Re: Best Players

jpahk <*no_reply_at_yahoogroups.com*> · Wed, 07 May 2003 12:30:22 -0000

i'm going to once again vehemently disagree with seth here. huh, 
maybe we should take it to qb-flame... :)

--- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, Seth Teitler wrote:
> I think Jeff Hoppes is the best active player on the West 
> Coast—he puts up fantastic numbers at every tournament. At 
> NAQT Sectionals, he personally had more powers and less 
> negs than my whole team.

there's little doubt that jeff is the best NAQT player on the left 
coast; and that's particularly true on sectionals-level questions. 
but my point was merely that seth is a better all-around quizbowl 
player (NAQT, ACF, invitational tournaments... i'm not counting CBI 
or trash).

> He beats science players to science, 
> myth players to myth, and reads Latvian national epics in his 
> spare time.

he doesn't do any of these things very often. except for that latvian 
stuff, which i admit is very impressive. :)

> I am certainly not the best science on the circuit, let alone the 
> West Coast. Joon, Raj Bhan and Paul Lujan are the  first people 
> who come to mind when I think, "best science players on the 
> circuit." There are plenty of great non-West Coast science 
> players I'm skipping, but I don't see them play much.

this is a fairly weak point i was trying to make; it sort of depends 
on what you consider "best." but seth has better overall science 
coverage than any of the players listed above--he's better than paul 
and myself at biology, earth science, and astronomy; he's better than 
raj at math and physics (and earth science and astronomy); and he's 
not too far behind anybody in any category.

i, too, haven't seen too much of the top science players who don't 
play out west, so it was sort of fatuous of me to claim that they 
were all worse than seth. but that's the kind of guy i am, i suppose.

> Similarly, I 
> don't think I'm the best myth player on the circuit. Maybe on the 
> West Coast, but then there's only 3 or 4 myth players out here.

come on. there's only a handful of myth players anywhere, i think. 
and none of them has got anything on seth--though i could be wrong 
about that.

would the people who play regularly in the midwest, south, and east 
like to nominate a potential challenger for "best myth player"? now 
i'm genuinely curious. i'm not sure how exactly we would resolve it, 
but surely somebody will have seen the various contestants in action 
enough to make an informed judgment. or at least, more informed than 
mine. :)

> The team I played on at ACF Nationals, much like the team I 
> played on at Michigan's Auspicious Incident, did not have any 
> one person leading it to victory—we all rode each other's 
> coattails.

auspicious incident, sure. but when i see a list of individual PPG 
for a championship team and it goes "48 27 22 20" i think to 
myself, "great player with good support" rather than "great balance." 
certainly seth could not have defeated michigan or kentucky without 
the help of his teammates (and really, who could? maybe not even 
subash); but that doesn't mean he didn't *lead* his team to victory. 
he very clearly did--look at the stats.

> Since Joon was at both Austpicious Incident and NAQT 
> Nationals, I am surprised at his claim regarding "most improved 
> player." When we saw Subash at AI, he was very good. When we 
> saw him at NAQT ICT, he was perhaps the best quiz bowl player 
> ever. I personally believe he improved his level of play more in 
> two weeks than anyone has done in the past year.

this is perhaps the most interesting point here. and it may be true; 
but certainly some of the improvement is due to the fact that subash 
is just better on NAQT questions than on ACF questions. on difficult 
ACF questions, one player can't take down a good balanced team just 
by learning zillions of lead-in clues. on NAQT questions, it's fairly 
well demonstrated that such a thing is very doable.

anyway... as a concession, i will weaken all of my pro-seth arguments 
to exclude subash, who has pretty well earned the right to no longer 
be compared with any other active players (aka "mere mortals").

it's time for me to stop toadying, i guess.

joon