Re: Ken from Utah, the 18-time Jeopardy champion......

• From: madelman1 <no_reply_at_yahoogroups.com>
• Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 16:33:30 -0000
• Message-ID: <cbuq0q+5lgl_at_...>

--- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, grapesmoker <no_reply_at_y...> wrote:

> Are those people judging all of ACF based on ACF Nationals? Or do 
> they have experience with ACF Fall as well, a tournament created 
> specifically in response to complaints about ACF's difficulty.
> 

Very little of it is on ACF Nationals; most of it is from playing in 
ACF-style tournaments (which I know is not the same thing as ACF) and 
listening to ACF questions in practice.

> > You say that people likely 
> > don't play because of anti-ACF rhetoric on the message boards, 
but 
> I 
> > have never, never met anyone who cites that as a reason for not 
> > playing, and I would be interested in hearing if you have.
> 
> No, I haven't, and that's not what I said. What I wrote was that 
ACF 
> has at one point acquired a reputation for being difficult. Now, 
> despite the fact that great effort has been put into making ACF 
more 
> accessible across the board, that reputation unfortunately lingers. 
> When one person in a public forum complains about how hard ACF is, 
I 
> suspect that it only reinforces people's stereotype of the 
> tournament. They are then more likely to not come just because 
> they've heard that ACF is hard, and that's a bad thing. Lest you 
> think I read minds, this is all conjecture, which I suspect has 
some 
> merit.
>

Fair enough.  It's just that in my experience I have never seen this; 
the reason that I have seen is that people think that the questions 
are inaccessible.
  
> > I don't think you give quizbowl players enough credit; most of us 
> are 
> > fairly intelligent people who can make informed decisions on our 
> > own.  We don't just blindly listen to the first thing we see on 
> these 
> > boards.
> 
> Did I malign your intelligence somewhere? I don't doubt that most 
> quizbowlers are fairly intelligent people, but the fact remains 
that 
> people make decisions based on secondary information, which can be 
> of variable quality. If I heard that some movie really sucked from 
a 
> trusted source, I probably wouldn't go see it. Likewise with 
> tournament: if people continually perpetuate the stereotype that 
ACF 
> is too hard, people won't play it.
> 

By the same token, if it actually is too hard, people won't play it.  
There seem to be a lot of people who think this.  Now, if ACF doesn't 
want to make their questions easier to accommodate the masses, that's 
fine, but if that is the case, people should stop pretending that ACF 
is accessible to everyone.


> > Besides, there are more than enough people who defend ACF 
> > when someone criticizes it (may I point out that right now there 
> have 
> > been four people saying that it isn't too hard and two saying 
that 
> it 
> > is), so I don't really understand why it is that people would 
only 
> > listen to one side and not the other; it doesn't make sense.  
> > Basically, I think more people make decisions on their own than 
> you 
> > think.
> 
> To use my previous analogy, if you heard that a movie was just 
> awful, would you shell out $7 to see it? Better yet, if you heard 
> from someone with some 2000-2001 ACF experience that you're going 
to 
> drive several hundred miles only to get pounded by Monster Team A 
> and not answer more than 10 questions all tournament, would you go? 
> Traveling to a tournament involves expenses and time while staying 
> home doesn't. People just might choose to err on the side of 
caution.

No, I might not pay $7 dollars to see it if someone said that it was 
awful.  But my decision would be different if one person said that it 
was awful followed by two people jumping in and vociforously saying 
that it wasn't awful at all.  At that point, I would definitely try 
to make my own decision.  But you're right, some people might make 
their decision based on what other people tell them about ACF; I just 
haven't seen it.

> 
> > Having said that, I would encourage anyone who has not played in 
> an 
> > ACF or ACF-style tournament before but is considering it, not to 
> > listen to anyone on this board, positive or negative, when making 
> > your decision.  ACF does an excellent job of making their packets 
> > available on their website; I would encourage you to check them 
> out 
> > and see if you think that the questions are for you.  Many people 
> > don't like them, but many other people do; you never know which 
> camp 
> > you'll fall into unless you try it.
> 
> I wholeheartedly support this statement. What I'd like to point out 
> additionally is that ACF exists in tiers of difficulty, with ACF 
> Fall being statistically easier than NAQT SCT while ACF Nationals 
> really is hard. Ideally, Regionals would fall in between; this year 
> was atypical in its difficulty. Also, please remember that ACF, 
> unlike NAQT, is run by current students with a lot of non-qb work 
to 
> think about. People volunteer do this because they love the game 
and 
> without any promise of remuneration or other compensation for their 
> time. Therefore, you'll most likely only see 3 official ACF 
> tournaments all year, and Fall is by far the most accessible of 
them 
> all. ACF Nationals is not for everyone, and I don't expect everyone 
> to play in it. If the field at Nats is the top 3rd of collegiate 
QB, 
> that's probably the way it should be. But ACF Fall is a different 
> story, as are all the mACF packet-submission tournaments being run 
> year round, and I really encourage people to give them a try.
> 
> Jerry

Couldn't agree more.

Thanks for keeping it civil.

Michael Adelman