Hello coaches,

I am excited to announce that the University of Missouri Quizbowl Club will be hosting the third annual Mort Walker Invitational, our annual ACF-style event, on February 11th this year. Last year this tournament was incredibly competitive, with Clayton defeating Ladue in the finals, and we hope to see an even more impressive field this year.

We are using questions that are being written by the quizbowl team at Ohio State University for this event. Because this tournament is using the ACF format, that means there will be 20 tossups worth 10 points each with -5 point penalties for interrupts, and non-rebounding 30 point bonuses. There will not be powers.

We will be giving out trophies to the top 3 teams, and if we have enough small schools, we will give an award to the top placing small school team. We will let public schools with 500 or fewer students in grades 10-12 be considered for small school awards.

This tournament will be using a rule where each team can have a maximum of 6 players. If you have more than that, do not feel hesitant signing up an extra team so that every player gets more opportunities to participate in games. Ladue has registered an E team at MU events, so there certainly are no problems with schools bringing many teams.

We are going to have a maximum field size of 24 teams. Teams will be registered on a first come, first served basis. When the field fills, we will form a waitlist in case anybody drops. If the field fills, we will be able to guarantee teams an 11 game schedule. I think it needs to be noted that the interest in our events has been pretty overwhelming this year, and I literally expect us to hit 24 teams
within a day of this announcement going out (25 teams registered for our December tournament in a day, and this event already has some spots that have been taken), so if you want to attend this tournament, you should probably register immediately, because we will not be expanding the field size.

Entry Fees
First team from a school: $70
Additional teams from the same school: $60
Buzzer system discount*: -$5 per system per team, up to $15 off.
Scorekeeper discount: -$10 per team that brings a scorekeeper the morning of the tournament. This can be a coach, parent, or any other person attending who isn't playing. We will provide the scorekeeper with a breakfast and lunch.
Moderator discount: -$30 per experienced moderator that a team brings to the tournament. We specifically request you let us know about this well in advance of the tournament, and will reserve the right to choose our moderators. If we end up with enough staff, we may not offer this discount. We will be offering a breakfast and lunch.
* In order to receive the buzzer system discount, the system must be fully functional for 8 players.

To register, please email us at mizzouquizbowl@gmail.com with the name of your school, how many teams you wish to enter, and the best way to contact you with any questions.

Our tournament has been certified by the Missouri Quizbowl Alliance, a statewide group promoting high quality quizbowl. Criteria for certification include pyramidal questions, a guarantee of six rounds minimum per team, and other factors that MOQBA considers valuable for high quality quizbowl. Details on MOQBA and its certification procedures can be found online at moqba.org.

This tournament will be giving bids to the 2012 PACE National Scholastics Championship out to the top 4 teams, and potentially up to 6 teams can get bids if we get approval from PACE. This year, PACE is being run in St. Louis at Washington University on June 8th and 9th, making this the most accessible national championship event ever for Missouri teams. As such, this is a GREAT chance to get your team a bid if you are interested in attending.

Don't hesitate to respond early, and if you have any questions, be sure to let us know. Our campus will also be hosting the Missouri NAQT Qualifier tournament on March 3rd, and the Pre-Nationals Tournament and Singles Championship on May 19th. We also recommend you look into attending other MOQBA events, which can be found on their website at http://moqba.org/calendar/.

See you at Mizzou in February!

Jacob Billingsley and Alex Dzurick
Tournament Directors

Field (24/24)
Updated: 2/10, 4:00 pm

3 - Rock Bridge + 1 buzzer
1 - Oakland Jr. + 1 buzzer
2 - West Jr. + 1 buzzer
2 - Columbia Independent
1 - Fatima + 1 buzzer
1 - Smith-Cotton
3 - Clayton
2 - Oakville + 1 buzzer
1 - Tuscumbia
2 - Fulton + 1 buzzer
2 - Hickman + 1 buzzer
3 - Ladue + 2 buzzers
1 - Helias

Already full. Wow!

Wow, I don't even get a chance to read the announcement before the field is full... that's incredible


It's not on Monday... March 3 is the correct date, and hopefully there will be a formal announcement going out within the next week.

Are you going to look into expanding the field? I know of at least one team that I think should be at this tournament.

EDIT: I can't read announcements, apparantly. The post answered my question.

Interestingly, exactly half of the teams in this field are from Boone County...Rock Bridge, Hickman, CIS, Oakland, West, and Hallsville.

We will now be using GSAC for the set.

I'll be posting game scores (if I remember) on twitter here: https://twitter.com/#!/JacobORourke1

I don't think this is still accurate, considering that GSAC has 10 packets plus two (harder) finals packets.

Yeah it's not, we're doing an unusual format of my devising that I hope everybody enjoys.

I'd like to go ahead and write this post while it's fresh in my mind...

I made a pretty bad mistake that affected the 2/3 of the field playing consolation rounds this afternoon, and for that, I hope teams will accept my sincerest apologies. In creating the playoff pools, even though I mentally understood the format that we intended to use, I somehow managed to screw up pairing the 4 and 6 seeds with the 3 and 5 seeds. This means that consolation teams aren't getting to face the intended opposition in the afternoon. The championship pools are unaffected.

This is *solely* my fault. The moderators and teams who were affected are in NO way responsible for the mix-up, and blame for any statistical issues lies solely on me and not on anyone else.

I hope that anyone who has any concerns will contact me personally. I can only ask that you understand and be patient with me.

Earlier this afternoon, we finished up Mort Walker 2012:

Ladue A won a one-game advantaged final over Rock Bridge A to claim the championship.
Clayton A took third place over Helias.

Expect all games stats to be posted tonight sometime, and stats sorted by prelims/playoffs/superplayoffs either tomorrow or Monday as I can find time to edit the SQBS files.

Thanks to all teams and all moderators for coming in today to help us out! It was a fun day!

You can find some stats for the prelims and all the games here. It's going to take me a while to go through and create playoff-only and superplayoff-only stats.

A photojournalist for the Columbia Missourian showed up to take some action shots during the Providence Road rivalry match of Hickman A vs. Rock Bridge A, which can be found here - www.columbiamissourian.com/stories/2012 ... mpetition/
I think the pictures are actually pretty cool, and any media coverage is good for quizbowl.

Unless I'm missing something, Ladue A put up the best performance (in terms of ppb, imperfect measure of performance as it is) on this set in the country so far.

Indeed they did. Anybody that thought pyramidal questions were too hard for local teams is going to be in for a rude awakening if they ever play any of the teams who made the playoffs here.

This isn't too big of a deal, but one of my tossups in round 1 should have gone to Max, meaning that I would have switched places with Michael Menkhus.

I think Clayton B and Fatima played a game that wasn't recorded in the stats somehow, as they both only have 9 games played.

EDIT: This is in the All Games file. I just realized I never specified that.