Newsletter 1.4 (LONG)
ACF West Coast Newsletter March 2
Gaius Stern
First a welcome to new subscribers in Colorado, Snow College, and Fresno
State. If you know anyone who would like to get this newsletter, please
forward their address to pinax1@garnet.berkeley.edu. If anyone knows how
to
reach Joe Richer by e-mail (?? currently at U Wyoming?), please send his
e-mail address through.
ACF REGIONALS set at Five Sites
ACF Regionals will be held at five sites this year. All rounds
have been written by various participants and then sent to the ACF
Regionals Mastereditor, Jim Dendy (Ga Tech). Jim then sent back all the
edited rounds to the Tournament directors. There should be enough games
that each team will sit out the game it wrote while all other teams
play. In some regions it may be possible to hold the packets submitted
by local teams so that everyone will play every game.
The following teams are scheduled to play at the Midwest Region at
Chicago:
Bowling x3 Chicago x 2 Illinois x 2
Iowa State Michigan x 5 Pittsburgh
Western Michigan TOTAL: 15
The following teams are scheduled to play at the Southwest Region in
Norman, OK at the University of Oklahoma:
Arkansas Midwestern State Oklahoma (Filler)
Texas A&M Missouri-Rolla Rice TOTAL: 8
Texas Christian Wichita State
The following teams are scheduled to play at the West Coast Region at the
Univ of CA at Berkeley:
Fresno Brigham Young x3 Chico State
Stanford Berkeley x3 or 4 TOTAL: 10
CORRECTION TO AN ARTICLE LAST ISSUE
The newsgroup for quizbowl was erroneously referred to without
the hyphen. If anyone tried and could not subscribe to the newsgroup,
please use the instructions from last issue again, but this time try
typing g alt.college.college-bowl after you get into TRN.
If your computer system does not use TRN, ask a computer center
worker how to subscribe to newsgroups.
DO YOU NEED MANY FREE QUESTIONS?
If your club needs new material, there is a simple and free way
to get almost unlimited questions through the ftp site from your
computer. You only need to pay the printing if your school makes you.
Dave Dixon has offerred these instructions:
Here is how to get on the FTP site
1. type "ftp ftp.pitt.edu"
2. at login prompt, type "anonymous"
3. at password prompt, type in your email address
4. to get to the college bowl archives type "cd group" and then "cd
college_bowl"
5. the questions are in the Questions directory.. type "cd Questions"
6. type "ls" to get a listing of question directories (ACF_Reg_93, etc.)
pick one.. "cd <directory name>"
7. "ls" gives you a list of files (packets) To get one, type "get
<filename>" To get several, type "mget <filenames>" To get all of them,
type "mget *.*"
Some files have been compressed beforehand. They should automatically
uncompress before they're transferred. If they don't, just type
"uncompress <filename>" from your main directory once you're done
8. Type "quit" to quit
VANDERBILT WINS THE CARDINAL CLASSIC V
Two weeks ago, Vanderbilt University flew in three teams to Palo
Alto and won the Fifth Annual Cardinal Classic with victories over
BYU and Berkeley in single-elim semi-finals and final round.
The participants were:
Vandy A,B,C Stanf FILLER GA State
BYU A, B, C Fresno A, B Michigan
CAL Berk A,B,C UC Davis A, B TOTAL: 16
At the end of the fourteen preliminaries, the rankings were:
Berkeley A 14-1 (lost to Michigan)
BYU A 14-1 (lost to Berk A)
Vanderbilt A 12-3 (lost to Berk A, Berk C, and BYU A)
Berkeley B 11-4 (lost to Berk A, BYU A, and Vandy A)
Berkeley C 10-5 (lost to Berk A, Vandy B, BYU A, Berk B, Stanf)
Stanford 8 -7 (lost to top 4, Fresno B, Vandy B, BYU C)
In single elim play-offs, Vandy defeated BYU and CAL A defeated CAL B.
Then Vandy defeated CAL A by a wide margin.
This brings up an issue of single-elim playoffs to be discussed below.
(Additional comments by Doug Bone of Stanford)
1. Berkeley A 14-1 lost to Michigan 305-150, beat BYU A 235-165 on
the tournament's hardest packet, beat Cal B
245-225
Most of this team will not play at the CBI RCT.
I don't know what their plans are for ACF
regionals.
2. BYU A 14-1 lost to Cal A; beat Vandy A 290-270 in RR; scored
690 against Davis A; beat Cal B 215-205
3. Vandy A 12-3 lost to BYU A, Cal A, and Cal C
Vandy looked good but not great when I moderated
for them in the round robin, but they looked
very impressive in the playoffs defeating BYU A
305-160 in the semifinal and then beating Cal A
fairly substantially to win the tournament.
4. Berkeley B 12-3 lost to Vandy A, BYU A, Cal A (the three top
teams)
5. Berkeley C 11-4 lost to BYU A, Cal A 215-365, Cal B 175-225, and
Stanford; Berkeley has an incredibly deep program
and dominated the tournament as a school; they
also
placed three teams in the top three of their own
tournament
6. Stanford 8-7 lost to Cal A, Cal B, BYU A, Vandy A, Vandy B,
FILLER BYU C, and Fresno B.
This team was a random assortment of players
Comments:
BYU A and Cal A were the class of the round-robin portion of the
tournament.
Cal B was almost as good, as was Vandy A. Vandy A looked much more
impressive in the playoffs. These four teams are of roughly equal
ability and I wouldn't be surprised to see any one of them win a specific
game. Cal C is almost as good as the other four, though they seem a
definite
notch lower. That team would also be a threat to win any tournament.
The drop off to the next teams is a bit severe. Michigan and Stanford
finished just above .500, each beating one higher team (Michigan defeated
Cal A and Stanford defeated Cal C). Our actual regional team will be
substantially better, though I don't know to what extent. I don't know
who Michigan will be sending to regionals.
The 7-8 teams {Fresno B, Vandy B, and Georgia State} beat none of the
top five teams and knocked off Stanford twice and Michigan once. Georgia
State seemed to be having trouble with neg fives, perhaps as our
questions were atypical for them.
BYU B beat Michigan and BYU C downed Stanford; otherwise, the remaining
teams lost to all .500 + teams. Many of these teams played quality
games, the most extreme example being Davis B's close loss to fourth-place
Berkeley B.
Gerard M did most of the editing for the CCV and he is
to thank for the efficient fashion in which the tournament ran.
STANFORD WINS AT COLLEGEBOWL, BUT RTC WAS A DISASTER
Stanford University deserves credit for regaining their Region 15
Championship in a tournament plagued by bad management. Stanford gained
a fourth title in five years by defeating Chico State and UC Davis in
semi-final and final games. Defending champion, Berkeley, lost to UC
Davis in the semi-finals.
Due to the indifference and incompetence of Pat Bailey, the
California Region 15 Collegebowl RTC was a disaster. Many teams came a
long distance, paid $750 (questions plus entry fee) plus hotel and gas,
only to play five games and then be sent home.
Twelve teams arrived at San Diego State University. There was
sufficient time and manpower to play a round robin so every team would
have a chance to play one other. Pat Bailey refused to accept help from
spectators and insisted in playing two brackets of six schools with the
top two advancing to semi-final rounds. As a result, many fledgling
teams lost to the more experienced teams and went home with a sense that
they had been cheated.
Congratulations to two talented teams, both of whom deserved a
better forum in which to demonstrate their knowledge.
If you want to complain about the RTC, call 1-800234-BOWL and
tell Mr. PaulMcteer (spelling?) what you expected and what you received.
FRESNO STATE WOULD LIKE TO HOST A TOURNAMENT
Fresno State has announced interest in hosting a tournament the
last week of April. If you are interested in attending, please contact
LRubinow@delphi.com or pwa00@mondrian@csufresno.edu.
More details will be forthcoming.
SINGLE-ELIM PLAYOFFS???
The finals at Stanford raises an interesting question about how
best to conduct play-offs. Are single-elims fair? Occasionally
undefeated teams get paired up with temas that they had already once
defeated and get eliminated in a semi-final match. Is this fair? More
appropriately, should it be allowed? A very similar situation occurred
at the Berkeley tournament where two of the three best teams at HCB were
eliminated due to the TD's failure to make play-off arrangements in
advance.
One way to avoid this is double elim playoffs. Another is only
to allow the top two teams to duke it out in a best 2/3 situation. Some
are in favor of abolishing play-offs entirely in favor of "best record
wins" straight out of the round-robin.
The newsletter welcomes suggestions and opinions on play-offs,
and those opinions will be printed in the next issue if any are sent to
the newsletter address (pinax1@garnet.berkeley.edu)
BEST OF LUCK TO ALL TEAMS AT THE ACF REGIONALS!!!