Andrew Gao

Andrew Gao
High school	Belmont (2023-present)
Middle school	Chenery (2020-2023)
Stats	HDWhite • NAQT

Andrew Gao (class of 2027) is a player for Belmont and captain of the quizbowl club there (since 2023). He is siblings with Cindy Gao. Andrew is a generalist, with focuses in literature, geography, history, and current events. He is also a spreadsheet enjoyer and the creator of various quizbowl-related spreadsheet projects, such as a standalone Google Sheets scoresheet, the Live Stats Hub, and more. Andrew also loves staffing quizbowl tournaments (but has lost count of how many), writing and editing questions (see below), tournament directing (see below), and other contributing to the community online and in person. Andrew is also a noted panda enthusiast and is known in the Northeast community for bringing an IKEA kramig to tournaments.

Middle School Career (2020-2023)

Andrew was first active in the 2020-2021 season, with his first tournament being Knights' Challenge. He played a few tournaments as a sixth grader and ran the first iteration of MSQB Madness, a league-style individual player packet submission tournament in the summer.

In the 2021-2022 season, Andrew played his first in-person tournament solo. He also played the 2022 MS IPNCT, finishing 3rd. The team he led, Chenery, placed second in the 2022 MSNCT after losing against Longfellow 310-280 in a one-game final. This was his second national tournament (after IPNCT) and his school's first-ever quizbowl nationals.

In his last year of middle school—the 2022-2023 season—Andrew attempted to play as many sets as possible. This journey involved over ten online tournaments, much traveling (including two trips to Sacramento for regular-season tournaments), and lots of fun playing high school teams and harder sets. A notable result may be him breaking the H-M limit by over 30 PPG with Gregory Zeldovich at the 2023 LATTE. Andrew also attended the HS IPNCT, finishing t-22 after making the semifinals, the only middle schooler to do so. Andrew was a tournament all-star at the 2023 MSNCT, and got the game-winning power over River Trail in the second game of an advantaged final to clinch Chenery's victory. He was slated to duo the 2023 HSNCT but ended up soloing to a 196th-place finish.

High School Career (2023-present)

Andrew has been a captain of the Belmont quizbowl team since 2023. He was joined by seniors Julian Halpern-Smith and Krikor Hachikian in the captain role for the 2023-2024 school year. He will be assisted by co-captains Luca Hu and Jeffrey Wu for the 2024-2025 school year.

Writing and Editing

Andrew is a prolific writer, having written since essentially the start of his quizbowl career. He has head edited the three-edition long line of packet-submission-esque MSQB Madness sets, with the last being turned into SWAMP, a housewrite played by over 140 teams in the 2023-2024 season. In addition to this, he has written for four editions of Conor Thompson's line of "dwarf planet novice sets," beginning with CERES. He wrote over 140 questions for MAKEMAKE and served as a writer and subject editor for both QUAOAR and SEDNA. In total, he has contributed about 300 questions overall for novice-difficulty sets (mostly Conor Thompson's, but also 28 for MOQBA Novice II). Andrew has also participated as a writer in three editions of the well-received SHOW-ME line of sets, contributing over 100 HS regular difficulty questions between SHOW-ME, SHOW-ME More, and SHOW-M3.

Tournament Directing

Andrew is also a prolific tournament director. In the 2020-2021 season, Aatreyo Bhattacharyya and Andrew directed MCMT Solo, a middle school tournament for individual players. With the help of other various co-TDs, Andrew directed 12 other one-day tournaments throughout his middle school years—the first team-based one being CERES National Mirror (with Cindy Gao and Conor Thompson). In addition to the aforementioned tournament, Andrew directed SPRING, ROAR, and MOIST in the 2021-2022 season/following summer. Andrew directed another 7 team-based tournaments in the 2023-2023 season, including the 34-team large SUNSET] tournament in the summer.

In his high school career, he assumed Tournament Director responsibility for Belmont Quizbowl tournaments in the 2023-2024 school year on being made a captain. He directed three local in-person tournaments at Belmont, including the largest tournament in Belmont Quizbowl history—the 30-team Belmont Winter Tournament II—also his first time directing an in-person tournament. The three in-person tournaments he directed this year (with help and support from the Belmont Quizbowl club, alumni, and outside staff), served 68 teams and played a small but crucial role in revitalizing the Massachusetts circuit after COVID-induced issues. He also continued with his tradition of hosting annual online tournaments aimed towards circuits with fewer in-person opportunities and teams hoping to play at the national level. He hosted the second edition of his high school tournament series "KRAMIG," the third edition of his annual "National Mirror" of Conor Thompson's annual novice set (for middle schools), and the third edition of his tournament series "SPRING." He hopes to continue running at least three in-person tournaments at Belmont for the Massachusetts circuit, three more tournaments to help fill the gap in high-quality online tournaments, and finally one casual summer middle school/high school open event.

Though inherently biased, Andrew considers all 21 of his tournaments to be well-run and at a reasonable price point too. He enjoys the logistical work of tournament directing and being able to give back to the community, hence his commitment to continuing the diverse offering of tournaments in future seasons.