Fancy Store-Bought Dirt

How I Spent My Weekend

http://www.naqt.com/hsnct/2005/2005-hsnct-results.html
http://www.naqt.com/hsnct/2005/results/stats.html
http://www.naqt.com/hsnct/2005/results/personal.html
http://www.fraughtmachine.com/9minutes/

That last link has audio (podcast) for selected matches. (If you've ever wondered what it's like to hear Ken Jennings read questions instead of answering them, he's the moderator on at least two of what's posted there.) Championship round podcast files are coming soon, as are the playoff gamescores and final team rankings when NAQT's webmaster gets them up hopefully tonight.

96 teams. 48 rooms of simultaneous play. Over 100 game officials, over 500 players, over 500 particular matches.

10 rounds Saturday, teams paired against opponents with the same record or as similar a record as possible. (Same record for games through the first five rounds; then starting round 6 you get odd-sized groups at a given record.) Teams knew they had to go 6-4 or better Saturday to make the playoffs.

37-team double elimination playoffs Sunday. If you ever have to run a double-elimination tournament that size, the point where you finally see the light at the end of the tunnel is entering the fifth round, with 3 undefeateds and 9 single-loss. If the undefeated team wins the one cross-bracketed game then you're down to 2-and-5 and can post everything you need to post about room locations all the way through the finals. (Even otherwise, at 1-and-7 it's pretty straightforward what to do with the 7.)

A major public mea culpa to Greg, whom I utterly hosed with too quick a trigger finger on covering for supposed playoff no-shows. Replacing him Sunday because I thought he wasn't there wouldn't have been so bad except that:
1. He was setting up the buzzer in his/Coen's room at the time.
2. He'd brought the donuts that were sitting at the head of the room where moderators all met.

But my hosing Greg worked out to JQ's spontaneous gain.

Of the 100+ game officials we had Saturday, a vast majority did stick around for Sunday (including, obviously, everyone whom we flew in from out of town). Most of those were prompt and extremely helpful on buzzer set-up and so on. Aside from a handful of out-of-this-world readers, many game officials who've been doing this forever are about equally good at reading and certainly competent enough at scorekeeping.

Even with 37 teams in double-elim, there are "only" 18 playoff game rooms and 36 staff slots, of which six each become superfluous after 2/3 rounds anyway. I suppose one could add a third game official to all playoff rooms. The problem there is if more teams than expected turn out for consolation rounds.

Anyhow, many of you who were game officials also read this weblog; my immense personal thanks to you all.

(If you were wondering: We got 100 game officials on the dot, with six doing HQ work on Saturday and 94 in game rooms - so two people going solo. I came expecting us to have 101. Good news were the two people who'd fallen through the cracks on my staff list. Bad news were the three no-shows, all from two Chicagoland college quiz teams who shall remain nameless.)

Posted by Matt Bruce at June 6, 2005 03:35 PM