Academic Competition Newsletter Editor in Chief: Gaius Stern 27 January 2003 Hello all, This is a short newsletter. No doubt the Feb issue will be larger with results from Regionals and such. This issue mostly has columns instead of results. I thank in advance Seth T from Berkeley for assembling the CA calendar of events for the ACN and Michael F for his efforts to revive the touranment list webpage. Congratulations to the UC Berkeley team for winning second place at Penn Bowl last weekend. More congrats to Michigan A for avenging Michigan B's loss to Berkeley in the play-offs and for beating Berkeley to come out on top as the champion of the 60 team tournament. read on ... ------------ QUIZBOWL CALENDAR Feb. 1 Cardinal Classic at Stanford, Elvis U Wisc-Madison, Feb. 8 NAQT SCT at Caltech, Simon Fraser U, Chicaco, Tx A&M Feb. 15 ACF Regionals at UCB, CHicago, UT Austin Mar. 1 Wildcat Invitational (Kentucky) mirror at Stanford Juniorbird at Northwestern Univ. Mar. 8 Carleton Undergrad Tournament Mar. 15 Wash U St Louis TRash Tournament (?) Mar. 22 Rice Acabowl Apr. 4-5 NAQT Nationals is at UCLA (co-hosted with Caltech) Apr. 19 ACF Nats at GA Tech Apr. 26 Princeton Buzzerfest mirror at UCB Also check the new tournament list created by Michael Falk of Iowa State at http://www.e-falk.com/qb/ Michael has contact info for the tournies at his site. WHAT IS THE BEST BONUS VALUE? This Spring, Rice is running a contest and have decided to make bonuses worth 15 points instead of 30.* The rationale is that the bonus is too heavy a factor in the game. (From Stephen Aslett): "The thought behind making bonuses worth a maximum of 15 pts rather than 30 pts is that the number of points currently awarded to bonuses is so high as to almost break the game of quiz bowl. Frankly, the members of our organization--myself included--agree that the often wildly uneven difficulty of bonus questions makes for unreasonable swings in score, often awarding victories to teams who receive a lucky bonus distribution rather than teams who possess better speed and more knowledge. While we agree that greater speed and knowledge will result in more wins in the long run, the present setup allows for all too bitter and disappointing defeats." This may seem revolutionary to those wed to the 30 point value, but a similar discussion was held a few years back to reduce the bonus value to 25 (the reasons were the same, but the reduction was only 5 points). No one else reduced to 25 point boni. Back in the early 90's, teams were averaging 12/30 on boni. It is not clear if teams are much better, or simply "much better at what gets asked," but that average is probably above 20/30 today. (TDs can report to me bonus conversion averages as a verification). I am pretty sure Berkeley A and B are in the 21+/30 range. Rice's complaint arises from the ease with which boni are now answered by many teams. The old solution was to make boni harder. Lowering the value of the boni reduces their role in the game, which is perhaps a better solution. It will be interesting to see how (or if) Rice's new implementation changes the game. *This system resemble that used in University Challenge in the UK. WHAT IS THE BEST TIEBREAKER? Back in the early 1990's, ACF strongly advocated head-to-head as the single tie-breaker in cases where a play-off was impossible. Other modes generally abandoned were total points, or points-against within the tie. Total points drew fire in cases where there was no full round robin. If one team had an easier schedule than the other, total points was an unfair measuring stick. While points-against is fair enough, it sometimes takes a while to calculate. Head-to-head was just easier. Everyone who has repeatedly lost head-to-head ties grumbled, but did not come up with a better solution than points-against. After thinking about it, I offer another solution. This is especially important in big tournaments. Instead of points-against, teams total up how many points they earned in each DEFEAT with higher total breaking the tie. It differs from Total Points because it is essentially "total losing points." Running up the score against weak opponents does not help. But continuing to try in a lost game is rewarded. Almost every tournament of 10+ teams will have a tied record for 1st, 2nd, or 3rd. Only "tough matches" count in the tie-breaker, although the definition of touch varies from "close" to "tough luck." Criticism or evaluation of this suggestion is welcome in next month's issue. BUZZER WEBPAGE If I get my act together, in Feb I will put up a page on the web which will include all previous reviews made in the ACN of buzzer systems. This will include Steve Kirkman's new 20 person system which was not been reviews in the ACN, merely plugged. It might be easier to attack this page to the Berkeley quizbowl club's site, but we'll have to see. Either way, I am happy to have helped over 25 school find an affordable buzzer since I started the reviews. Just a week ago I received an inquiry about a system which is no longer available (the company went out of business around 1996), which means someone was reading a pretty old newsletter. That's all. Gaius -------------------------------