Tab browsing

So I suspended the Tabroom account on Facebook. It was supposed to echo the Twitter @DebateTab, which was problematic at best, but there was also the issue of keeping track of “friends” and the like. One Facebook account is enough for anyone. Two smacks of hubris. If people are too anti-Twitter to follow the proceedings, such as they are, that way, then they can take the proverbial flying leap.

I think that tomorrow night the Tres Hombres will be discussing tabbing, especially in light of our latest drive to publicize what’s going on in general, but that won’t stop me from talking a little today about who breaks and why. This came up in Monticello, and in a different way with Big Jake. Here’s my thoughts.

The first way to break at a tournament is to win all your prelim rounds. This is usually quite effective. The second way to break at a tournament is to win all but one of your prelim rounds. This also usually works. In fact, Menick’s Law #2874 states that it is desirable to lose one of your random rounds, as this puts you into the down-one bracket henceforth, and if your speaks are high, you’re in good shape to win all your rounds in high-low bracketing. This should not be extended, however, in the mistaken belief that Menick’s Law #2874 means that you should lose ALL of your prelim rounds. The odds of breaking in the 0-5 bracket are, in my experience, relatively slim.

Most tournaments break most people who are down two. But they can’t break all of the down-twos without taking extraordinary measures. The reason is simple. You can’t create brackets if you break, say, 39 people. The only way this can be handled is with a run-off round. The problem with a run-off is finding time to do it, and most tournaments simply don’t have that time. TOC does, of course, and we’re making the time at Big Jake to clear all the 5-2s. But these are unusual circumstances, and unusual tournaments. Most tournaments would never end if similar approaches were taken. The alternative to the run-off round is to get higher speaks, although some tournaments prefer other measures for bracketing (opponent wins, for instance). This is an up-for-grabs subject, but the point is, you usually can’t break everybody at the same point in the bracket, so some other measure than win-loss has to come into play. That’s just the way life is. (All competitions work similarly, as far as I can tell, one way or the other.)

The issue of tabbing a tournament is to somehow engineer what is perceived by the tournament director as the correct number of breaks (tab directors suggest, tournament directors decide). Different rules will apply. For instance, in a novice division we tend to be fairly generous, and we’ll almost always break a third of the field if we can because they’re young and we want to be encouraging. Tougher competitions set tougher breaks, but the rule of thumb is about 25% of the field at the most. Bump, for instance, with a field of 120, breaks 32, marginally generous. A tournament with 90-100, maybe break 24. Under 80, probably break to octos.

What’s the difference between 5 and 6 rounds? It depends. The more rounds you have, theoretically the clearer it is who the better competitors are, but there can be more to this than pure math. Tournament size connotes inherent judging limitations. At Monticello, for instance, the nature of the pool (mostly very experienced, some newbies), meant that if we went for a sixth round we might have to use the less experienced judges in important rounds (bubbles or speaker-point contests), whereas breaking a large percentage of the field allowed us to husband our good judges in double-flighted elimination panels. The field was better served by 5 rounds and double octos than the alternative, which would have been 6 rounds and octos. Those were the only real choices (the field was 85 people).

At Big Jake, on the other hand, the pool is rich with experienced judges, and there is no issue about placement of As vs Cs. Plus, many of them are tournament hires, so you can work them to death (although O’C and I are planning on a very strict pattern of rounds off to allow a little nap time for everyone). You could, if you wanted, do the 7 rounds knowing that your top debaters are at the top of the break. But the thought is, you know, any 5-2 is damned close. Off by what, a half an adjusted speaker point? And you paid a bazillion dollars to fly to Bronx International Airport and stay at the South Bronx Burnout Hilton for this? Since they’ve got the time (the tournament lasts longer than WWII), and the judges are available, why not create the run-off? My only objection to this is that there are the poor slobs at the bottom of the 5-2 bracket who have to defend their position that one extra time, the same sympathy I have with the bubble debaters at TOC. The pressure! Oy. (To be honest, I’m not quite sure how we do this in the TRPC software, but I’m sure O’C knows, or else we’ll figure it out. If you know, please pass it along to me. At the moment I'm assuming I'll set up the rounds off-line and stop scheduling the losers.)

So this whole thing is not an exact science by any means. But the general inclination always seems to be to have the number of people break that makes sense, and to have that breaking be as meaningful as possible. No solution is perfect, but looking at, say, the bid round at my most recent tournaments, Monti and Yale, and the people who were awarded TOC quals at both, I’d be hard-pressed to say that the system doesn’t work.

Bottom line: if you want to break, win a lot and speak well. (It’s the giving of advice like this that earns me the big coaching bucks.)