How do I become eligible to compete?
After talking to some people that’re interested in competing, it seems better to be overly inclusive than exclusive and better to be simple rather than complex. Here’s how it works: if you’ve ever been top 20 TOTY or SOTY or have broken at Nationals, you’re eligible to compete. Additionally, each school receives a two “free seeds”: one for dinos and one for current debaters, so even people who do not meet the eligibility requirements can still compete if their team allots the free seed to them.
Current debaters can debate on teams with dinos, and the free seeds can be mixed (i.e. each can be one dino, one current debater). Competitors will debate with team mates from the school where they debated when on APDA. For example, I’m currently a Harvard Law student but debated while I was at
Since the goal is to ensure high quality rounds, it is possible that reg will close early for lower ranked teams, but no team that has already signed up to compete prior to an announcement will be affected. For more details, see http://apdacup.blogspot.com/2009/10/reg-details.html
I don’t want to be the only dino there, how do I know that there’ll be other good debaters?
Registration will be rolling, and we’ll try to publicize the list of teams that have signed up as much as possible, so you should be able to see if other good teams will be there. To incentivize teams to sign up early, there’ll be three “stages” for reg, with the price escalating after the completion of each stage. For people that’ve signed up, see http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=thKrihT0Vaib3_WutoPg_uw&hl=en. For details on payment and pricing, see http://apdacup.blogspot.com/2009/10/payment-and-pricing-details.html.
How do I sign up?
Go here: https://apdacup.wufoo.com/forms/apda-cup-signup/. Each person signs up individually, but eventually you’ll have to find a partner. You don’t have to pay up front, but you save $10 if you do. You have to submit a 20% deposit by the end of registration, and you can’t actually start debating until we’ve received either your payment or official paperwork from your school indicating that payment is underway.
How much does it cost?
If you register between now and October 20th (at 11:59 PM), the price to reg a team will be $170. From October 21st to November 3rd (also 11:59), it’s $200, and from November 3rd to November 17th it’s $230. You also save $10 by paying up front (you can pay by credit card on Google Checkout when you sign up).
Now that I’ve signed up, what happens?
Once registration is complete, the APDA Cup tab staff will divide teams up into five-team “regions” in a way that both makes competition within the region convenient (i.e. everyone lives near one another) and ensures an equal level of team quality across regions. (In related news, if you’re interested in being on the APDA Cup tab staff, email apdacup@gmail.com). Within a region, each team will face each other team in round robin format (and thus will participate in four qualifying rounds).
How’re the rounds scheduled (once the regions are established)
Teams are largely responsible for scheduling their own rounds. The way this works is that each pair of teams contacts one another and selects several dates that work for both of them and tells the APDA Cup events staff (whose job it is to coordinate with the teams hosting the qualifying rounds) (if you want to help out as part of the events staff, email apdacup@gmail.com). The date that best fits a venue and judging availability will be the one they debate on. If none of the dates work, the teams are asked to come up with another set of dates and the process is repeated.
Who advances to the final weekend?
The top team in each five-team region advances to the pool round (which will include 16 teams in total). Each qualifying round will be judged by five judges, and there will also be a floor vote. The top team is decided by: first, win-loss (so a 4-0 team automatically advances); second, total judge ballots (so a 3-1 team that won its three rounds 5-0 and lost one round 2-3 (thus 17 ballots) advances over a 3-1 team that won three rounds 3-2 and lost one 0-5 (9 ballots)); third, total floor votes; fourth, head-to-head result.
Depending on the number of teams competing, there may also be an opportunity for 2nd place teams to make it to the final weekend. This would be accomplished by organizing those teams into a single-elimination tournament for the remaining spots.
Who judges these rounds?
Judging comes from several sources. First, each school that hosts an event must commit to providing at least three judges who’ve qualled for Nats. Second, each competitor agrees to judge a certain amount of rounds (the amount depends on how badly the competitor is wanted (their market power), so more elite debaters are required to judge less rounds. Third, dinos and debaters in the area who are not competing will hopefully also be willing to judge some rounds. The Tab Staff will assign judges to rounds.
How’re the venues for the round scheduled?
The goal is for each qualifying round to be attended by an average of thirty people, sine these rounds are intended as showcases for APDA and for quality debate. Rounds will mostly be held at schools during the week (probably at the same time a team would have held practice rounds), and they’re expected to be well-publicized to the community at large (flyering, co-sponsorship, etc.). Teams that want to host rounds will be asked to pay a fairly nominal fee (about $30) to prove their seriousness towards putting a lot of effort into making this a big event on campus. Similarly, some rounds will also be scheduled before or in between rounds at tournaments.
The APDA Cup Events Staff will be in charge of scheduling events, collecting commitment fees, and handling any issues on the day of the round that may arise.
Is this going to be a big time commitment? Am I going to have to travel all over the east coast to do these rounds?
No. In terms of time commitment, each team will be debating in four rounds and each dino will judge 2-4 more. (Also, the judging requirement may be somewhat flexible). Thus your time commitment is something like 6 hours (45 minutes per round + 15 minutes of travel time) over the course of about ten months. Teams are grouped into “regions” based on their geographic availability, and they get to make their own schedules. Anyone competing can schedule rounds to be at the most convenient times for them (so if you have exams in December, don’t schedule any of your rounds for December).
I want to compete, but the person who’d be my teammate lives way the hell away. What do I do?
While the expectation is that most rounds will be held as on-campus demo rounds during the week (Sunday-Thursday nights), some rounds will take place in between rounds at tournaments. (Novice tournaments and other title tournaments might be particularly good for this). If you can’t be fit into a geographically sane region, going to two tournaments (and debating twice at each), will do the trick. Otherwise, it’s only a couple of trips for each person to make over the course of a year, so it’d hopefully be a good opportunity to see other cities, friends, etc.
So let’s say I compete in the qualifying round and don’t break to the Pool Round on the final weekend. Why would I come to that tournament?
Lots of reasons. First – to judge. The idea is to have a really deep, strong judging pool on the final weekend, and this can only be achieved by having lots of great judges attending. Second, to watch really awesome rounds and cheer on your school, friends, or region. Third, to get to go to an APDA tournament that’s more leisurely and relaxed (since rounds are pre-scheduled, allowing you to run off and do other things and then come back) and hang out with people in a less frenetic atmosphere. Fourth, to get to see (probably)
Fine, I’ll go, but what about my poor novices? They won’t have anything to do.
At the suggestion of some people at the Harvard tournament (particularly Kathleen Clark-Adams, who I’m indebted to for the idea), there will be a novice tournament on Friday (with outrounds on Saturday morning) to induce novices to come. Moreover, novice education will be an integral part of the final weekend, since there will be novice education sessions and novice workshops centering around and running after some of the rounds. Some rounds will also have Q&A between the novices and the people participating in the round.
Moreover, if, as intended, the tournament is run in
So besides the novice tournament, what’s the schedule for the final weekend?
There will be sixteen teams who reach the pool round, which will be held on Saturday from 10 AM to 7 PM with each round pre-scheduled into a ninety minute slot. They’ll be divided into pools of four (A–D) in an interesting way. They each compete in round-robin format (so each does 3 rounds), with seven judges each. The top two teams from each pool advance. Results will be reported on a leader-board as the tournament goes on, but the break will be officially announced at 7 PM.
On Sunday will be the knockout round, and will run from 9:30 to 3. It’ll be a modified challenge format (based around results in the pool round, with qualifying round results used as a tiebreaker). This will be a simple quarters system (but rounds will be staggered to allow for watchability). Each knockout round have at least 11 judges.
What do I get for winning?
The winning team wins $7500; the 2nd place team gets $2500. There will also be a gaudy traveling Cup (the tournament’s namesake). I think technically the tournament could give out OTY points to current debaters teams that do well, but I don’t think that would make much sense. (If this is a big selling point, let me know. I’d be curious for feedback on this)
How much does the final weekend cost to attend?
$20 per person. The cost of the novice tournament will depend on the school hosting it. There will also be a cost to house ($25 per person).
So who’s actually running this thing? How can I be confident that it’ll be fair and well-run?
There will be two groups of people administering the tournament. The APDA Cup Tab Staff will figure out a process for placing teams into regions in the qualifying rounds and then recruit and allocate judges to judge rounds throughout the tournament. They will also handle any issues of competitive fairness that may arise (e.g. a biased floor vote). Tab Staff cannot compete in the tournament. Secondly, there will be APDA Cup Event Staff, whose job it will be to help coordinate the logistics of the tournament. In particular, they’ll be responsible for ensuring that each qualifying round is as publicized and well-attended as possible and for making sure all rounds are videotaped (preferably by high-quality recorders from multiple angles). Event Staff can compete in the tournament (since there job has nothing to do with the actual results of the tournament). Event Staff can’t work on their own rounds or region, and they won’t be working with the Tab Staff member in charge of their region.
The stakes here are pretty high. How do we avoid a bunch of tight cases?
I’d be open to suggestions on this. A few thoughts I have: (1) extra penalties for tight cases: if you lose a tight call in the qualifying round or pool round, you get two “negative” ballots added to your total and you don’t get any of the ballots of the people who voted for you. (so if you win 3 rounds 5-0 but lose a tight call round 2-3, you have total ballots of 13 (the 2 votes for you in the round don’t count, and you subtract 2 from the 15 total ballots you won). (2) minority voting rules for tight calls: so if the amount of judges giving you the loss is one less than a majority, you still lose and suffer all of the penalties of a tight call. (In other words, if 2 judges call a case tight in a 5 judge panel, you still lose). (3) If a team calls your case tight, that case is publicized on the forum, and future judges are alerted that your case has been called tight. (4) teams can opt into straight-link. The way this works is that each team indicates if they’d prefer straight link (this would apply to all of their rounds). If both prefer straight-link, then gov is given a choice of straight link cases to run prior to the round.
