How Collegiate Quizbowl Works

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How Collegiate Quizbowl Works: A Guide for New Players

Introduction

This guide is designed as an introduction to quizbowl as it is played on the collegiate and levels. If you are completely new to the game, you should look at the article on quizbowl to familiarize yourself with the game before returning to this guide.

This guide will not define several of the terms it uses. Please either click the hyperlink to the article on that term, or use the Quizbowl basics and Quizbowl lingo categories as a glossary.

A Few Basics

This section is devoted to the basics, or what you should know before you start playing quizbowl at the collegiate level.

Quizbowl

Collegiate quizbowl involves two teams of up to four players competing in tossup/bonus format. Links to several videos of 2013 ACF Nationals are available here. If you're completely new to quizbowl or the tossup/bonus format, those videos will give you an idea of what quizbowl (at a very high level) looks like before you read the rest of this article.

The Circuit

The circuit, broadly speaking, this consists of all collegiate clubs who regularly attend weekend quizbowl tournaments. The page on the circuit is divided up by region—yours will be the area in which the majority of the tournaments you attend will be held.

The Clubs

If you want to play quizbowl, you're most likely going to have to join a club. A quizbowl club is responsible for organizing practices, running tournaments, and coordinating attendance at tournaments, as well as several administrative responsibilities.

See the (soon-to-be-created) article How to start a collegiate quizbowl club.

Communication

Almost all communication is currently done via the Internet. The primary place for national discussion of quizbowl is on the forums. In addition, players from around the country frequent the quizbowl IRC channel. Most clubs and some areas of the circuit also have their own e-mail mailing lists.

Your best source of information will be the hsquizbowl.org forums, in particular the Collegiate Announcements and Results and Collegiate Discussion sub-forums. You should try to make sure that someone in your club is checking these areas on at least a weekly basis, so that your club is up-to-date on the latest happenings on the circuit. If you have a question about any aspect of collegiate quizbowl after reading this guide, you are encouraged to register for the forums and post your question in the Collegiate Discussion section, but please read the forum rules before posting.

The Formats

There are four major formats played in collegiate quizbowl: ACF, NAQT, mACF, and trash.

ACF

ACF, or the Academic Competition Federation, is a loosely centralized organization that provides high-quality academic tournaments. It is played on untimed packets of 20 tosssups and 20 bonuses. ACF produces three sets each year:

  • ACF Fall is a novice-difficulty tournament, and typically runs on the first or second weekend in November.
  • ACF Regionals is a regular-difficulty tournament, and typically takes place in February.
  • ACF Nationals is a national-difficulty tournament, and typically takes place in April. With NAQT ICT (see below), it is considered one of the two major national championships.

ACF is known for its commitment to quality, which includes limited trash (pop culture), and a focus on more "academic" topics.

NAQT

NAQT, or National Academic Quiz Tournaments, is an incorporated organization that provides questions for high school and collegiate play as well as various quizbowl television shows. NAQT tournaments are played in two ten-minute halves on up to 24 tossups and 24 bonuses. NAQT produces two sets each year:

  • Sectional Championship Tournament (SCT) is a regular-difficulty tournament, and typically runs on the second weekend in February.
  • Intercollegiate Championship Tournament (ICT) is a national-difficulty tournament, and typically takes place on the first or second weekend in April. With ACF Nationals (see above), it is considered one of the two major national championships.

Notable quirks of the NAQT format include a higher emphasis on current events, geography, and popular culture. NAQT also writes a separate "Division II" of easier questions for novice players at both of its collegiate tournaments.

mACF

mACF is a derivative of ACF (the "m" stands for "modified") format, and is the main format for most unaffiliated invitational tournaments. Most clubs have a "flagship" mACF tournament, for instance TIT at Maryland, Penn Bowl at Penn, and MUT at Minnesota.

The main difference between mACF rules and ACF rules are the eligibility requirements, in that official ACF tournaments have specific eligibility restrictions while mACF tournaments have host-specific eligibility restrictions. Some mACF tournaments (and all of NAQT's) use powers.

Trash

Trash consists of questions entirely dealing with popular culture. Currently, trash tournaments are often played in conjunction with an affiliated academic tournament on the Sunday after the Saturday tournament. Notable trash tournaments include the variously-named Chicago Open Trash Tournament, which occurs the day after Chicago Open.

The Tournaments

With the exception of Thanksgiving weekend, winter break, and the summer, there is some tournament happening somewhere almost every Saturday.

The following is a non-exhaustive list of tournaments that have a venerable tradition of being high-quality events and continue to attract many quizbowl luminaries as writers, editors, and players. In other words, if your club has a budget of infinity dollars, these are the tournaments you should definitely attempt to attend at least once in your quizbowl career. While some of these tournaments are only held at one location, most of them will have mirrors in your area of the circuit if you are not within reasonable driving distance of the tournament. Still, for some of these tournaments the main attraction is the field itself, and you should attempt to make the original tournament if possible.


Fall

The fall season lasts roughly from September to the beginning of winter break in December.

Collegiate Novice

Sponsored by ACF and edited by Andrew Hart, Collegiate Novice is meant to be many players' first exposure to collegiate quizbowl. Thus, strict eligibility requirements keep the tournament restricted to truly novice players, difficulty and length are kept strictly under control. Many new writers are encouraged to get experience by writing for Collegiate Novice.

ACF Fall

ACF Fall is another highly accessible tournament, continuing to attract many new teams every year. It typically takes place in early November at many regional sites.

Winter

The winter season lasts from roughly January until March.

Terrapin Invitational Tournament

One of the oldest continually running tournaments, TIT takes place in either winter or fall at Maryland. Its target difficulty varies, but is typically around regular-difficulty.

Penn Bowl

Once thought of as the "third national championship", Penn Bowl is now a standard regional mACF tournament, but though its prestige has decreased, it's still a must-attend for any team within driving distance of Penn, and is widely mirrored throughout the country.

WIT

Berkeley's Western Invitational Tournament has largely replaced Stanford's Cardinal Classic as the premier west-coast regular-difficulty quizbowl event.

NAQT SCT

NAQT SCT, both Divisions I and II typically takes place the second weekend in February at one of several sectional sites. It usually attracts the largest audience of any regional quizbowl tournament.

ACF Regionals

ACF Regionals typically takes place a week or two after NAQT SCT at several regional sites. ACF Regionals is often considered the standard by which other regular-difficulty tournaments are measured.

Spring

The spring season consists of April and the beginning of May. It is dominated by the two major national tournaments, which take place on consecutive weekends in April.

NAQT ICT

NAQT ICT, both Divisions I and II usually happens in early April or late March. It, like ACF Nationals, takes place over two days.

ACF Nationals

ACF Nationals has a deserved reputation as being the hardest national tournament. It, like ICT, takes place over two days.

Summer

The summer season lasts from roughly mid-May to August.

Chicago Open

The "crown jewel" of mACF eventst, Chicago Open attracts players from all over the nation to its "nationals+"-difficulty mACF event, as well as a Sunday trash tournament and several subject tournaments.

Other Tournaments

In addition to the tournaments on this list, there are always other tournaments being run in all areas of the country. Check the hsquizbowl.org forums or your area of the circuit's mailing list to become informed of all tournaments happening in your area.

Attending Tournaments

Eligibility Restrictions

If a tournament is not labeled "open", then it has eligibility restrictions. Here are some of the more notable eligibility restrictions:

For NAQT ICT, teams must originally have qualified via either hosting or performing sufficiently well at SCT, and receive and accept a bid to the tournament. There is no longer any such restriction for ACF Nationals, although discussion for a new qualification system is underway.

For all official ACF and NAQT events, all team members must be enrolled at the same school. There are minor differences between ACF and NAQT on what constitutes "enrolled".

For NAQT events, a player may not participate in Division II if he or she has either (1) earned a bachelor's degree or equivalent, (2) played on a team that qualified for ICT in either division, (3) played on a team at ICT in either division, or (4) played at more than one sectional tournament in Division I.

For ACF Fall and other novice events, the gentlemen's agreement style of eligibility rules is in effect, in which players decide for themselves whether the tournament is right for them based on question difficulty and projected field strength.

Question Sources

There are many sources of the questions used in tournaments:

  • NAQT remains the only company to write good quizbowl questions for use in high-level collegiate play.
  • Several tournaments feature questions entirely written by one or multiple hosting teams.
  • For most tournaments, you will need to write a packet of questions. Discounts to the entry fee are typically given for questions submitted eight weeks and six weeks before the tournament, and additional penalty fees added for questions submitted less than four weeks before the tournament. New teams may operate on different schedules and are always encouraged to submit a packet regardless of whether one is necessary.

For more information on writing questions, please see Jerry Vinokurov's excellent treatise on How to Write Questions.

Tournament Formats

Almost all collegiate tournaments use a round-robin or bracketed-round-robin setup, with either an ACF-format final or NAQT-format final if sufficient packets and time are available. This means that you will almost certainly play teams at your knowledge level, while also typically playing teams both above and below that level.

Practicing

Most clubs spend between three and six hours a week practicing quizbowl by dividing club members into arbitrary teams and playing old tournament packets. Currently, a movement is in place to store every tournament online for free. See below for packet repositories.

External Links

For more information about the college game, you are encouraged to visit the following websites:

Formats

ACF
NAQT

Packet Archives

Communication

hsquizbowl.org forums

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