER Stanford University deserves credit for regaining their Region 15 Championship in a tournament plagued by bad management. Stanford gained a fourth title in five years by defeating Chico State and UC Davis in semi-final and final games. Defending champion, Berkeley, lost to UC Davis in the semi-finals. Due to the indifference and incompetence of Pat Bailey, the California Region 15 Collegebowl RTC was a disaster. Many teams came a long distance, paid $750 (questions plus entry fee) plus hotel and gas, only to play five games and then be sent home. Twelve teams arrived at San Diego State University. There was sufficient time and manpower to play a round robin so every team would have a chance to play one other. Pat Bailey refused to accept help from spectators and insisted in playing two brackets of six schools with the top two advancing to semi-final rounds. As a result, many fledgling teams lost to the more experienced teams and went home with a sense that they had been cheated. Congratulations to two talented teams, both of whom deserved a better forum in which to demonstrate their knowledge. If you want to complain about the RTC, call 1-800234-BOWL and tell Mr. PaulMcteer (spelling?) what you expected and what you received. FRESNO STATE WOULD LIKE TO HOST A TOURNAMENT Fresno State has announced interest in hosting a tournament the last week of April. If you are interested in attending, please contact LRubinow@delphi.com or pwa00@mondrian@csufresno.edu. More details will be forthcoming. SINGLE-ELIM PLAYOFFS??? The finals at Stanford raises an interesting question about how best to conduct play-offs. Are single-elims fair? Occasionally undefeated teams get paired up with temas that they had already once defeated and get eliminated in a semi-final match. Is this fair? More appropriately, should it be allowed? A very similar situation occurred at the Berkeley tournament where two of the three best teams at HCB were eliminated due to the TD's failure to make play-off arrangements in advance. One way to avoid this is double elim playoffs. Another is only to allow the top two teams to duke it out in a best 2/3 situation. Some are in favor of abolishing play-offs entirely in favor of "best record wins" straight out of the round-robin. The newsletter welcomes suggestions and opinions on play-offs, and those opinions will be printed in the next issue if any are sent to the newsletter address (pinax1@garnet.berkeley.edu) BEST OF LUCK TO ALL TEAMS AT THE ACF REGIONALS!!!