To illustrate Mr. Hillemann's point, let's take two teams in both types of matches. Team One will be a team with a strong tossup factor, but mild bonus conversion of about 12 PPB (four of me#). Team Two is slow and erratic (four Matt Colvins#), but unbelievably deep: they tend to get 25 PPB. Match One: Gosses vs. Colvins, no bouncebacks. Colvins get 8 TUs and 5 negs, while Gosses get 9 TUs (4 on their own plus 5 rebounds) and 1 neg (which the Colvins converted). Gosses have 85 points, plus 108 points on boni, for a score of 193##. Colvins get 55 on tossups, plus 200 on boni, getting 255. Colvin leaves the room, breathing a sigh of relief for walking away with a win after such awful play. Match Two: No bouncebacks. Same tossup scores. Colvins score 255, Gosses 193, without bouncebacks, so they have at least that much. After the eight Colvin bonuses, (30-25)*8 = 40 possible points remain for the Gosses, out of which they get 12/30*40 = 16. After the Goss bonuses, there are (30-12)*9 = 162 Colvin points, out of which they get 25/30*162 = 135. Colvins 390, Gosses 207##. Put yourself in the shoes of the Colvin team. In Match One, your negs were devastating, since they resulted in an average 27 point deficit (-5, 10 on the tossup, 12 on the bonus). In Match Two, you can neg and still only lose 12 points (-5, 10 on the tossup, 12 on their bonus, 15 on your bounceback). Just the fact that you should get more points on their bonus than your opponent is comforting. Now consider the Goss team's predicament. On every tossup you get without the help of a Colvin neg, you gain on average 7 points (22-15)... which is less than one tossup. In Match One, you lost by only 62 points, which is the difference between the Colvins getting a correct answer and getting a -5 (as it turns out, exactly the difference... one more neg produces a 215-215 tie, once the Goss team factors in converting that neg). However, once bonus bouncebacks are introduced, the loss becomes 183. You've gone from in it to way out of it. One can make the argument that a team with bonus conversion half of their opponents shouldn't be within shouting distance, much less within one tossup cycle of a tie. That may be so, and at tournaments where tossups are so carefully written that the neg factor almost never happens, oftentimes a team will lead in tossup points and bonus points. Nevertheless, it's never fun if rules are introduced that violently change game outcomes, and I think that a 121 point swing is drastic enough. Andy # - hypothetically speaking... "Gosses" and "Colvins" makes nice shorthand ## - on average; obviously, no one scores non-multiples of five in a real game
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