In the case of the tie between ISU and Florida, tournament officials offered Raj (Florida) the opportunity to play us in a similar shoot- out. He declined, preferring to use the head-to-head results (we won) and then told us about it. I haven't played against Raj all that often, but I must say from what I've seen he's a fine example of good sportmanship and amiability, 2 traits that that are in rather short supply in the quiz bowl circuit. Incidents like what happened to Vanderbilt shouldn't happen, especially at national tournaments. The preferred method of breaking ties should be announced before play begins. Perhaps ACF should include in their rules an official means of breaking ties for purposes of ranking. In any event, I believe the final decision should have been rendered by Roger Bhan, not Harvard. One of my biggest complaints was the long delay between round robin play and the playoff matches. From my perspective, it looked like Georgia Tech was not prepared to offer playoff matches for anyone except the top two teams in each bracket. I'm certainly glad they did in the end hold a more robust playoffs. For future reference, the kind of players who come to ACF Nationals aren't going to be satisfied with 10 games. Paul Tomlinson ISU quiz bowl --- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, "Matt Keller" <mkeller99_at_h...> wrote: > I was going to let this die because I frankly didn't care that much > at the time, but after looking at the results, does anyone else think > it quite odd that we (Vanderbilt) had to play a shootout against > Harvard to settle our tie-breaker, whereas all others were resolved > via head to head record? We beat Harvard 170-125 during round robin > play (we beat Mich. B as well, so even though they left, we > theoretically would've had the edge over them too). It's quite clear > that they had a fairly big edge in total points over us, but I'm > wondering how one clearly defined tie-break procedure was not used > for all cases. Here's basically what happened: Vic(?) from Harvard > came up to me after the round robin and told me of the standings > conundrum, and said that apparently Roger and Saurabh were > disagreeing about which one of us should win the tie-breaker, so we > should try to come to an agreement about what to do so they wouldn't > have to deliberate. After stating my opinion that we should use head > to head since that is generally the preferred method, I saw that the > discussion was going nowhere, so we agreed to Harvard's suggestion of > a play-in game, which wound up being a 20-question shootout to settle > it, basically b/c I didn't want to be an ass about it, and was too > tired to argue any more. I never actually heard Roger's point of > view b/c Harvard was pressing us to make a quick decision, of which > they informed him quite quickly. > > It's not so much that I'm bitter about the results and the lowering > of our standing, b/c we sucked in the playoffs anyway (in response to > Adam, we did go 1-3...with all 3 losses by 20 pts or less, probably > b/c Robert was half asleep, and it's never a good sign when I > outscore him twice in four games). So what this post really comes > down to is why there was no clearly defined precedent for tie-break > procedures to be followed in all cases, and why didn't we have more > input instead of essentially having Harvard tell us what was going > on? > > On another note, I only feel qualified to comment on science and fine > arts questions, which I thought were pretty good for the most part. > Some of the bonuses were ridiculously tough, especially the physics, > but I guess that's harder to judge for most people. Anyway, thanks > to all for a mostly enjoyable experience. > > Matt Keller > co-Pres, VU Quiz Bowl
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