Re: Necessity of stats?

Arsaces_I · Fri, 23 Feb 2001 12:43:42 -0800

In reading Edmund's post (which I will cite below
in the form of his words enveloped by quotation
marks) I found several distinct questions being asked. I
do not feel qualified to answer all of them, and the
qualifications I believe myself to possess for answering some of
them must be understood to be based on my rather long
career as a player of quiz games in high school and
college and my severely limited experience as moderator
and host for the same. In other words, my thoughts
are far from being divine law cast down from Olympian
authority but are in fact just that: thoughts, which should
be taken as mine alone (by definition, though others
might well agree with them) and with the proverbial
grain of salt.

That said, Edmund had asked
"(A)re there now de facto minimum standards to be met by
any tournament to be considered 'legitimate?'". I
believe that there are such standards, many of which
Edmund then lists, to whit the tabulation and speedy
publication of statistics (which I qualify by adding that
these should include both team and personal); guarantee
of a minumum number of rounds (though the number of
these is now somewhat undetermined; time was that any
invitational which failed to supply at least 10 rounds of some
sort could be seen as having failed); and non-use of
single-elimination playoffs. Certainly, as a player I have -perhaps
illogically- felt that tournaments which do not provide all of
these are lacking in "legitimacy"; it is the custom of
competitors to be furnished with these, and the lack of them
suggests inattentiveness to the game's sensibilities and
the preferences of players.

Indeed, I'll add
to the list. Perhaps my expectations are tinctured
by the regions in which I have played, the "format"
I favor, and the climate of the game when I began
my career, but over time I have also come to expect
that a legitimate tournament will include some form of
recognition of individual all-stars. Currently, these, when
given, are usually distributed to the top four players
(based on performance as evaluated by points per game);
I have grown accustomed to this, though I started
playing when five were regularly given out (at ACF
events, which I once played almost exclusively)and the
reduction to four, while certainly more in tune with the
idea of an "All Star Team" which would now most likely
have four players and not have an alternate, met with
some distress on my part. As far as my personal
feelings go, lack of an all-star team reduces a
tournament's legitimacy in my eyes.

Of course, these
are _de facto_ standards, and I certainly would be
the first to aver that a team with excellent packets,
first-rate moderators, and quality competition which is not
replete with all-stars, statistics, or ten game-minimum
would be preferable to a tournament which had all the
"fat", if you will, but none of the actual "meat".

What do the rest of you think? And on a related topic:
if all-star awards are given, should there be a
standard number handed out? And should this be restricted
to four (or five), indicative of one all-star team
(and alternate), or should there be more? Several
teams past and present have handed out eight
(suggestive of one first all-star, one alternate all-star
team); does this diminish the prestige of the award? Or
should all-stars be handed out on a sliding scale based
on number of participants in the tournament (four
per every twenty-fout players, for example)? What
about events which divide competing teams into separate
brackets? Should all stars (as I believe) be selected from
each bracket?

Thoughts?