Hold those brackets!

This week we mostly seem to agree on some things in the tab room, but it's not clear what. Find out in Episode 44.

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In our latest episode, the Three Stuffed Tomatoes (Menick, Palmer and Cruz—Bietz sat out) talk about NDCA, inevitably winding up in the region of neg bias. For reasons explained only by sun spots or the lack thereof, the podcast fades off at the end as first Palmer and then Menick and Cruz crash their Skype. But, as we point out in the program, it's not as if you're paying for this, so don't expect to get your money back any time soon. Episode 42.

Plugging Everybody In

Spanky, Alfalfa and Spike discuss plugging in the tabroom. No one's knocked it completely yet, but inroads have been made. Episode 35.

Episode 19 - Questions from the floor

Continuing our series on tournament management, the Three Bean Salads, with the addition of an extra Bean, answer all the questions that are asked of a tab room during a tournament, and put a few urban forensic legends to rest along the way. Final score: TVFT 3, Dumb Questions 5 — they'll win every time, damn the little buggers! Get the episode here.

By the way, Mr. Palmer will be joining us in the future as a semi-regular. This will keep him out of mischief on Wednesday nights, if nothing else. If you wish to join the show, let us know what you want to talk about, when you can do it, and don't forget to avail yourself of a decent microphone, so you don't sound like Halefoil Cumcut with a head cold.

Episode 17 - Tournament management

The Three Little Pigs take on running tournaments. Want to do it yourself? Are you that crazy? Get tips from the experts in this episode.

(If you're counting, episode 16 doesn't exist, except for the phantom episode of Not 16. And our special guest this week is not Chris Palmer. What else is not true? Don't ask.)

Episode 13 - Rantin' and Ravin'

In this episode, the Three Remaining Marx Brothers stop complaining about Zeppo behind his back and discuss a few very specific tournaments, most notably last weekend's Emory event. How would you handle their kerfluffles? Get it here.

(In related news, Menick asks that you refrain from handling his kerfluffles, thank you very much. He's perfectly capable of handling them himself.)

Episode 12 - The future

In this episode, which might be number 12, or 11, or 13, or some number bigger than a golf ball, the Three Skating Mojitos discuss the technological future of debate, the ups and downs of MJP, why boring lists of old debaters should be other boring lists of old debaters, and whether pigs have wings. Get it here.

Episode 7 - Potpourri

Just think. Now you know how to spell potpourri. (And so do I.)

The Three Major Food Groups attack such questions as, should all 5-2s break, and should brackets/results be posted during the tournament. Get it here, or go sign up to get them all from iTunes.

Our tech discussion this week is a Google lovefest. Feel the warmth! Touch the magic! Cringe at the unwarranted bashing of Yahoo!

Predictions are mostly about Glenbrooks, I think, but since I'm not going to Chicago this weekend, I couldn't join in. But I will add here that I predict that I will not be in Chicago this weekend, if that counts.

More on judge assignment

I just realized that comments were being posted (I thought I was getting them sent to my email, but obviously I wasn't). And I love the phrase strikes and dice.

As an habitue of one of those smoke-filled tabrooms, I can say a couple of things. First, protesting that we don't favor our own teams would sound disingenuous, but in reality, we deliberately make sure that there are representatives from more than one school, to prevent that from happening. Of course, anyone who has sat with me in tab knows that my personal motto is, "Make this damned thing end," so the only manipulation I'd be doing, if I could, is closing out the tournament in, if possible, doubles. But seriously, I have often heard accusations made against certain people manipulating tab; as far as I know, none of those people are any longer active in debate, and no one has accused any of my cronies tab team colleagues of anything like that, so at least the northeast is clean.

Secondly, the issue of putting the better judges into the tougher rounds is not really just us making it up. Obviously we can use prior knowledge: we certainly know who all the coaches are, but by default we will highly rank coaches we don't know personally on the basis of the simple idea that, if they're a coach, they know what they're doing until they prove otherwise. (And make no mistake, many coaches quickly and categorically do prove otherwise, but that is up to them, not us.) We also use the experience of each tournament's previous rankings. I keep a spreadsheet of every tournament that I've done with community rankings of every judge in the pools. Community rankings from tournament to tournament tend to remain stable, and I'm able to consult this list when I have no knowledge of my own. Just as a point of information, we've started adding to this list the names of parent judges we have trained ourselves at MHLs, so we know who we can trust at the newer level.

So, realistically, a good tab room ought to be making reasonable and honorable assignments when they are simply not going at random. But this does not subtract from the appeal of strikes and dice. We talked in the podcast about trying it at Ridge, but instead we're going to test MJP (since it's new to me from an operational standpoint, and I'd like to try a little baptism of fire). Maybe we should try S&D at Lakeland, which should be humongous. The big question is, what is the number of strikes that makes sense for a field of, say, 100?

Episode 3 - Judge preferences and rankings

This week the Tres Meatballeros discuss Mutual Judge Preference, Community Rankings, strikes, random selection of judges, and other tabbing issues. Get it here.

Our tech selection for the week is Dropbox. And our prediction for the near future is that there will be a short gap between Jon Cruz worrying about this year's Big Bronx tournament and starting to worry about next year's tournament, but the smart money is against us.