ACF West Coast Newsletter V.8 May 1999 Editors Eric Owens and Gaius Stern Welcome to several new subscribers up and down the Pacific coast and a few scattered places in Texas, Kentucky, etc. This is probably the last newsletter of the 98-99 year. Next year we will try to begin in late Sept. and run one newsletter at the end of the month counting Dec/Jan as one issue. Additional volunteers who can contribute to the newsletter are most welcome and should contact Eric or me. This issue: Results from ACF Nationals, U-Wash Husky bowl Caltech HS state Championship, Berkeley Nerva-Trajan Certamen a list of summer quizbowl events, Masters' and otherwise Summary of a poll of players' opinions on ACF, CBI, and NAQT An ACF consortium for HS bowls next year Export WIT 7 to your area opportunity Trivia Bowl 1999 at Boulder, CO Tentative schedule of events next year --------------------------------------- CHICAGO WINS ACF NATIONAL TITLE at Chicago, U-MD takes SECOND The University of Chicago, led by Andrew Yaphe, defeated all comers with an undefeated record at ACF Nationals over #2 U-Maryland, #3 Illinois, and #4 UC Berkeley. Because Chicago was undefeated after the prelims and semi-finals and Maryland was not within a game, the finals were bypassed altogether. Instead an all-star game was played by players from the opposing prelim brackets. The battle for second place seemed more of a contest at times because the next three teams were in a circle of death 1-1 for a period of time. However losses to other teams outside the top four settled the final placing. Cinderella team Kentucky and the infrequently seen team from Columbia played a major role in determining the final standings. A special congratulations go out to the underdog team from Kentucky who defied all predictions by placing third in the prelim bracket after beating Berkeley in initial round-robin play. All in all, 22 teams played at ACF Nats. Most of the Regional champions and runner-ups attended, minus Harvard, Stanford, and BYU. As before, teams submit a round well in advance and a crew of editors goes over the questions to reduce duplication and ensure question quality. This year's question editors included Mark Swisdak, Rick Grimes, John Edwards, and Alice Chou (apologies to those who we missed), and they did an especially fine job. The rounds tested the teams' knowledge with only few instances of stumperbowl. Most games averaged about 340 points between two teams with two "tough" games and three "easy" games deviating from this average. Congratulations to Andrew, Samuel, Sarah, Matthew, and Ryan from Chicago and John, David, Zeke, and Mike from MD. Full results from Nationals may be available by the time the newsletter is mailed off at http://www.inform.umd.edu/StudentOrg/maqt/acf/results.html UC BERKELEY WINS HUSKY BOWL AT U-WASHINGTON (courtesy Jason Brown) Congratulations to Cal-Berkeley on becoming the first Husky Bowl Champions. Also congrats to Carl Beatty of Montana for being the top individual scorer with 60.7 points per game. Play was round-robin among the seven teams and then a finals 2/3 match. I hope that Husky Bowl is just the start of a series of Quiz Bowl Tournaments in the Northwest in the years to come. The top players were TUs right -5s total Points Carl Beatty Montana 50 15 425 Michael Ailion Wash A 43 8 390 Joshua Solomin Stanford 42 15 345 Rohit Dewan C. Wright 38 11 325 Matthew Wright PCC 32 0 320 Mark Lanning Whitman 28 4 260 Andy Penner Cal 27 5 245 Casey Cook Cal 24 1 235 CAL TECH RUNS CA STATE HIGH SCHOOL QB CHAMPIONSHIP (courtesy Chris Nolte) The 1999 NAQT California State High School Championship was held at Caltech on April 17, 1999. The tournament format was a full round-robin among the 13 teams entered. Los Alamitos was undefeated, thus winning the tournament. Edison and Torrey Pines were tied for second after the round robin, each having two losses (Edison had beaten Torrey Pines but had lost to Palos Verdes Peninsula). Edison defeated Torrey Pines in the 2nd place playoff game, 330-120. The top 4 teams have qualified to enter the 1999 NAQT High School National Championship, to be held June 6 in Norman, Oklahoma. SWEEPS ON EACH LEVEL OF UC BERKELEY NERVA-TRAJAN CERTAMEN The April UC-Berkeley Certamen (Latin Bowl) again saw different schools sweep the top two spots on every level. Level 1 (first and second) was won by The Academy, while Pinole Valley took 3rd. The Bentley School won all three places on Level 2 and Pinole Valley swept Upper Division. previous level. Question matter on level 1 and 2 is 25% mythology, 25% Anc history, 10% social history of antiquity, 10% vocabulary, and 30% Latin grammar. College QB players will find the level 1 myth and history questions are exactly the right level for junior bird, and the level 2 questions are adequate for standard college play. Note however, that most certamen questions have 2 or 3 clues and run only 2 lines of text. The questions are available (as will be next year's) if other teams wish to run a Latin bowl or just try out the questions for fun. Mail gaius@socrates.berkeley.edu. SUMMER TOURNAMENTS PLANNED For players who can not wait for the fall season to begin, there will be several open competitions over the summer. Some of these are Masters events, meaning anyone interested including coaches and old dinosaur players can come out of retirement to pick up a buzzer. The is the schedule so far and the contacts. July 10 at George Washington University Contact: Shawn Pickrell at U-Wisconsin, Madison Contact Eric Hillemann July 17 at Vancouver Contact: Peter McCorquodale July 24-25 at Boston University Contact: Matt Bruce July 31-August 1 at U-Chicago, others? Contact: Andrew Yaphe August 14-15 at U-Pennsylvania Contact: Samer Ismail Sept. 3-6 at Univ of Colorado Contact Paul Bailey INFORMAL SURVEY OF COLLEGE QUIZBOWL QUESTIONS Veteran player Darrell Frye has conducted an e-mail survey of the three national companies who run Championships for college play. ACF did surprisingly well in the survey (many people complain that editing is uneven or that questions are too hard), while CBI did fairly poorly. This at least, given that "CBI is a professional group with professional quality questions (sic)." ACF is a group of dedicated amateurs and probably always will be. NAQT was also in the survey and had results comparable to ACF, and again ahead of CBI. A single survey question appears below. In general and according to my own experiences, I would consider the quality of the intercollegiate tournaments sanctioned by ____ to be ACF CBI NAQT Excellent 41% 13% 44% Above average 41% 20% 33% Average 12% 20% 11% Below Average 0% 27% 11% Poor 6% 20% 0% VETERANS from WEST COAST ACF and PACE START HIGH SCHOOL CONSORTIUM In cooperation next year, various personal from the West Coast ACF and from PACE will work together to create a consortium of HS rounds so that more schools can run quality HS tournaments in their area. Each participant will write 2-3 games over the summer of differing difficulty (scaled 1 to 5) and then send their rounds to a central coordinator. All participants who send their rounds in will have access to the entire set. If ten schools participate that makes 25 quality rounds for HS play - enough to run two tournaments. This plan is still at an organization stage, but seeks geographically exclusive schools if possible. Ideally we will receive applicants from many different parts of the country. Some of the schools already interested include UT-Austin, Duke, Wichita State, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Barbara, Kentucky, and others (sorry I did not have a chance to check the full list). Ideally we will have a school in the Pac NW, New England, along the Mid Atlantic and SE, the Plains, and the Mountain states. Interested schools should write to Gaius right away in order to assure your spot _and_ cc Samer Ismail and Emil Tom Chuck . EXPORT THE UC-BERKELEY WIT 7 TO YOUR AREA UC-Berkeley runs the biggest tournament in the West, and we hope to have 20 teams in 1999. We would like to invite a team from the Plains (Minnesota?), Hawaii (Hawaii-Pacific), Texas (UT-Austin?) and elsewhere to come and play at the WIT 7 and then bring the rounds back with you to run the tournament at home, if you wish. Special discounts can be arranged for teams traveling great distances. The West Coast circuit has grown considerably in the last 4 years and is now as competitive as any of the others. We welcome the chance to show other teams the strong level of competition in CA as well as the unique camaraderie of the CA circuit. Special arrangements could also be made for question swaps for schools who submit a packet by the deadline, or wish to run a consortium tournament on the same day. If you are interested, please contact Jason Hong or Gaius . TRIVIA BOWL 1999 AT BOULDER Labor Day Weekend (September 3-6)in Boulder, Colorado at the historic Depot Building in Boulder Colorado, there will be an event called "Trivia Bowl 1999". This is a double elimination tournament in which two teams of up to four players each can compete. The topic areas for questions are in the realm of popular culture regarding film, television, sports, music, and topics such as literature, theater, dance, and other entertainment areas grouped under "miscellaneous". The questions primarily are derived from the 2nd half of this century, but at times may wander from this time period as appropriate. Depending on response, there will be a seeding test offered in various parts of the United States on Sunday, August 8th to seek the best 24 teams for competition (the top 8 seeds will get a first round bye, but all teams will have at least two games in the double elimination format - see website for details). Individuals interested in joining a team, or entire teams are encouraged to contact Paul Bailey at 303-520-0200; PO Box 3037, Boulder, Colorado 80307-3037; mailto:pbailey@esri.com or mailto:triviabowl1999@usa.net; website http://members.tripod.com/~triviabowl1999; This event is sponsored by the Boulder Jaycees http://bcn.boulder.co.us/community/jaycee/ with assistance from persons involved with the previous University of Colorado Trivia Bowl, which ran from 1968-1993. TENTATIVE CALENDAR FOR NEXT YEAR (some dates are not official or verified) SEPTEMBER 25 Stephanopoulos Novice at Illinois ja-hagen@students.uiuc.edu OCTOBER 2 Shootout in the Old West at UMKC adhawan@cctr.umkc.edu 2 Rollapallooza at Missouri-Rolla caviebjm@umr.edu 9 Oklahoma Rt 66 Classic V mrsb@telepath.com 16 Western Ontario MacKenzie Bowl dthorsle@julian.uwo.ca ?? Iowa Theme-round tournament nichol-vogeler@uiowa.edu NOVEMBER 5-6 WIT 7 at UC Berkeley jasonh@cs.berkeley.edu 12-13 NAQT Conference (sites TBA) topquark@silicon-age.com ?? 19-20 Caltech Technophobia 3 mason@robby.caltech.edu ?? 21 ? UC Berkeley fall HS quiz-bowl jasonh@cs.berkeley.edu DECEMBER 6 UC Berkeley HS Latin bowl gaius@socrates.berkeley.edu Eric and Gaius ------------------------