New Scaratings

Is that 1-800- 745-4686, or is it another number? Thanks!

So how many of 16 teams is "much"?

It's all moot.
TIMUR has ruled, and the baby will be halved.

That is the number I used.

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Merkin

So let it be written, so let it be done. I suggest someday we come up with a rule saying we drop a week only if a "certain" percentage of teams report problems. We all know this will happen again; and such a rule would take the pressure off the director.

Let me say this was not an easy decision to make. I knew people would be unhappy whichever way I went--I actually drafted two notes, the one I posted, and one saying "we're counting the week, here are the results and next week's matchups", before deciding which way to go.

I'm not going to respond to everything above, but I will say that in assessing what to do, given that we are in single-elimination, I didn't look so much at number of teams affected, as number of matches affected. And it was quite a few.

And if we have issues next week: I hope that my "fool me twice, shame on me" provided a clue about my thinking. The affected bars know who they are, MERKIN has posted about some possible solutions, so I would hope teams would take all the steps they can to make it more likely that everything will work. If you do nothing, go to the same bar, and have the same problem, you probably won't get the same forgiveness.

And in response to "let's just go on hiatus until everything is working": This is NTN. When is everything ever going to be working?

And finally: any of y'all are welcome to win the tournament this year, then make the rules and decide all the fun decisions next year.

До вторника

As one who ran this event for several years, I wanted to chime in.

When things do not run smoothly, it's a thankless job. Some team is always going to be frustrated. But when a team signs up, it's known that one person runs the show. You don't have to like it, but you have to abide by it. And you don't get a vote.

I never worry when a member of a team that's been around the block a bunch of times runs the show. Heck, there's only been one McCarthy Cup that was run poorly and that was because the team involved had zero experience doing so.

I'm glad I didn't have to make this decision.

Were each of the individual participants in this tournament polled on the Commissioner's decision, by how wide a margin would his decision be supported?

Irrelevant.

The job of the participants is to supply information to the Commish so he can make an informed decision. Both parties have done their jobs.

Alas, BO, once again we're at loggerheads. I was merely inviting the players who post on these threads, New Scaratings, BadBart, Facefuck, whatever, to poll their groups regarding TIMUR's decision to void the March 26th quiz.

I support TIMUR, and on behalf of his "thankless task," I'd like to see him get some credit for that decision.

It would be easy enough for those of us who participate on those threads to poll the players around us and post the results.

Let us review the current situation:

We have a software problem that prevents Showdown from being shown on TV often, not always, but often. A reboot of the system has corrected the problem, but at the cost of missing a number of questions, something that could make the difference between winning and losing a match. Buzztime has been contacted, and they have stated that the problem had been corrected, though it has not been for many as of last Tuesday(it is conceivable that any fix may take days to reach all locations).

So, as of now, there is no definitive fix to this problem, only damage reduction. A team could have this problem next Tuesday, reboot the moment it occurs, get the game back in progress, then lose a close game because of it. That is hardly a "fool me twice, shame on me" situation.

Yes, Buzztime has never been perfect, but this is a rather different situation that those we've faced in the past: it is neither an isolated problem nor a system-wide problem. If this problem continues to happen and some of the competing teams lose matches because they were not allowed on the playing field for part of the game, that will greatly diminish the integrity of the competition.

The same principle that governed last Tuesday's postponement should apply: if a substantial proportion of competitions are decided due to computer problems, that week's competition should be cancelled, and if it becomes clear that Buzztime has not corrected the problem, serious consideration should be given to postponement until the problem is resolved.

Why replay all 16 teams though?
Why should a team that had it's arse soundly kicked in a single elimination tournament get another (and maybe another) swing at the pinata?
And following on Ray's observation regarding the low regard a win against a technically challenged team is held, one might also expect the teams that just plain lost to put up their hands and take a seat on the sidelines.

Maybe the reason a team got its arse kicked was that its computer wasn't working. We fully expected to have a tough game against Stained Glass Pub, but they had a score (as I recall) in the hundreds. Surely not typical. Not everyone follows the intense discussions on this and other forums.
XTrain

I guess the equivalent would be a baseball game called due to rain in the fourth inning when one team is ahead 10-0, but this illustrates the problem when you have a playing condition problem is not individual nor universal, there are no ideal solutions, just workarounds with their own weaknesses. In the case you mentioned, one could have kept the results from the problem-free matches and allow both teams to play in a three-way for the round of eight, but given that a large proportion of the matches had problems, the decision that was made for last Tuesday's round was reasonable.



Before I start, just a thought: The competent solve problems; the wise anticipate them.

You bring up an issue of trust. While at least those of us who have experienced the problem have a good idea as to what would or wouldn't be a credible claim, there are far worse possible-to-likely scenarios. For instance, the game freezes for a team. They reboot immediately and lose the first six questions of the first round. They play the game, and the final results show that they lost by 2,000. When they see the transcript of the questions the next day, they see they would have answered all the missing questions. Now let's assume this happens in several of the contests, over the next few rounds.

What do you do? No possible decision is perfect, or even terribly good. If you say "tough" to all the victims, you're saying "let's pretend everything is fine" and you're letting computer error decide the tournament. That will make a lot of people put an asterisk besides this year's tournament, like Roger Maris in 1961. If you don't say "tough," no matter how you do that, you have the arbiter deciding multiple matches, to a greater or lesser degree, and a different group of people will pull out the asterisk.

This is a new situation we are dealing with: it's relatively common and long-lasting. We've been told that Buzztime thinks it fixed the problem. This is not so, at least not yet (it's conceivable any fix could take considerable time to reach all parts of the system). If the problem is out of the box, one should be open to where a solution might be found.

It's precisely because this problem could happen, often, throughout the rest of the tournament that postponement is a good idea. When you don't have a level playing field, you can't have an injustice when you don't have a game. That's why sporting events are postponed when playing conditions are deemed unacceptable.

There is no compelling reason for McCarthy to be completed within a set timeframe. Tradition is a pretty weak reason when you have a pretty nontraditional problem. So long as you made the period of postponement clear and long enough to reasonably expect resolution of the problem, those who do not automatically play every week should be able to arrange their schedules appropriately.

If I were running this tournament, this is what I would do:

We would play the round of 16 next Tuesday. I would ask all participants to report on what happened at their location, good or bad, after the game. If multiple locations report this problem, I would cancel the round and postpone it for a month or so. If only one place reported the problem, I would probably continue the tournament and decide (if they had lost) whether or not that team could continue into the next round (a round of three) or not. The same principles would apply to succeeding rounds.

Yes, I would fully expect to be flamed frequently for these decisions, and there will be some merit to them, but since someone would do so no matter what I did, I would rather err on the side of inclusivity and a level playing field than err on the side of timetables and tradition.

It is somehow fitting that this sort of problem is plaguing the McCarthy Cup competition. The Cup itself was created twenty plus years ago by Kevin Vahey when a bartender at Crimson Sports Grille turned Showdown off just before the end of the last qualifying game of an NTN Showdown tournament, knocking them out of a tournament slot.

I see it more an issue of honor.

i haven't checked this board since early wednesday and did not know of this decision. on behalf of west park station i want to say that i truly hope that danny ks beats us on tuesday. that being said we are going to be there tuesday, like we are every tuesday. we are going to try to get the best score that we can, like we do every tuesday. if anyone doesn't like that, then we will have to agree to disagree.

Voulez-vous que je pisse une corde?

We may all hope that Buzztime has resolved its parkour issues, and in taking note of that, has provided us with a functional Showdown.

How about a timely analogy.
GONE D becomes ensnared in a kompromat operation and is forced to take the place of the official shot clock operator for the upcoming Texas Tech/Michigan State Final Four game.
He secretes a Neodymium magnet on his person and employs it to dilate the shot clock time when Texas Tech, which the FSB has bet heavily on, has the ball.
The plot is foiled when GONE D clumsily drops the magnet on his foot in the process of leaving the venue and a vigilant rent-a-cop immediately makes the connection.
Under light interrogation GONE D confesses all, claims he was a patsy, and promptly defenestrates when Jack Ruby's great grandson enters the room.

Should the Auburn/Virginia game be replayed?

Если они не делают этого с вами, не ложитесь и просите об этом.
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

беспокойный лежит голова, которая носит корону. спасибо TIMUR за эту неблагодарную работу, когда нет хорошего выбора. Лучше ты, чем я.

И почему мы все сейчас говорим по-русски?

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Anon
"He may seem like Mr. Rogers but a dark spirit lies beneath."

How about you save the defeatism for Thursdays?

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Merkin

The bigger question is what do you do with the Texas Tech-Michigan State game, especially if you want or have to play the final on Monday night.

While pondering this situation, I found a new problem: if competitions are affected by this problem next Tuesday, you can't just take both teams and put them into the next round for a threesome. This is because of the rule change this year which requires reseeding after each round. How do you reseed the two-headed beast? You could reseed based on the higher or lower seed, but that can yield some interesting results. For instance, if you reranked based on the lowest seed, if Tuesday's Fellowship/Kzoo match was affected again and the match was tossed out and reseeded based on the lowest ranking, the next matchup would see 1 vs. 2 vs. 16 seed.

I think it would be best to get a decision about this and other issues before tomorrow's game. Again, if we continue to have the problems tomorrow we had last Tuesday, postponement should be an option.

Ask TIMUR. He started it.

I'm good with that. Just point me to the nearest window and I'll let myself out.

you know damn well this doesn't apply to thursdays. we will do whatever we can to win a game, especially after this recent run.

In response to two recent questions:

I used the Russian phrase because I wanted to say "Until Tuesday", realized it was too close to a band's name, and switched to Russian. It was совсем неожиданно that it would become a thing.

I am not going to make any rulings tonight on hypotheticals that may emerge tomorrow. We'll see what happens tomorrow, and if any decisions need be made, I will do so on Wednesday.

--Rick

I think I'm gonna join a pool league.