Re: Oh another point to this whole thing

• From: samer_ismail
• Date: Sat, 25 Dec 1999 10:07:13 -0800
• Message-ID: <000S6A1UH.000EOHGS9.12170551-quizbowl_at_...>

<<The situation is: last tossup of the
game, your team is up by between 5 and 20 points. The
other team misses the tossup. Then you're sure as heck
not going to answer it and risk the other team
getting a chance to clean up on your bonus. This
qualifies under the objection that many people have aired
in many different situations and that we've tried
our best to eliminate from the game: we do not want
to penalize extra knowledge.>>

[First
off, let me just point out that ANY introduction of
strategy into the game will almost guarantee that there
are situations where "playing BADLY" is encouraged
(see "Thomas Mann" in the Harvard lexicon). However, I
don't see the trade-off as inherently
bad.]

Consider this scenario: A team is up 45 points (or 50, in
a game with powers) with one question to go. To
guarantee that they cannot lose, all they have to do is....
*let the question go*. The same goes with teams up
80-90 points with two questions to go.

In my
book, that's the equivalent of Doug's scenario: a team
is encouraged to "sit" on their knowledge, instead
of ringing in as soon as they think they know
it.

Of course, a simultaneous increase in value of
tossups--which, given current trends, might be a good idea,
independent of bouncebacks--would tend to reduce the
effectiveness of this argument.