<<In a way, I find that number somewhat surprising. At the PACE National Scholastics Championship this year--which does allow bouncebacks--I think the outcome of only ONE match out of about 125 would have been changed had bouncebacks not been allowed. But perhaps the NSC was the fluke, and MrSmiley's experiences are more typical.>> Well... actually, rebounding boni probably don't decide as many matches as I seem to imply in my previous message. Part of the problem with my team is that we're a very "streaky" team-- we might get 4 or 5 toss-ups in a row, converting all of the corresponding Boni for the full 20, and then we might to fall apart a bit (Nerves? Arrogance? I don't know-- probably a bit of both)I do know that the only reason we were able to stay alive as long as we did in a semi-final match about a month ago was because the opposing team didn't know 3/4 of the boni, and we were able to take that from them. But then we got "cold" again, they started converting, and by the end they were up by 100 points or so. Conversely, at a tournament early in the year, where no rebounding questions were allowed, we won a crucial match because the other team couldn't get at any part of the boni that we missed (and by the end, we were missing most of them). It's really a matter of the kind of match you're playing-- when you have two obviously mismatched teams, chances are that the superior team is going to pull ahead regardless of how many points the other team manages to salvage (because you're probably going to know SOME boni parts). But when you have a matchup like the one Mr. Hillemann described, obviously the bounceback factor becomes a serious issue, potentially determining the eventual winner. (Plus, I think I exaggerated-- it was more like 5 or 6 toss-ups, but you get the idea) On a completely unrelated note, I have noticed the decline in quality in boni during tournaments-- but a lot of that is because of the format that we use in Illinois. (For the uninitiated, in IL we get all our bonus parts at once, rather than having the moderator give one part, wait for an answer, then give the next part). In some cases, the boni are adapted from NAQT boni, which creates the following situation: " a) Name this author of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. b) Mark Twain also wrote..." In other cases, though, the question themselves are either too obvious or too hard (One bonus at the NU tournament: "Given 6 French cities, and starting at 12:00, give the cities in clockwise order around France." I don't know about College-types, but there is NO HS player who's going to get a bonus like that). Granted, some tournaments didn't have incredibly difficult boni in the first place, but there is a definite fall in the overall quality. Don't see much that can be done about it, though.
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