The third annual Vancouver Estival Trivia Open (VETO) was held on Saturday, July 14, 2001, at the Harbour Centre Campus of Simon Fraser University in downtown Vancouver, B.C.

We are grateful to National Academic Quiz Tournaments (NAQT) for providing questions at no charge. Question packets from NAQT's intercollegiate series were farmed out to players at VETO and the companion London Estival Trivia Open (LETO). These editors replaced some of the American questions with Canadian ones. There was no central editing.

There were seven teams with a total of 25 players, more than twice as many players as in VETO 2000. Teams were:

• Simon Fraser University (SFU) — Shaun, Hanson, Sarah, Paulman
• Teaching Support Staff Union (TSSU) — Tara, Dave, Cynthia
• University of Oregon — Sean, Amy, William, Helen
• University of Waterloo — Justin, Stephanie, Geoff, Nikhil
• Maple Ridge Secondary School (MRSS) — Greg, Nicole, Julianna, Tariq, Neal
• B2B — Brock, Bruce, Brian, Amy
• FARSIDE — Peter

Round-Robin Results

A single round-robin was played in two rooms.

winning team	score	score	losing team	question authors
B2B	225	115	MRSS	NAQT + Peter
Oregon	145	135	Waterloo
SFU	210	150	Waterloo	NAQT + Oregon
FARSIDE	285	180	B2B
SFU	260	60	MRSS	NAQT + Tara
FARSIDE	310	40	Oregon
SFU	220	75	TSSU	NAQT + MRSS
B2B	480	50	Waterloo
Waterloo	155	60	TSSU	NAQT + Peter
B2B	205	140	Oregon
MRSS	235	60	TSSU	NAQT + Brock
FARSIDE	420	65	SFU
FARSIDE	410	45	TSSU	NAQT + Bruce
SFU	win	forfeit*	Oregon
MRSS	155	40	Waterloo	NAQT + SFU
Oregon	180	25	TSSU
FARSIDE	360	155	MRSS	NAQT + Waterloo
B2B	210	155	SFU
Oregon	185	155	MRSS	NAQT + SFU
B2B	345	15	TSSU
FARSIDE	470	35	Waterloo

* The Oregon team forfeited the game against SFU because it was late returning from lunch. After Oregon showed up, they played SFU half a game anyway on the packet by NAQT + Bruce. Result: SFU 70, Oregon 20. Points in this half-game are not included in the stats below.

Finals

We had agreed originally that the top two teams would face off in a best-of-three final series, in which the round-robin game would count as the first game in the series. But we were running late: by the time the round-robin ended it was almost 4:40, and we were scheduled to do the Trans-Canada Championship Match at 5:00. There would not have been time to play two more rounds, if that were to be necessary, so the top two teams, FARSIDE and B2B, agreed to play just one final round, and the tournament winner would be decided by the total score in that game and the previous FARSIDE-B2B game (which was FARSIDE 285, B2B 180).

winning team	score	score	losing team	question authors
FARSIDE	305	145	B2B	NAQT + Carlos from SFU's team in Ontario

Therefore FARSIDE won VETO for the third time.

Individual tossups in the final game (+10/-5):
FARSIDE: Peter 9/1
B2B: Bruce 5/1, Brock 2/0, Brian 0/0, Amy 0/0

The FARSIDE team then played in the Trans-Canada Championship Match against the winning team from the London tournament.

Team statistics

W: Wins
L: Losses
TH: number of Tossups Heard
PPG: average Points Per Game (forfeited games excluded)
+10: number of tossups answered correctly
-5: number of incorrect interrupts
TUP: TossUp Points
BP: Bonus Points
BAvg: average points per bonus
PPTH: average Points Per Tossup Heard
PA: total Points Against
Diff: average score difference (forfeited games excluded)

Rank	Team	W	L	TH	TP	PPG	+10	-5	TUP	BP	Bavg	PPTH	PA	Diff
1	FARSIDE	6	0	120	2255	375.8	77	5	745	1510	19.6	18.8	520	+289.2
2	B2B	5	1	120	1645	274.2	59	18	500	1145	19.4	13.7	760	+147.5
3	SFU	4	2	100	910	182.0	37	6	340	570	15.4	9.1	915	-1.0
4	Oregon	3	3	100	690	138.0	36	5	335	355	9.9	6.9	830	-28.0
5	MRSS	2	4	120	875	145.8	41	6	380	495	12.1	7.3	1130	-42.5
6	Waterloo	1	5	120	565	94.2	33	6	300	265	8.0	4.7	1520	-159.2
7	TSSU	0	6	120	280	46.7	18	10	130	150	8.3	2.3	1545	-210.8

In every match, the higher-ranked team defeated the lower-ranked team.

Individual player statistics

Rank	Player	Team	+10	-5	Games	Points/Game
1	Peter	FARSIDE	77	5	6	124.2
2	Bruce	B2B	38	7	6	57.5
3	Greg	MRSS	24	5	6	35.8
4	Sean	Oregon	19	3	5	35.0
5	Justin	Waterloo	18	5	6	25.8
6	Hanson	SFU	14	4	5	24.0
7	Sarah	SFU	12	2	5	22.0
8	Brock	B2B	18	10	6	21.7
9	Amy	Oregon	10	0	5	20.0
10	Tariq	MRSS	5	0	3	16.7
11	Nikhil	Waterloo	8	0	6	13.3
12	Paulman	SFU	6	0	5	12.0
13	Neal	MRSS	6	1	5	11.0
13	William	Oregon	6	1	5	11.0
15	Geoff	Waterloo	7	1	6	10.8
15	Dave	TSSU	7	1	6	10.8
17	Shaun	SFU	5	0	5	10.0
18	Nicole	MRSS	5	0	6	8.3
19	Tara	TSSU	7	6	6	6.7
20	Cynthia	TSSU	4	3	6	4.2
21	Amy	B2B	2	0	6	3.3
22	Julianna	MRSS	1	0	5	2.0
23	Helen	Oregon	1	1	5	1.0
24	Brian	B2B	1	1	6	0.8
25	Stephanie	Waterloo	0	0	6	0.0

For leading the individual scoring, Peter retains the title of West Coast Dominatrix of Relevant Knowledge (WC-DORK).

Prizes

Honour	honouree	reason	prize	sponsor
Early bird award for first arrival	MRSS team	was at Harbour Centre at 8:45 a.m.	a bag of Gummy Worms	Peter
First to lodge a protest	Peter	protest in second round (his first game)	The Nitpicker's Guide for Next Generation Trekkers	Bruce
Most ridiculously wrong answer	Brock	"University of Chicago", after hearing a whole tossup with the correct answer of SFU.	M & M Minis	Hanson
Solidarity award for most united team	SFU	working together	TSSU pens	Tara
Longest trip to VETO that morning	Justin	he started the day in Redmond, Washington, and picked up all of his teammates	a bag of airline peanuts	Hanson
Brock Stephenson award for most -5s	Brock	got ten -5s	M & M Minis	Hanson

General observations and lessons learned

• VETO 2001 was the largest quiz bowl tournament ever held in Canada outside of Ontario. With seven teams playing "guerrilla" style, we could have had three games running simultaneously in every round, but this would have required every team to supply three moderators, and only one team (SFU) had three people who felt able and willing to moderate a game. Therefore, we played only two games in each round, except for the last round, when SFU had three moderators on one of its two packets. In all the other rounds, three teams had byes, including the team responsible for reading the round, which usually had assistance from some of the other teams that weren't playing.
• Things went pretty slowly before lunch, with only five rounds being done between 9:00 a.m. and 1:15 p.m. This was a result of the relaxed nature of the untimed games, and also some first-time moderators seeking feedback while reading. After lunch, we knew we were behind schedule, so we avoided chitchat between questions and got through a round every 30 minutes from 2:00 p.m. until 4:30 p.m.
• The two teams that were visiting Vancouver from outside B.C. decided not to have lunch at the downstairs food court, and both ended up returning late from lunch even though they were given an extra-long break. :) One of these teams ended up getting lost on East Hastings.
• Harbour Centre has some very nice seminar rooms. In the future we'll try to reserve earlier to get rooms with views.
• The tape recorder we borrowed from the audio-visual staff played at a slower rate than normal, so that Anne Murray ended up sounding like a tenor.
• We had agreed on total points as the first tiebreaker after win-loss record in determining rankings. As it turned out, we didn't need to use this tiebreaker, but in retrospect, using total points is a bad idea because forfeited games skew the results. It is better to use average points per game.
• We hope to see everyone in 2002!

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