Deep Bench
Deep Bench was an annual tournament put on by the University of Minnesota. It was edited by Ezra Lyon in 2006, and by Rob Carson and Andrew Hart in 2007.
Format
Deep Bench is noted for its complex format, which involves eight-person teams competing at a variety of levels. Each team breaks into two singles teams and three doubles teams to play tossup-only singles and doubles rounds. Those teams recombine to constitute two quads teams to play more difficult rounds of tossups and bonuses. Each singles and quads team is marked as "first" or "second," while each doubles team is marked as "first," "second," or "third." In each event, a win in the first division is worth five points, a win in the second division is worth four, and a win in third doubles is worth three points. The team with the most points at the end wins the tournament.
2007 incarnation
The 2007 tournament was edited by Andrew Hart and Rob Carson and played in two locations: the University of Minnesota and Brandeis. The tournament was largely a critical success.
Minnesota tournament
The Minnesota version featured several hilarious counts of Tournament Director ineptitude on the part of Andrew Hart, including a lack of schedule, slow transitioning between rounds that led to the cancellation of the singles and doubles portion of the tournament, and the eventual loss of statistics. Mike Sorice and the University of Illinois won the tournament, with Mike scoring around 120 points per game, while the Gabriel Lyon-led University of Wisconsin team finished second, just a point behind.
Brandeis Mirror
The Brandeis mirror of 2007 Deep Bench was played on six of the nine rounds available. Harvard won by five points over Brown, with Maryland, MIT, Amherst, and another MIT team rounding out the impressive field. Jerry Vinokurov, Jonathan Magin, Eric Mukherjee, and Ted Gioia all scored 50+ tossup points per game at the tournament. Stats from this tournament are available here.
2006 incarnation
The tournament editor was Ezra Lyon, and Carleton College overtook the University of Chicago to win the championship. The distribution of the tournament was very similar to that of an NAQT set. The tournament was noted for causing a minor eruption of Mount Vinokurov as well as for an issue of plagiarism of a tossup about Pearl Prynne that sparked accusations that Matt Weiner randomly Googles Deep Bench tossups.