Back when I was doing debate in high school, the break between Advanced and Beginner divisions used the following rules: - All tournaments after your 5th must be at the Advanced level - After you play as Advanced you can't return to Beginner and this system worked fairly well. Of course, nobody hung around for more than four years anyway. Now, I can understand why NAQT, as an entity for which QB is no longer the sole project, might not choose to involve itself in the circuit to the extent that it tracks what players have gone to what tournaments other than their own. But certainly within the context of the circuit as a whole, some sort of point-based honor system of defining DI and DII might be in order. I myself have beated graduate students twice my age and had circles run around me by high school students at various points in my career thus far. In a greater sense, though, I've recently been more and more drawn to tournament formats which divide the field based on skill at some point during in the tournament, and commencing the tournament with everyone playing in a large, balanced pool. There's better games to be played against teams at your own skill level than there are either stompling or being stompled by a distinct mismatch. Edmund
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