Re: final thought on tie-break

• From: raffi81 <no_reply_at_yahoogroups.com>
• Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2003 19:53:44 -0000
• Message-ID: <b86r08+4hmf_at_...>

Matt,
 
I'm not entirely sure exactly what you understood about the 
situation or what Vik said.  I'll let him make his own response to 
that.  I just want to make the point that since no tiebreak 
procedure was announced prior to games being played and since we 
split the two most-used tiebreaking procedures(i.e. total points and 
head-to-head), a shootout was entirely justified.  Any ex post facto 
decree as to how to break ties once games had already been played 
was inherently unfair, regardless of whether or not Raj and Saurabh 
were in agreement.  I'm sorry that you feel you were wronged, but I 
feel we were entirely in the right, 

Dan Suzman
Harvard College Bowl


--- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, "Matt Keller" <mkeller99_at_h...> 
wrote:
> After reading Saurabh's and Raj's accounts of the tie-break 
> procedure, I think I determined the root of the whole problem - 
> Harvard lied to us.  They told us that Saurabh and Raj were in 
> disagreement over which procedure (head to head or total points) 
> should be used, when both of them have since said that they agreed 
> that head to head should be used.  Raj actually never did tell us 
> what was going on (except for maybe just confirming that we had 
> agreed to the shootout, w/o mention of earlier thoughts)...we 
relied 
> on what Harvard told us, which was that supposedly if we settled 
> things ourselves that it would avoid Saurabh and Raj having to 
argue 
> it out, and would make things go quicker.  After 10 rounds on 2 
hours 
> of sleep, I was apparently quite suggestible, and did what Harvard 
> presented as the method to get things moving most quickly, when in 
> actuality it seems like if Raj had talked to us and told us that 
both 
> he and Saurabh were in favor of head to head but open to 
> alternatives, I would have firmly stuck with the head to head.  
> Anyway, I don't blame those in charge for this lack of 
communication, 
> since they probably weren't aware of Harvard's misleading us 
either.  
> Harvard was clearly the better team for the day as a whole too, so 
> it's probably justified that they wound up above us.  I'm 
basically 
> just posting this in the hopes that teams will be more careful of 
> where their info comes from, and that similar things don't happen 
in 
> the future.
> 
> On a completely different note, you can throw in Vanderbilt as 
> another school for which ACF Nats already occurs during finals or 
> right before them, which was why we only had three people, 
including 
> one quite inexperienced freshman.
> 
> Matt