This post isn't meant in any way to be mean to the University of Virginia's academic team or its members. I thank them for running the tournament this Saturday. However, the operation of that tournament contained a number of serious problems which, in discussion with others, it was felt should be reported. Firstly, there was a serious error in the originally-proposed schedule. This schedule played ten teams in fourteen rounds in a round-robin and a half, with no byes. In other words, each team played all the possible opponents once; then, each team played an assortment of the same opponents again. A team's overall placement in the tournament was to have been determined by its total record. Obviously, each team would have been playing different opponents twice, essentially at random; the records produced would not have been comparable, and comparing them would have produced unfair results. This error, to UVa's credit, was corrected before play actually began. Secondly, the return time from lunch was not announced to all the teams. Lunch was supposed to take "an hour," but different rooms finished at different times; furthermore, any lunch at UVa requires a certain degree of walking, to a set of restaurants that are invariably crowded. Our service was slow, and when we got back, round 7, an important game vs. Pitt, was already half-over. Normally, I wouldn't complain; tournament directors are free to set whatever start time they want. However, especially since that time was not announced, a certain amount of leeway should have been granted -- especially since the D2 rooms didn't begin until 10 minutes after the D1 rooms. If D1 had resumed when D2 did, everything would have been fine. Instead, we took a loss which could very well have been a win. Fortunately, in rankings it turned out not to matter, and Katie did offer us the opportunity to re-play the first half with a backup packet if it had mattered, but that isn't anything like an ideal case. A third issue is that the tournament director was reading a round when we needed to find her. Maybe there's room for argument with this idea, but I personally feel that the TD should leave Tournament Central only to deal with crises, and should always be immediately available in case something like this does come up. To make matters worse, Katie was reading in D2, so we had to wait about ten minutes to reach her. Two further related issues are the means of tiebreakers and the scheduling of rooms. Many teams were, in fourteen rounds, placed in the same room for more than four rounds; we were in one room for four rounds in a row and five times total that day. The first tiebreaker, meanwhile, was in *total* points scored. In a timed format, different rooms will read a different number of questions each round; therefore, if one team is in the a slow room for several rounds, its total points will be lower than a comparable team in a fast room for the same number of rounds. Using either head-to-head or points-per-tossups would have been a far more fair means of resolving ties. One issue I should finally raise is that our buzzer was nearly lost. Virginia searched its tournament rooms twice and didn't find it. Only when we looked ourselves did we locate it; at this point, the tournament had been over for almost half an hour. To be honest, I don't know why things went as they did; these procedural hiccups didn't occur at either NAQT Sectionals or Wahoo War last year, and largely the same staff ran all three tournaments. And while this IFT was in the balance not disastrous, only a run of good luck prevented it from turning so. I think this set of problems serves as a warning to every prospective tournament host as guide to what to watch out for. Edmund
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