Re: Chicago Open Results?

valenciaqbowl <*no_reply_at_yahoogroups.com*> · Thu, 31 Jul 2003 16:32:15 -0000

Well, I've gotten a bit tired of waiting for anything official, and I 
don't have much written down, but here are some basics of what I 
remember happening at the Chicago Open:

The Popes of Chilitown (Raj Dhuwalia, Kelly McKenzie, Seth Kendall 
and I) won the tournament, going 9-0 in the round robin and then 
losing only one match in the local round-robin playoff (to a team of 
Ed Cohn, Susan Ferrari and Matt Reese).  The team of Zeke, Yaphe, 
Litwak and Heller finished second, with the R., Eric and Waters team 
taking third.  My apologies for not knowing the exact order of finish 
after that, but my guess is that the UChicago folks would have been 
fourth. 

Both of our matches with the Zeke team and the R. team were hard-
fought and close.  In both our matches with the Zeke team, both teams 
had a lot of negs (in the first one both teams had more than five 
each, I believe).  Certainly those matches could have gone either 
way, but I was fortunate to have great teammates who are very fast.  
The matches against R's team seem less sloppy in my memory, but were 
also matches that came down to the last couple questions.

The singles final on Sunday was a rematch of last year's, with Raj 
and Kelly squaring off.  The result was the same, too, with Kelly 
taking his third straight singles title at Chicago (really a 
brilliant achievement considering the vagaries of singles competition 
and the strengths of the fields he's faced).  I believe Andrew was 
third, but after that I'm a little hazy.  Paul Litwak deserves 
congrats for beating me twice in the finals to take the second 
bracket crown (he got a slim book on Popper, which I'm sure he's read 
twice by now and turned into a toss-up on falsification using a lead-
in about the black swan).

Other than that, I'll echo Nate's praise of Subash's questions, 
though I did feel that there weren't enough lit. questions about 
works written after 1950 (though I'm sure the distribution will prove 
me wrong), and I'd also like to thank Raj and Kelly, who must have 
gotten a little sore toting me and Seth around on their shoulders for 
most of Saturday (well, me more than Seth).  

--chris borglum

--- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, thefool75 <no_reply_at_y...> wrote:
> well, now that the bar exam is over (and there was a reference 
> Trollope on the multi-state!!), my comments re the 2003 edition of 
> the Chicago Open:
> 
> 1. I must say that it was something else to see Tom play the game 
> again--it says something for the quality of the competition that a 
> team composed of a Rusty Tom, Eric and R. as well as the team of 
> Zeke, Paul, Andrew and Ben(?) did not finish in first...congrats to 
> Kelly, Seth, Raj and Chris.
> 
> 2.  As to be expected, the questions were superb and always 
> interesting--kudos to Subash once more....
> 
> 3. On the subject of former greats returning to the game--it was 
good 
> to see Steve Watchorn play.
> 
> 4.  The singles tournament was the most competitive I've seen--a 
lot 
> of unpredictability due not to the questions--which were excellent 
> for the format--but rather a lot of closely matched people.
> 
> 5.  I don't actually know who won--I'm guessing Kelly (apologies to 
> Raj if I'm wrong), but I regret having missed that final.
> 
> 6.  And for a self-aggrandizing note: yes I had my usual 1.8 or so 
> ratio--but there were a lot of negs all round which provided for 
> plenty of humor (I think Kelly was at 2.2)--some rather good teams 
> managed 7-8 negs in a round; but Eric managed a very impressive 
> sharpshooting record of 38-1...