It seems it is easier to suspect someone of cheating than to believe that list memorizing actually does improve your personal score in ACF. No, really. It does. I admit, seeing one person's PPG average leap from around 15 one kind of tournament to around 80 the next made me suspect that there was something terribly wrong. Other circumstantial observations may make it seem that cheating was more likely than some legitimate reason for the dramatic change. But stopping to think, such a jump is within bounds. If ACF rewards list knowledge more than other formats, as some have believed, look at the distribution and do some theoretical calculations. Assume a player starts with a 20 ppg average hinging mainly on the sciences, an area where list memorizing's effect has been purposefully minimized. Work/author, composition/composer, painting/painter, and country or time/ruler are lists that may aid a player in improving his/her score in these tournaments. Assume for these areas to be catalogued or listed that the distribution is 6/6 Lit, 6/6 History, and 3/3 fine arts. Assume that a third of each of these contain "list clues" in the first 2 sentences. If you do a good job covering your bases and have the advantage of being quick to the buzzer, you've just earned yourself 50 points to add to the 15 you already normally score. It's possible to list other things as well that could help you. Now, some players (like me) begin playing this game with just the facts they know from years of school or life. After a while, they get tired of hearing moderators say "of course it's ____ , it only comes up every year," (an attitude taken with me by more than a couple of ACF moderators)and begin to do whatever they can to learn the extra stuff. If list memorizing works, great. Other options include playing for years and reading a lot, which there may or may not be time for. That someone wrote a java program to help them with list knowledge is very clever. Congratulations on improving on a method to improve your score. I submit that list knowledge is knowledge nonetheless, it shouldn't be declared illegitimate knowledge. It works to a player's advantage, and can EVEN be used to learn important stuff outside of quiz bowl (It definitely helped me in HS literature class). If people have a problem with this, they shouldn't write so many list knowledge-containing questions for ACF tournaments. As-is, it's the nature of the game. Don't criticize a player for improving their score when they can when their intentions are good. It smacks of "You shouldn't be all the sudden a better player than me, your knowledge must not be as legitimate as mine." --Wesley (list memorizing freak, and not ashamed)
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