The 17th annual Vancouver Estival Trivia Open (VETO) was held on Saturday, July 25, 2015, at the University of British Columbia.

This was a guerrilla-style tournament, meaning that all questions were written by members of the participating teams, and there was no central editing. Question packets were shared with a mirror tournament (VETO's Eastern Trivia Open: full stats available) being held the same day at the University of Toronto.

Thanks to Mischa for getting us space at UBC and for moderating some games. Other games were staffed by players.

We had four teams, matching 1999 and 2000 for the lowest number ever recorded at VETO, and a total of 11 players, the fewest since the first one in 1999.
Team rosters were as follows.

• [F] FARSIDE — Peter
• [N]* UBC students — Brendan, Jeff, Daniel
• [S] SFU CAWOO — Geoff, Brittany, Jo
• [U] UBC alumni + C Music Factory — Adam, Mike, Carlos, Lindsey

Round-Robin Results

Mischa was available to moderate in the morning, but had another obligation in the afternoon. Since none of the four teams had seen any of the Toronto questions, we could play two games on each Toronto packet. I suggested that when Mischa was around, he could moderate the first game on a Toronto packet between two of the teams while the other two teams were sequestered, and then the second game on the same packet could be played between the two teams that had just been sequestered, to be staffed by the two teams that had just played the packet. The UBC alumni + C Music Factory team then offered that instead of this system of having two consecutive games on the same packet, they could give up one of their team members to moderate one game on that packet while Mischa moderated the other game between the team's other members and whichever opponent they have. This concurrency would allow us all to save time, at the expense of the UBC alumni + C Music Factory team's performance, but they didn't mind making that tradeoff.

Another factor that went into making up the morning schedule was that the team of new UBC students should have the chance to watch a game before playing one. So we started with a locally-written packet.

Mischa returned before the end of the day, so the final round was played on a Toronto packet with Mischa moderating one game between SFU alumni and UBC alumni + C Music Factory, while Carlos of UBC alumni + C Music Factory went to the other room to moderate a game between FARSIDE and the new UBC students.

       Room 207    Room 209      pack       other byes
       =========   =========     ====       ==========
 9:30   [S]-[U]               |  [F]        [N]
10:00   [F]-[S]     [N]-[U]   |  Toronto    Adam from [U]
10:30   [F]-[U]     [N]-[S]   |  Toronto    Lindsey from [U]
11:00   [F]-[N]               |  [U]        [S]
-------------------------------------------------------------
       Lunch at the Student Union Building
-------------------------------------------------------------
 1:30   [N]-[U]               |  [S]        [F]
 2:00   [F]-[S]               |  Toronto    [N], [U]
 2:30   [N]-[S]               |  Toronto    [F], [U]
 3:00   [F]-[U]               |  Toronto    [N], [S]
 3:30   [F]-[N]     [S]-[U]   |  Toronto    Carlos from [U]

Here are the standings for the round-robin (full SQBS tables are available).
Teams were ranked by win-loss record, with average points per game as tie-breaker. It turned out that every higher-ranked team listed here beat every lower-ranked team whenever they played each other.

Rank	Team	W	L	T	Pct	PPG	PAPG	Mrg	10	-5	TUH	PPTH	G/N	BHrd	BPts	P/B
1	FARSIDE	6	0	0	1.000	211.7	143.3	68.3	54	4	120	10.58	13.50	54	750	13.89
2	UBC alumni + C Music Factory	4	2	0	0.667	264.2	130.0	134.2	65	13	120	13.21	5.00	65	1000	15.38
3	SFU CAWOO	2	4	0	0.333	146.7	195.8	-49.2	40	4	120	7.33	10.00	40	500	12.50
4	UBC students	0	6	0	0.000	78.3	231.7	-153.3	28	17	120	3.92	1.65	28	275	9.82

At the beginning of the day, we had planned to have Page playoffs after the double round-robin, but it turned out that at this time we had time to play only one more round. Since the top team had gone undefeated and had beaten the second-place team twice, it didn't seem fair that one more game between these two teams should decide the tournament champion, so no finals were held.

This was a real comeback for the FARSIDE team, which won only one game at VETO in 2014, and didn't win any games the year before. In the first three years of VETO (1999 to 2001), the FARSIDE team won every single game it played, but this year is the first time it has won the championship since 2001.

The UBC students did very well for a team that has never even played quiz bowl before. Though they didn't win any games, they correctly answered more than half as many tossups as the first-place team, 28 vs. 54 (over the same number of games), and only 3 of those 28 were obtained after incorrect interrupts from the opposing team. The UBC student team should take note that their G/N ratio (of "gets", meaning tossups answered correctly, to "negs", meaning incorrect interrupts) is the lowest recorded by any team at VETO since 2002. But I'm sure they'll get better with practice.

Individual Statistics

Rank	Player	Team	GP	10	-5	TUH	P/TU	G/N	Pts	PPG	'99	'00	'01	'02	'03	'04	'05	'06	'07	'08	'09	'10	'11	'12	'13	'14
1	Peter	[F]	6.0	54	4	120	4.33	13.50	520	86.67	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
2	Adam	[U]	5.0	30	5	100	2.75	6.00	275	55.00	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	Y	Y	-	Y
3	Geoff	[S]	6.0	27	2	120	2.17	13.50	260	43.33	-	-	-	-	-	Y	Y	Y	-	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
4	Mike	[U]	6.0	18	5	120	1.29	3.60	155	25.83	-	-	-	-	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	-	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
5	Carlos	[U]	5.0	11	2	100	1.00	5.50	100	20.00	-	-	M	Y	Y	-	-	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	-	-	-
6	Brendan	[N]	6.0	15	7	120	0.96	2.14	115	19.17	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
7	Brittany	[S]	6.0	9	1	120	0.71	9.00	85	14.17	-	-	-	-	-	Y	-	Y	-	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
8	Lindsey	[U]	5.0	6	1	100	0.55	6.00	55	11.00	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	Y	-	Y
9	Jeff	[N]	6.0	10	9	120	0.46	1.11	55	9.17	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
10	Jo	[S]	6.0	4	1	120	0.29	4.00	35	5.83	-	-	-	-	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	-	Y	Y	-	-	Y	Y
11	Daniel	[N]	6.0	3	1	120	0.21	3.00	25	4.17	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-

For leading in the individual stats, Peter retains the title of West Coast Dominatrix of Relevant Knowledge.

Note from the attendance records in the table above that Carlos, Brittany, and Jo were all playing in their 10th VETO.

Prizes

Honour		Honouree	Prize	Reason	Sponsor
West Coast Dominatrix of Relevant Knowledge		Peter of FARSIDE	handcuffs	scoring 86.67 points per game	Peter of FARSIDE
Fastest buzz		Brendan of UBC students	a pistol	giving a quick correct answer to a tossup on Singapore	Peter of FARSIDE
Best science question		Lindsey of UBC alumni + C Music Factory	a candy-making kit	writing a question on scientific taxonomy	Jo of SFU alumni
Worst repeat		Lindsey of UBC alumni + C Music Factory	a broken record	forgetting to remove from her packet a question that she had written on Rachel Notley, when some of the same clues with the same answer had come up in an earlier packet	Peter of FARSIDE

General observations and lessons learned

• As already noted, there was an unusually low turnout this year, for a variety of individual reasons; some said they regretted missing it this year, while others, presumably out of politeness, did not indicate whether or not they regretted it. :-)
  • Two weeks before the tournament, only two teams had registered for it (compared with 11 teams in Toronto!), and that's when we heard from the UBC students who are planning to reconstitute the UBC quiz bowl club and play in tournaments. Since none of them had even played quiz bowl before, they were exempted from the packet-writing requirement.
  • The UBC alumni + C Music Factory team had been rumoured to want to play VETO, and they finally made their intention official just a week before the tournament. It wasn't certain whether they'd have time to write a packet, and one of the SFU alumni team members had to drop out because of a family emergency, so we weren't sure if they'd finish a packet in time, either. But both of those teams did finish their packets.
• For the first time, we did not have any buzzer systems at VETO. This turned out not to be as big of a problem as expected, because some players had iPhones and iPads with apps that made different buzzer sounds. Players who didn't have those devices used different styles of table slaps, and the moderators were able to distinguish which sound came first. Probably the biggest problem was that other noises in the room, such as from people shifting in their chairs, were sometimes mistaken for table slaps.
• Last year, we lamented that over a nine-hour day, we used only ten packets, but this year, over the same length of day, we used only nine packets, over the same number of non-concurrent rounds. This was the fewest number of packets used at any VETO, although in 1999 and 2000 we had the same number of teams and the same number of games. From the players' perspective, the important measure is the number of games played. So here we list, for each year, the minimum number of games played by every VETO team, the type of schedule used (RRn meaning round-robin on n teams, and sRR meaning split round-robin), and finally the total number of non-concurrent rounds played including playoffs:

  1999: 6 (2 x RR4), 12
  2000: 6 (2 x RR4), 12
  2001: 6 (RR7), 11
  2002: 9 (RR10), 14
  2003: 7 (RR8), 12
  2004: 7 (RR8), 12
  2005: 6 (RR7), 12
  2006: 6 (RR7), 11
  2007: 8 (2 x RR5), 10
  2008: 7 (RR8), 11
  2009: 7 (RR6 + sRR3), 11
  2010: 8 (RR9), 10
  2011: 7 (RR8), 11
  2012: 6 (RR7), 11
  2013: 6 (RR7), 11
  2014: 6 (RR7), 12
  2015: 6 (2 x RR4), 9
  

  So every team had the same number of pre-playoff games this year as in the past three years. But in the past, we had always been able to get through more rounds in the day. Interestingly enough, back in 1999 and 2000, when we played 12 rounds all in the same room, we didn't even start until noon! But this was in an era of shorter questions, which makes a big difference. In 2002, we had 14 rounds of play, but that was almost a 12-hour day, and we don't want to repeat that.
• The following table with turnout data from all VETOs in Vancouver includes a text infographic and has the following columns:
  • number of teams at that year's VETO (same as the length of the entry in the next column);
  • one digit per team, giving number of players on each team, with teams listed in order of ranking at that year's VETO;
  • the year;
  • one digit per player, giving number of previous VETOs each player participated in, with players listed in order of ranking at that year's VETO (and starting in 2009, we use A=10, B=11, C=12, D=13, E=14, F=15, G=16);
  • number of players at that year's VETO (same as the length of the entry in the previous column).

  number      TEAMS   year   PLAYERS                              number
     4         1322   1999   00000000                                8
     4         2244   2000   110100000100                           12
     7      1444543   2001   2210000201001000002000000              25
    10   3441446334   2002   300300000113011030000110011020301100   36
     8     41445444   2003   442411121210210140002023010012         30
     8     41443344   2004   502302553201300022130512301            27
     7      3531443   2005   60166330102141324322020                23
     7      4441434   2006   712732430725425021337004               24
     5        44143   2007   8042524633514000                       16
     8     54334341   2008   903935950340621002074160000            27
     6       431443   2009   A01A630418076555227                    19
     9    443144433   2010   B764A431185007B900640030156000         30
     8     44414333   2011   C257026212859CA84010100081             26
     7      4451443   2012   D3184073D13A640B191151010              25
     7      4433441   2013   4E0149B1024087072102061                23
     7      4444412   2014   F64A1553255C81C92801301                23
     4         1433   2015   G3AB9092090                            11
  

  We can see from this graphic that peak VETO was reached in 2002. However, it would be inaccurate to say there's been a steady decline since then, because on some occasions, turnout has risen from one year to the next.
• The most encouraging development this year was the presence of the UBC students who are forming a new UBC quiz bowl club, years after the original one had disbanded. We look forward to this renewed participation in quiz bowl, and hope that other B.C. universities will also join them so that they won't have to travel too far to play against other university teams.

"Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it!" — famous last words

Back to CAQL tournament results page.

  Webmaster e-mail: caql -at- caql -dot- org