• High School

MOQBA High School Tournament Certification

MOQBA certifies tournaments that align with high quality quizbowl principles. MOQBA certified tournaments strive to provide the best tournament experience by:

• Using questions that fairly reward more knowledgeable teams. In a MOQBA certified tournament, players are rewarded for their academic knowledge rather than for winning constant buzzer races or knowing something trivial.
• Using tournament formats that rank teams more fairly. MOQBA certified tournaments use round robin based schedules that more effectively ensure that teams play a fair set of opponents compared to formats that rely on power matching, random draw preliminary rounds, or single elimination.
• Promoting participation. MOQBA tournaments are required to have more rounds than a traditional Missouri tournament, encouraging all teams to keep playing instead of sending them home after as few as three rounds. Consequently, this means that teams play on more of the questions they pay for.

Hosting an MOQBA Certified Event

MOQBA is eager to support tournaments that meet our criteria for high quality quizbowl events. We encourage all hosts to work with MOQBA to organize a successful event that will benefit your team and the quizbowl community as a whole.

Hosting a tournament of your own can benefit the game significantly. In addition to providing another much-needed avenue for teams to compete, the money you will raise allows your team to expand and compete in more tournaments. While the work involved can seem daunting, MOQBA members have accumulated many years of tournament organization and direction experience and are pleased to be able to make your job easier by assisting with tournament preparations, allowing you to contribute to the growth of quizbowl in Missouri by providing teams a successful, high quality tournament.

If you are interested in hosting a tournament:

• Review our certification criteria below to understand the minimum requirements for a MOQBA certified event. Contact us to confirm the details of your tournament to ensure that your event can be certified.
• Check with other area coaches, tournament hosts, and MOQBA to confirm the feasibility of a proposed tournament date and resolve any potential scheduling conflicts before making a formal announcement.
• Select and secure an appropriate question set that has not already been claimed by another nearby tournament. MOQBA will happily provide advice on choosing a question set that fits best alongside other planned events.
• Set an appropriate field cap based on the availability of your facilities and the size and experience of your staff pool.
• When announcing your tournament, in addition to emailing your announcement to area coaches, we also strongly recommend that you post your announcement and provide regular field updates on the Missouri Quizbowl Message Board.

If your tournament meets our certification criteria, MOQBA will gladly assist you with your tournament preparations:

• The collective MOQBA membership has hosted or provided significant assistance to hundreds of successful tournaments and will be happy to answer any questions you may have about any part of the hosting process.
• Information about your tournament will be featured on our tournament calendar, increasing your tournament's exposure and allowing you to draw additional teams.
• We also expect that at least one MOQBA member will be available to volunteer on tournament day itself, helping your tournament run as smoothly as possible.

Contact us to start planning your MOQBA certified event!

Certification Criteria for High School Events

Questions

• Questions used must be pyramidal and well-written. Pyramidal questions contain several clues arranged in decreasing difficulty. If questions are not provided by a reputable source, MOQBA will need to review sample questions to ensure that they meet this criterion.
• Inclusion of math computations is highly discouraged. Certified tournaments may have no more than one computation tossup and no more than one computation bonus per round.
• 20 tossup/bonus format is preferred, but other formats may be considered.

Tournament scheduling

• Tournaments must use an appropriate schedule based on full round robins within pools, with rebracketing into playoff and consolation pools as necessary.
• Alternative formats involving components such as power matching/Swiss pairing or single elimination will only be considered if no feasible round-robin based schedule is possible for the field size.
• Hosts may use an abbreviated schedule that does not meet scheduling and minimum round requirements only in emergency situations; for example, if the tournament must be shortened due to inclement weather.

Number of rounds

• A high school tournament in the 20 tossup/bonus format must guarantee each team in attendance at least 7 rounds.
• A high school tournament in the 20 tossup/bonus format must offer a minimum of 9 total rounds.
• All other formats will be decided on a case-by-case basis.

Statistics

• Hosts must keep full statistics for each match played that counts toward the final results, including the two teams, final score, team bonus conversion, bounceback bonus conversion (if applicable), and each student who played in the match with counts of each point value scored by each student.
• The aggregate statistics should indicate for each team: final order of finish, win/loss record, points scored per game, overall bonus conversion, and bounceback bonus conversion (if applicable).
• Hosts are expected to compile statistics using YellowFruit and post complete statistics reports to the Quizbowl Resource Center Database no later than fifteen days after the tournament. Alternate quizbowl statistics software or report hosting locations may be approved at the discretion of MOQBA.

Other host considerations

• Hosts should respond to any inquiries regarding the tournament in a timely manner.
• Prospective hosts that have run past tournaments with major issues, such as significant delays or poor communication, may be disqualified from hosting a certified tournament on a case-by-case basis.

Addendum: Criteria for Weeknight Events

A number of circuits around the state participate in weeknight tournaments. Despite the inherently limited time, a quality schedule of five to six rounds can be played on high-quality questions. MOQBA welcomes the opportunity to certify such events that are able to preserve the quality of questions and principles of fairness, while ensuring that students return home at a decent hour. Such tournaments should try and tailor their field to bring in no more than 16 teams from a localized area, and guarantee them at least five rounds. All other criteria related to question quality, round-robin scheduling, statistics, and tournament structure still apply.