Seth raises what I think to be a good point at the end of his post which is that there was one true packet submission tournament on the West Coast. While I think it may be good to introduce packets from other areas of the country into the west coast (maybe it's not good, who knows) I don't believe that tournaments that have, as long as I can remember, been packet submission tournaments (yes, with the occassional swap) should turn into mirrors of existing tournaments. Two years ago, CalTech did hold a Penn Bowl mirror but it did not replace Technophobia or any fairly well established packet sub. tournament. I don't know how many more packet submission opportunities there are on the west coast (ACF Regionals?) but even still it is likely that only A teams are required to submit packets for them. I think any region that does not have some number of packet submission tournaments, or for that matter, have clubs that frequently write questions, may be hindering the development of its young players. Make no mistake that the "elite" players in the circuit have written and edited whole tournaments. Sure this takes a lot of dedication and time that 90% of us may not have but I can't imagine that the two events are exclusive. As a perhaps related aside, why does a tournament that has a generally bad reputation for question quality still attract 45+ teams? Either people complain and still go to such tournaments anyways or clubs must have the money to burn on plane rides to philadelphia. I hardly think the latter is true. As wont as some may be to criticize Samer for some sort of blunder year after year I believe we often forget that there is no contract that states that Penn Bowl has to happen. Same with any packet submission tournament. Of course this is what collegiate quiz bowl is based upon: we rely on each other to put on a tournament for us to play in. I will also agree that when entry fees are charged those in attendance expect the same care and effort to be put into the production as they do when they host their own tournaments. Unfortunately as human beings sometimes a question will just plain suck or the distribution seems disproportionate in one way or another. I realize that what people are really after is accountability and "their money's worth" which translates into some form of perceived value. Clearly if that value is not attained then the customer wouldn't return. Yet teams return en masse. Floating between Albany and Emeryville, Ross --- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, james_g_blaine_4prez <no_reply_at_y...> wrote: > --- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, "Jordan Boyd-Graber" <jordanbg_at_y...> > wrote: > > > Frankly, I think that Cardinal Classic suffered from using the Penn > > Bowl questions. Last year, the questions were superb and well > > balanced. The requirements were also unclear, and our questions > about > > the requirements went unanswered; we ended up writing a packet that > > went unused. This is a poor introduction to quiz bowl for the > players > > new to the game (2/3 of the people who went from Tech). They > expended > > effort without reaping the reward of hearing their packet read. > > I share Jordan's opinion that Cardinal Classic would have done better > to generate its own packet set as in the past. I think last year's > Cardinal Classic had the best question set I've ever heard, and > previous years have been uniformly excellent. It also seems like > people on the West Coast (except perhaps the fine folks at Stanford) > weren't really saved much effort this way; in the event 3 Berkeley > teams wrote packets. I'm not sure how many Caltech teams wrote > packets, but it sounds like a large fraction of the teams at Cardinal > Classic ended up writing. I suppose without a packet swap Stanford > would have to write more in-house material to cover nonwriting teams > and playoffs, and perhaps that wasn't an option this year. In any case > it was a shame, much like Berkeley's having to use COTKU packets for > WIT--another fine west coast packet submission tournament that failed > to be a west coast packet submission tournament this year. > > On another note, I think Caltech's questions were used, just not at > Stanford--I think Stanford didn't use any of the west coast packets at > the tournament (can anyone confirm/refute this?). Since there were 16 > teams this worked out well, but it is nice to see people play on your > team's packet. I hope west coast teams will act to reverse a seeming > trend away from local packet submission tournaments--if I'm not > mistaken, this year there have been 3 local packet submission > tournaments that were either canceled (Ghetto Warz) or turned into > mirrors (WIT, Cardinal Classic), and only one successful local packet > submission tournament (Technophobia). > > -Seth
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