NAQT has no policy (that I know of) on "running up the score." [1] Eric Hillemann can more than adequately speak of NAQT invitation policies and particular concerns. I do have an honest question, though, independent (I'd like to think) of my NAQT membership: How would a team go about running up the score? _Do_ teams actually do that? Intuitively, one would expect a team always to try to maximize its bonus conversion (extreme clock situations aside). One would also expect that the point at which a player knows a tossup answer is independent of who the opponent is. That appears to leave two potential strategies: 1. Against weaker teams, play bonuses as quickly as possible. (This was already known to the qb circuit as a strategy used in some timed events where question quality led some players to perceive that luck was a gameplay factor. The more tossups you hear, the less likely a huge upset will happen.) The problem, as mentioned in parentheses, is that while you get more scoring chances you also hear more tossups. If the biggest criterion is points per tossups heard, you'd get at best a small advantage doing this. (Yes, more tossups heard against weaker teams may translate to greater expected points per tossup, but I'd still expect this to be balanced by the effect that rushing has on coming up with the right answer to a bonus part, especially if two teammates suggest different answers.) 2. Against weaker teams, play tossups aggressively. This is the opposite of conventional wisdom. For example, if a team knows that its opponent is weak in (say) physics, that team will tend not to buzz in on the third word of a physics question but rather to wait and be sure. Just as a longtime player, my intuition is that, while running bonuses quickly against weak teams is a small advantage if not a wash, aggressive buzzing against a weak team hurts more than it helps. I could be wrong, but I don't think teams run up the score, nor do I think that NAQT formula would encourage them to. The incentive is far greater at, say, a tournament that uses a point differential tiebreaker. Even as far as clock management goes, I would expect to see adjustments for opponent quality happen far less often than late-game, score-based clock strategy (ahead by 100? kill the clock! behind by 100? hurry, hurry!). Ironically, thanks to the tried-and-true clock kill phenomenon, having relatively less emphasis on win-loss record appears to *reduce* the effect of the clock on game play. (Mind you, relative merits of timed vs. untimed play get argued *over and over again*. I have no interest in opening up that can of worms. NAQT policy favors timed play for a lot of reasons that have been covered here before. That was one of the topics on the survey Eric did a year ago, and the results of that survey tended to vindicate our pro-timed policy.) Matt [1] There are rules about bad sportsmanship, but I don't think anyone would confuse playing as well as you can with bad sportsmanship. Some players argue that clock management is itself bad sportsmanship, but I leave that to the old, unresolvable timed-vs.-untimed debate.
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