Venetian

Venetian is a bonus-only format developed by Owen Riley in 2023. Its structure of cycling directed questions to each player is analogous the system used in other trivia formats like OQL.

Though originally conceived as a competition for four individuals, there have been iterations with two (and even three) teams of two. Sammarinese is a variation on the format developed by Conor Thompson that involves 30 questions played between teams of two instead.

Rules

Rounds of Venetian involve five bonuses being read to each of the four players, meaning it can be played with standard packets. Each round, players can choose to be read a question from one of the five categories:

• 4 history
• 4 literature
• 5 science
• 5 modern world (3 pop culture, 1 geography, 1 current events)
• 5 thought and art (2 fine arts, 1 religion, 1 myth, 1 philosophy or social science).

The number of rounds introduces the complication of it not being possible to fairly divide the "seats" between each player, something that is typically handled by having the number of rounds be a multiple of the number of players. To resolve this, the order of first four rounds is distributed fairly and the order of fifth and final round is chosen by players in order of their performance in the first four.

	1	2	3	4	5
Player 1	1 (q1)	3 (q7)	2 (q10)	4 (q16)	by seeding
Player 2	2 (q2)	4 (q8)	3 (q11)	1 (q13)
Player 3	3 (q3)	1 (q5)	4 (q12)	2 (q14)
Player 4	4 (q4)	2 (q6)	1 (q9)	3 (q15)

There are two "mechanics" in Venetian that differentiate it from conventional quiz bowl:

• after hearing the lead-in, the active player can go "double or nothing": if they 30 the bonus they will receive 60 points, but if they score anything else they will receive 0. This can be done any number of times.
• after hearing the lead-in, any player can "mulligan" to force the active player to hear a different bonus (which will become available for other players). Additionally, it is possible to "mulligan" a "mulligan" to ensure that the active player hears the original question. It is only possible to "mulligan" (or cancel a mulligan) once per game.

Past results

All iterations of Venetian and similar competitions have been month-long online leagues. Due to the unusual format, stats have not uploaded to the database and have not been consistently posted anywhere else. Data like field size have been taken from posted updates and registration lists and taken to be true.

Date	Iteration	Field size
October-November 2025	Sammarinese 4	52 (25 open DI, 14 open DII, 7 HS DI, 6 HS DII)
August-September 2025	Venetian VII	96 (24 senior champ, 16 international champ, 8 international novice, 12 senior novice, 20 U18 champ, 16 U18 novice)
June-August 2025	Venetian Teams I	20 (11 open, 9 U18)
February-March 2025	Sammarinese 3	42 (20 open DI, 12 open DII, 6 HS DI, 4 HS DII)
December 2024-January 2025	Venetian VI	120 (28 senior champ, 8/8 international champ, 8/8 international novice, 8 senior novice, 28 U18 champ, 16 U18 novice, 8 U18 international)
August-September 2024	ISU Sammarinese II	31 (16 open DI, 8 open DII, 7 HS)
June-July 2024	Venetian V	120 (32 senior champ, 8/8 international champ, 8/8 senior novice, 32 U18 champ, 16 U18 novice, 8 U18 international)
April 2024	Corinthian	8
February-March 2024	ISU Sammarinese I	13 (9 open, 4 HS)
February-March 2024	Venetian IV	124 (24 senior champ, 16 senior novice, 32 U18 champ, 24 U18 novice, 16 international champ, 12 international novice)
December 2023	Venetian Duos	?
September-November 2023	Venetian III	88 (24 senior champ, 16 senior novice, 16 U18 champ, 32 U18 novice)
June-July 2023	Venetian II	92 (36 senior, 56 U18)
March-April 2023	Venetian	24