The 19th annual Vancouver Estival Trivia Open (VETO) was held on Saturday, August 12, 2017, at a private suburban home outside Vancouver. Thanks to Brittany and Geoff for hosting!

This was a guerrilla-style tournament, meaning that all questions were written by members of the participating teams, and there was no central editing. This year, a packet of questions was contributed by every team except for one that had no members who had ever written quiz bowl questions before. We also used packets from the mirror tournament (VETO's Eastern Trivia Open: full stats available) being held the same day at the University of Toronto.

We had five teams, which will be denoted here by these code letters:
[B] The Band — Brendan, Anna, Nathan, Daniel
[F] FARSIDE — Peter
[I] IQ2000 — Mike W., Brock (actually, Brock was only present for the first round, which took place before Mike arrived)
[J] JBGP — Jo, Brittany, Geoff, Philip, and Brook, who wasn't intending to play originally but joined in once she saw how much fun we were having
[M] McHam — Matt, Carlos, Hanson, Adam, Mike C.

Round-Robin Results

Rank	Team	W	L	T	Pct	PPG	PAPG	Mrg	10	-5	TUH	PPTH	G/N	BHrd	BPts	P/B
1	[J] JBGP	6	1	0	0.857	225.0	136.4	88.6	66	15	140	11.25	4.40	66	990	15.00
2	[M] McHam	6	1	0	0.857	220.0	123.6	96.4	67	12	140	11.00	5.58	67	930	13.88
3	[F] FARSIDE	4	3	0	0.571	166.4	135.7	30.7	59	8	140	8.32	7.38	59	615	10.42
4	[B] The Band	1	6	0	0.143	80.0	186.4	-106.4	33	7	140	4.00	4.71	33	265	8.03
5	[I] IQ2000	1	7	0	0.125	100.6	196.2	-95.6	48	14	160	5.03	3.43	48	395	8.23

In the tenth round that we didn't get around to playing, we would have had FARSIDE vs. The Band, JBGP vs. McHam (which would have decided the overall champion), and a bye for IQ2000.

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	'15	'16
1	Peter	[F]	7.0	59	8	140	3.93	7.38	550	78.57	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
2	Mike W	[I]	7.0	43	12	140	2.64	3.58	370	52.86	-	-	-	-	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	-	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
3	Adam	[M]	6.0	32	4	120	2.50	8.00	300	50.00	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	Y	Y	-	Y	Y	-
4	Philip	[J]	7.0	37	7	140	2.39	5.29	335	47.86	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	Y	Y	-	Y	Y	Y	-	-	Y
5	Brock	[I]	1.0	5	2	20	2.00	2.50	40	40.00	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	M	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	M	M	-	-
6	Brittany	[J]	4.0	13	1	80	1.56	13.00	125	31.25	-	-	-	-	-	Y	-	Y	-	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	-
7	Brendan	[B]	7.0	24	6	140	1.50	4.00	210	30.00	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	Y	-
8	Carlos	[M]	6.0	19	2	120	1.50	9.50	180	30.00	-	-	M	Y	Y	-	-	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	-	-	-	Y	Y
9	Matt	[M]	2.5	6	2	50	1.00	3.00	50	20.00	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	Y	-	-	Y	-	-	-	-	-
10	Geoff	[J]	4.0	9	5	80	0.81	1.80	65	16.25	-	-	-	-	-	Y	Y	Y	-	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	-
11	Daniel	[B]	4.0	7	1	80	0.81	7.00	65	16.25	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	Y	-
12	Hanson	[M]	6.0	10	4	120	0.67	2.50	80	13.33	-	-	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	-	Y	-	Y
13	Jo	[J]	7.0	6	2	140	0.36	3.00	50	7.14	-	-	-	-	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	-	Y	Y	-	-	Y	Y	Y	Y
14	Nathan	[B]	4.0	2	0	80	0.25	inf	20	5.00	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
15	Brook	[J]	4.0	1	0	80	0.12	inf	10	2.50	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
16	Mike C	[M]	6.5	0	0	130	0.00	0.00	0	0.00	-	-	-	Y	-	-	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	-	-	-	-	-	-
17	Anna	[B]	4.0	0	0	80	0.00	0.00	0	0.00	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-

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

Prizes

Honour	Honouree	Prize	Reason	Sponsor
West Coast Dominatrix of Relevant Knowledge	Peter of FARSIDE	handcuffs	averaging 78.57 points per game	Peter of FARSIDE
Team with highest score on the JBGP packet	the McHam team	chocolate loonies	getting 220 points on the JBGP packet in Round 2	Jo of JBGP
Worst repeat	the Chicago team in Toronto	a broken record	the packet had Bonus 1 asking about New York City's street pattern with answer "the grid system", and then Tossup 12 referring to "the grid layout ... on this city's streets" with answer "New York City"	Peter of FARSIDE

General observations and lessons learned

• The venue was unprecedentedly great: comfortable, friendly, safe. For many people it was less conveniently located than in the past, but the one person who didn't arrive by car was still able to walk from the nearest SkyTrain station.
• Parents who brought young children were all on the 5-player teams, and they arranged for continuous childcare by subbing out at least one of them during their games.
• There were two game rooms, which were well separated because one was upstairs and one was downstairs. The downstairs room had a door, but the upstairs room did not. This meant that sometimes the moderator had to shout over the toddlers who were in the adjacent kitchen, but the lack of a barrier wasn't necessarily a bad thing, because it enabled players upstairs to keep an ear on their children.
• For lunch, we ordered take-out pizza, and for non-pizza eaters, the hostess cooked a special dish, which must be a first for a quizbowl tournament.
• It was good to see teams writing packets again: the only one that didn't was a team that had no experience writing quiz bowl questions.
• We've still got to work on speed. We were supposed to start at 10 a.m., but we waited for some players to arrive; 10 hours later, we had played only 9 rounds.
• Although packets by Vancouver teams had 24 tossups each, packets from Toronto had only 21 tossups each. This could have become a problem because we were discarding repeats as they came up. So to avoid the situation of having fewer than 20 tossups in a game, we decided in advance that each Vancouver team should keep its own packet's unused tossups hidden away for possible use if they were needed to fill out the later Toronto packet to be read by that same team. And this did happen in one game: one tossup was discarded as a repeat, and then another was discarded because of a game play error. In order to have 20 tossups, the moderator simply pulled an unused one from his team's packet that had been played earlier in the day.
• Two UBC students came back to VETO, and they brought a couple of teammates who were not in university yet. We look forward to seeing them participating in university quiz bowl in the coming year!

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

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