i agree with david that tournaments starting friday evening are a major hassle for teams with significant travel to do, especially those going west->east. also, while in theory i could go to an easily accessible tournament which was entirely on holy saturday if i were able to take almost all of friday off and be back for easter sunday, if a tournament is the weekend of easter and play commences on good friday, that's pretty much right out, even if it were held in my backyard. i think a self-contained saturday tournament is just fine. a well-run event can certainly fit 15 or more rounds of academic competition into a single day. and with regards to a comment made earlier, i don't see at all why the editor of ACF nationals also has to be tournament director. it would seem to me that the whole thing could come off much more smoothly if the host school provides a TD and staff and handles logistics while the editor concentrates on writing and editing before the tournament, and moderating/resolving disputes about questions during the tournament. i think most experienced tournament hosts are perfectly well-qualified to decide things like tiebreakers and playoff format (though it wouldn't hurt to have that sort of thing standardized by ACF, either), in addition to making sure the event runs on time. shifting gears a little, just because "you know of" only 2 (or however many people) who had a conflict with ACF nationals because of easter doesn't mean there aren't many more. kevin comer has already spoken up saying he would have attended were it not for easter (and florida ended up very short-handed). personally, i was looking forward to ACF nationals more than any other tournament this year until i realized it was the weekend of triduum; this conflict probably caused stanford to not send a team. (i'm not certain it was my absence that caused everybody else to decide not to attend, but i know i would have been willing to go and play even solo.) and i'm sure there are plenty of others; easter is the biggest (actually in some sense "only") religious holiday for most christians. and there are a lot of christians, at least a decent fraction of whom prefer to (or feel obligated to) spend easter at church or with family or both. this makes tournaments scheduled around easter highly undesirable; the fact that it's tougher to find well-priced airfares only compounds the problem. in regards to a very strange comment a few posts back, zillions of schools have their spring break in late march. it's sort of normal, isn't it? sure, some schools break in early march but i don't think any particular week in march is an unusual time to have a spring break. on the other hand, that doesn't mean you can't hold a tournament in march, as it would be perfectly reasonable for players to attend a tournament before or after spending their vacation away from school. though, i think ACF nationals 2001 was in march and drew very few teams. joon
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