Academic Competition Federation

ACF has recently codified its policy on cheating:

A player who has been shown to have cheated at an ACF event, or has been credibly proven to have cheated at any other organized academic competition, will be banned indefinitely from the time ACF receives the credible report until that player states a desire to play an ACF event, accompanied with a statement of contrition or countervailing evidence. When ACF receives that information, it will conduct a vote to determine whether the player can participate in the tournament in question, and if not, determine a formal length of a ban from ACF events. If there are any questions about whether a third-party report of cheating is credible, any Full member of ACF can call a vote of the Full members in which a simple majority will decide whether or not the report is credible.

According to this policy, the four players deemed to have inappropriately accessed questions by NAQT (in these two reports) are indefinitely banned from participating in ACF tournaments. ACF is also considering bans against other individuals.

Update – 3/30/13:

ACF has also voted to indefinitely ban the individuals identified in these three reports as having cheated.

ACF is pleased to announce that Matt Weiner has won the 2013 Dr. N. Gordon Carper Lifetime Achievement Award. Matt has been an editor of ACF since 2005; he edited ACF Fall in 2005 and 2006, ACF Regionals in 2008 and 2011, ACF Nationals in 2008, and served as head editor of ACF Nationals in 2009. Matt founded hsquizbowl.org and has served as an adminstrator of the forums since their inception in 2003; he served as the chief administrator of the forums from 2003 til 2006 and again from 2011 to 2012. Matt’s other contributions to collegiate quizbowl include editing Penn Bowl from 2007-2009 and FICHTE I and II, working on every iteration of VCU Open, and writing for NAQT since 2009. He also founded and currently advises the VCU team. Congratulations, Matt, and thank you for all of the time and effort you have devoted to collegiate quizbowl.

As of February 11, 2013, ACF has voted to exclude high school players from consideration for  D2 titles at any ACF tournaments.

The official announcement for ACF Regionals 2013 can be found here.

This is just to announce that ACF has changed the definition of Division II. The new definition of Division II follows:

C12. For collegiate tournaments that recognize high-finishing teams and/or individuals of “Division II” status, a “Division II” player is:

C12.1. At ACF Fall and Regionals, and any other collegiate tournament except ACF Nationals, any player who meets the definition of “undergraduate” and has never played ACF Nationals

C12.2. At ACF Nationals, any freshman or sophomore player (measured by time in school, not by credits)

The rationale for this change is that, at Fall and Regionals, the purpose of Division II is to get more teams to attend who otherwise might not, and reward those who do well while being “newer” players. So, at Fall and Regionals, Division II should be for any person meeting Undergraduate status who has never participated in ACF Nationals previously (even as a high schooler). At Nationals, we want to ensure that the title has a meaningful field competing for it and we don’t end up with people afraid to play Nationals earlier because it might mess up their future team’s eligibility.

We realize that this means that some teams that have already registered as Undergrad teams may, in fact, be Division II teams. Fear not! We will be in touch with you over the next day or two to figure out what division your teams qualify for and to correct your previous registrations, if necessary.

ACF Nationals happened last weekend. Yale A (John Lawrence, Matt Jackson, Kevin Koai, and Ashvin Srivatsa) held off Virginia A (Matt Bollinger, Evan Adams, Tommy Casalaspi, and Dan Hothem) in the hotly contested first leg of an advantaged final. Yale built up a 190-65 halftime lead, but Virginia stormed back to tie the game at 210 apiece on tossup 18. Yale answered the last two tossups of the game to win 270-210.

Michigan (Will Nediger, Kurtis Droge, Libo Zeng, and Bryan Berend) beat Penn (Eric Mukherjee, Saajid Moyen, Patrick Liao, and James Lasker) 315-135 in the third-place game.

Illinois (Ike Jose, Billy Busse, and Austin Listerud) vanquished Chicago B (Doug Graebner, Charles Tian, Jimmy Ready, and Connie Prater) 160-140 in a close final to take the Undergraduate championship.

Haverford (Thomas Littrell, Alec Johnson, and Graham Lobel) beat Chicago D (Kay Li, Tony Song, and Navi Singh) 50-20 in the Division II final.

The top eight individual prelim scorers were Ike Jose (Illinois), Matt Bollinger (Virginia), Eric Mukherjee (Penn), Chris Ray (Maryland), Henry Gorman (Rice), Matt Jackson (Yale), Andrew Hart (Minnesota), and Sean Smiley (VCU).

Undergraduates Doug Graebner (Chicago B), Jasper Lee (Ohio State), Charles Tian (Chicago B), and Kevin Malis (Northwestern) earned scoring honors, as did Division II players Spencer Weinreich (Yale B), JR Roach (Virginia B), Arun Chonai (Maryland A), and Ashvin Srivatsa (Yale A).

Division II players who made the championship bracket include: Charles Tian (Chicago B), Arun Chonai (Maryland A), Saajid Moyen (Penn), Ashvin Srivatsa (Yale A), Patrick Liao (Penn), Dan Hothem (Virginia A), Gaurav Kandlikar (Minnesota), James Lasker (Penn), and Robin Heinonen (Minnesota).

Congratulations to Yale A, Illinois, and Haverford on their championships, and thanks to everyone for coming!

Check out this hsqb thread for some videos of Jerry Vinokurov reading for teams at Nationals.