Chicago Open Trash Tournament

In recent history, the Sunday following the Chicago Open has featured a trash tournament.

The Tournaments

In 2005, the tournament was written by Andrew Yaphe and Subash Maddipoti as the Mordechai Richler Trash Tournament. It was won by Ezequiel Berdichevsky, Matt Lafer, Paul Litvak, and Matt Weiner.

In 2006, it was written by Andrew Yaphe and Ezequiel Berdichevsky as the Gottfried Keller Open. It was won by Greg Sorenson, Brian Hight, Jeremy White, and Mike Burger.

It did not occur in 2007 due to Matt Weiner failing to write enough questions.

In 2008, the Erik Axel Karlfeldt Memorial Open was written by Andrew Yaphe, David Seal and Michael Arnold, with Yaphe serving as head editor. It was won by Greg Sorenson, Brian Hight, Colby Burnett, and Jeremy White.

In 2009, the Ferdinand Tonnies Memorial Trash Tournament was written by Andrew Yaphe, David Seal, Michael Arnold, and Mike Sorice, with Yaphe again serving as head editor. Stats have gone the way of Donald Taylor's UIUC page, but it appears that Greg Sorenson, Brian Hight, Colby Burnett, and Jeremy White retained their crown.

The 2010 iteration was known as the Paul Goodman Memorial Open and was written by Michael Arnold with help from Susan Ferrari, Auroni Gupta, Andrew Yaphe and Sam Medley. It was won by a team consisting of Colby Burnett, Brian Hight, Greg Sorenson and Jeremy White.

In 2011, Mike Bentley wrote COLT, a trash tournament won by Brian Hight, Colby Burnett, Jeremy White, and a mysterious individual known only as "Jimmy?"

In 2013, Seth Teitler Presents: An Intimate Engagement with Trash was written by David Seal, Brian McNamara, Owen Cooper, and Nolan Esser, and won by Brian Hight, Colby Burnett, and Yogesh Raut.

In 2016, Chicago Open Trash made its triumphant return, with Rob Carson, Carsten Gehring, and Andrew Hart as the writers. The tournament was won in a thrilling final by Mike Cheyne, Tejas Raje, Kenji Golimlim, and Chris Manners, in what is believed to be the first CO Trash win since the 2005 iteration by four players known primarily for their academic quizbowl exploits.

Style

The Chicago Open Trash tournament has brought about the development of the term-of-art "Yaphe trash" after the name of the usual driving force. Though each iteration of the tournament has been slightly different because of the various collaborators, tournaments have reflected the core principles of Yaphe trash:

- Meta quizbowl. Much to the chagrin of the some of the TRASH people who show up to the tournaments, questions about quizbowl events and individuals join meta clues in regular tossups.

- Academic content. Yaphe trash contains a higher proportion of academic content in questions. This manifests itself occasionally as trash clues about academic subjects, academic clues about otherwise trashy subjects or just plain academic questions. Curiously, in 2008 this proved more controversial among academic players than among the so-called "TRASH people," who more or less shrugged it off.[1]

- High proportion of "other" questions outside the Big 3 of trash of Sports, Music and Film/TV. Literature questions are much better represented than in TRASH or other trash tournaments while other pet topics of editors frequently come up (fashion, for example). This also allows for multidisciplinary clues to be used in common-link questions, which are themselves well-represented in Yaphe trash. Some claim the "other" distribution stints video games or other fields, while some claim it means the Big 3 are relatively underrepresented.

Commentary

While Matt Weiner has referred to the first two events and the two Maryland trash tournaments head-edited by Mike Bentley as the only four good trash tournaments ever produced, others, such as Greg Sorenson, have alleged that the Chicago tournaments featured even more 1980s content than trash usually does, notably in music. The 2008 edition was met with somewhat more praise from the usual TRASH people.