2020 BSQC: card system

Tournament director of 2020 British Student Quiz Championships, Daoud Jackson, explains how this year’s competition will use the card system to ensure everyone has the most meaningful and enjoyable experience possible.

The expanded size of BSQC is absolutely fantastic, yet with a bigger and bigger field it gets harder and harder to schedule a day’s quiz. It would be fantastic if every team could play one another, but 31 games and finals would be a very long day! People told us they wanted to have a chance to play strong teams, but also to play as many meaningful games as possible against opposition of similar skill levels and experience --- the format we’ve chosen to use this year is new to the UK and slightly complicated but hopefully it means more meaningful games for everyone whilst still being fair and not overly tied to the vagaries of seeding.

In the morning

In the morning we will be using a format known as the card system which is a form of power matching. This system means that you will always play a team who has the same record as you in the morning which should mean more close games and fewer blow-outs. This system only works for large numbers of teams but can be powerful at sorting teams: the US’s High School National Championship Tournament uses a variant of this system for over 200 teams!

Rather than having five games mapped out, at the start of the day you will be given a card with a number on it. The card will tell you where to go, and which other numbered team you will be playing against. The initial card allocation will be seeded as well as we can. At the start of the game, you must give your card to the moderator. After the game has ended, the winner will be given the card with the lower number (1 being the lowest, 32 being the highest) and the loser will be given the higher numbered card. For example:

14 card (University of Lincoln) plays 19 card (University of Bangor). Bangor University wins the game. The moderator will give the lower numbered card 14 to the winner (Bangor) and the higher number card 19 to Lincoln. In the next round, Lincoln will play another team with the same record, as will Bangor. The location of the next game and the number of the card opponent will be on the card you end up with.

After the fifth round of card games, it will be lunch. From here on in, please do not swap cards any longer. You will now be locked in to the card you have, which will tell you the schedule for the five remaining games. Swapping here will destroy the schedule, so it is the responsibility of both moderators and teams to stop swapping.

The enthusiasts of Pascal’s triangle amongst you will have worked out that after round 5 there should be one 5-0 team, five 4-1 teams, 10 3-2 teams, 10 2-3 teams, five 1-4 teams and one 0-5 team. The six teams who have won four games will enter into the playoffs to compete for the title.

We will not play the game between the two 4-0 teams (both of whom will already have qualified for the final) and solo exhibition game will be held instead for a nominal prize. This is because there is no good way to overcome the problem of these two very good teams playing a game which will likely not count to the results of the tournament. If, as has happened in, I think, three of the last four (or five?) BSQCs, the two best teams split their games against one another, we would be forced to weight these two games differently, which seems unfair, especially for the other top bracket teams. There isn’t a good solution either way, so we’ve decided to just not play the game and keep the powder of these sharpshooters dry until the afternoon and perhaps even the final!

In the afternoon

No more swapping. The top six teams (cards 1-6) will each play a round robin against the other teams from their bracket. The rankings here will be based solely on afternoon games. If a team has a two-game lead they will win the tournament --- if not we will enter either a one-game final if the top two teams are tied, or a two-game final, if one team has a single game advantage over another. If two teams are tied with one loss less than the leading team, the plan is to have a play-in game to a two-game final, time and god willing.

In the 3-2 and 2-3 brackets (cards 7-26), we will use the paired bracket system. This means there will be two groups of teams with 3-2 records: each team will play against the five other teams in the other bracket and not the four other teams in their own bracket. Your order of finish will be determined by your record against these five teams, compared to the records of the other teams in your bracket over these same five games. At the end of the day we will therefore have finishers in joint 7th, 9th, 11th, 13th and 15th. While it would be possible to break all of these ties in another game, tabulating all of these results live has proven a major drag to the efficient running of the day and so we have opted not to. I don’t think teams will be too worried about finishing joint 23rd rather than just 23rd or 24th. If this sounds complicated, all the info will be on your card for the afternoon.

The six teams with cards 27-32 will also play a round robin against one another in the afternoon.

After you have finished your games it would be great to see as many people as possible for the announcement of prizes and the final back in the main lecture theatre.

2020 British Student Quiz Championships will take place at Imperial College, London, on March 7th.