Advantaged final on half-packets

The advantaged final on half-packets was a format used in many high school tournaments from 2009 to the mid-2010s.

This involved an otherwise normal advantaged final in which each game in the two-game series was replaced by a "half-game" comprised of 10 tossups and bonuses, created by splitting one packet in half.

The idea was born out of necessity at the 2008 Weekend of Quizbowl, when a format was designed with incorrect information about the number of packets in the set, and only one packet remained once the final began. The use of the format spread due to the appeal of being able to finish the schedule much more quickly than in a two-game finals scenario and to make schedules which reserved only one packet for the finals.

Unfortunately, this format is fundamentally unfair, as it reduces to allowing a team that is behind in the standings to win the tournament by winning a single additional game plus the near-arbitrary criterion of "being ahead at halftime," which is highly correlated to winning the game in the first place and adds very little further resolving power.

Lessons from the advantaged final on half-packets trend include:

• Understand why something is done (whether a traditional practice, or an innovation) before imitating it.
• Do not attempt to change what something actually is by changing its name; calling a single game "two games" does not change the fact that it is actually one game.
• Address issues which can be prevented in advance by making an appropriate plan so that unnecessary compromises between bad options are not forced upon you (e.g.: write one more packet and train staff to run games efficiently so that you are not tempted to make a tradeoff between tournament efficiency and format fairness).

One way to avoid this problem without using all the packets and time necessary for a proper advantaged final is to simply abrogate the notion of an advantaged final and determine (as announced in advance) that a team ahead at the end of the regular playoffs, even if ahead by only one game, is the winner of the tournament. If there is a tie for first place, that can be played off on a single packet. Certainly, this has some drawbacks (as do all tournament formats and finals schemes, including advantaged finals).