ACF Regionals
ACF Regionals is a difficult college quizbowl tournament produced every year by ACF. It typically takes place in late January or February and is held concurrently at multiple locations throughout North America and the United Kingdom. (ACF's "regions" are non-normative, so a school may attend any site of ACF Regionals.)
Since 2015 (except 2021), ACF Regionals has served as a qualifier for ACF Nationals. Teams can qualify for ACF Nationals by obtaining a sufficiently high A-value (which is computed from team performances at ACF Regionals [1]), or alternatively by either hosting a Regionals site, providing an editor for the question set, or winning the overall or undergraduate title at their Regionals site.
ACF Regionals is a packet submission tournament. Since 2015, as demand for ACF Regionals has grown past 100 participating teams (to more than 150 in 2020), reforms have reduced packet submission obligations from full-packet to half-packet (as of 2018), and from teams with at least one player having 2 years of college quizbowl experience to at least two such players (as of 2020).
History
ACF Regionals was produced from 1991 to 1997 by the now-defunct Academic Competition Foundation. The Foundation was replaced in 1997 by the Academic Competition Federation, which has edited the tournament ever since.
Difficulty
Before the late 2000s, the difficulty of ACF Regionals tended to be above the usual range of difficulty of most tournaments (later called regular difficulty).
In the late 2000s, ACF Regionals came to be seen as the benchmark for regular difficulty [2]. ACF Regionals became more difficult for several years, although 2008 ACF Regionals was noticeably easier than 2007 ACF Regionals (and was in fact statistically easier than NAQT Sectionals of the same year).
After the difficult 2018 ACF Regionals [3], the usual difficulty range of collegiate tournaments shifted to become somewhat easier, and the concept of regular difficulty began to be redefined [4]: it bifurcated into easier "standard" and harder "qualifier" tournaments, with ACF Regionals being the benchmark for the latter category (and EFT for the former).
List of ACF Regionals tournaments
External links
| ACF tournaments | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| ACF Fall | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | ||||||||||||
| ACF Winter | 2009 | 2010 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ACF Regionals | 1991 | 1992 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | |
| ACF Nationals | 1991 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | |||