Re: The Circuit

tgallows <*no_reply_at_yahoogroups.com*> · Tue, 22 Oct 2002 20:52:10 -0000

>CBI seems to have alienated many of the good 
> hardcore players who, if they showed up, would walk all over the 
> tournament. That leaves the field open for other teams that aren't
as 
> competitive to play in with a good chance of winning. As much fun
as 
> quiz bowl is period, going to a tournament and knowing that since 
> Kentucky, Florida and Emory are there you're fighting for fourth 
> place is pretty disheartening. 

     I don't think CBI stands as a counterexample in this respect.  To
get through CBI Regionals and into Nationals, you (essentially) must
be the #1 team, which in the southeast means beating Kevin Comer's UF
team and several other strong teams.

>Junior Bird tournaments seem to be a 
> good thing (in my humble and inexperienced opinion), but they need
to 
> be marketed more. GT has plans to reinstitute MLK this year (I'm
not 
> promising it will, but it's definitely been brought up) and there
is 
> talk of the return of Heinrich Boll and a Div. II tournament in the 
> fall as well. 

     The University of Florida will be hosting its Sunshine State
Invitational on the MLK weekend, and it's aimed at being accessible
for less experienced teams (but open to all), so that might be the
wrong weekend for GT to host a tournament.  However, I'd love to see
GT return to hosting the Heinrich Boll tournament.

     Since I'm here, I may as well comment on the running threads. 
I'd agree with Ed Cohn's message about the future of the circuit.  I
don't think there's any lack of junior-bird tournaments.  COTKU is the
only tournament I'm going to play in until February, simply because
there's nothing else for me within driving distance (except for the
two that UF is hosting, of course).  In the meantime, I'm going to
moderate at 5-6 tournaments, all of them aimed at or restricted to less
experienced quizbowlers.

     Like Ed, Roger, Nathan, and assorted others, I too would
attribute the difficulty issue to mediocre (or less than mediocre)
question writing.  I remember writing my first ACF packet, for the
Heinrich Boll in (I think) '99, and I'm sure it sucked profoundly
because I was trying not to submit a packet that was too easy.  I'm
sure many new players have the same experience -- they want to write a
challenging packet, but it ends up with tossup topics like a Chinese
navigator of the 1420s.  But again, I think this trend is going the
other way, toward more accessible answers, like in ACF Fall.  [[On the
other hand, there's nothing wrong with an Artaud tournament which
advertises itself as being difficult, or with late-season championship
tournaments being more difficult.]]

     As for the dinosaur thing, I'd agree with Nathan on that as well
(twice in one message -- yikes).  The majority of my playing
experience has been since the beginning of 2001 -- I played about 5
matches in high school, a few tournaments at the CC level, and three
CBI regionals in the mid-90s, before playing my first ACF tournament
in 98 -- even then I played maybe 8 ACF/NAQT events before February
2001.  I suspect many sophomores and even a few freshmen have totaled
more tournaments than I have.  The same is true of many so-called
dinosaurs.  And as someone or other mentioned in the past, being in
grad school is generally not an advantage for qb -- I've had to cut
way back on anything quizbowl-related due to simple lack of time, and
my classes certainly don't cover anything qb-related (except the
physics questions, of course).

     Last, sorry if my comments about COTKU came out more harsh than I
meant them to be.  There were many logistical problems I should have
noted in my previous message, and I wasn't aware of the lateness of
the arriving packets.  My thanks to Charlie and the assorted
moderators and others for their efforts.

--Raj Dhuwalia, UF