Keyser Soze rule

A staple of advice Seth Kendall often gives to novice quizbowl players when asked about the way to become good at quizbowl. His own dubious qualifications for doling out such wisdom notwithstanding, the "Keyser Soze rule" is a periphasis of a line from the film The Usual Suspects in which it is noted that to became powerful all one needs is "the will to do what the other guy wouldn't". Illustrations of this "will to do what the other guy wouldn't" was then furnished by the example of the sort of massive studying regimen in all subjects undertaken by Kelly McKenzie, Kendall's teammate at Kentucky, whose apartment was overflowing with notecards which he spent most of his free (and unfree) time perusing, or more specifically by those who sought out weaknesses on their teams and extensively studied such subjects (as Kentucky's Robert Osborne did by boning up on current events and particularly noxious trash to become the team's indispensable garbageman). Kendall's own method for improving - go to graduate school for the better part of a decade and learn giveaways from sheer osmosis, resulting in a Ph.D. and a slew of individual scoring titles but precious few tournament wins - is not usually recommended.