Valencia Fall Tournament

Question Guidelines | Rules | Sample Questions | Registration Form

Rather than delineate all rules of play, this document focuses on points which make this tournament unique with regard to other two-year tournaments in Florida.

1. Players will have three seconds to answer after buzzing in, and readers will give players a true three seconds to buzz in when the question's finished.
2. Players may give two DIRECTLY RELATED pieces of information, such as "On the Road by Jack Kerouac" or "the dynamo invented by Michael Faraday." In other words, creator-creation will be accepted. Well written questions, however, will render its use unlikely.
3. Teams MAY substitute players at the half of a match.
4. A captain should be designated at the beginning of each match and s/he should deliver all bonus answers. The captain MAY designate a teammate to deliver an answer or series of answers on a bonus, but any attempt at delaying will be struck down by the reader/judge.
5. Readers will give captains a prompt when time is up on a bonus part: "answer, please." At this prompt, the captain must immediately provide an answer; any stalling will result in time being called. The prompt will be delivered by the reader after three seconds, resulting in about five total seconds per bonus part.
6. Ties will be settled by a sudden death toss-up. If teams are still tied after one question, another will be read, then another, until the tie is broken.
7. Ties for overall record in the tournament will be settled by head-to-head record-no exceptions. If head-to-head doesn't settle the tie (a three-way split), then total points scored will determine a winner. There is no provision for a championship round or playoff.
8. Teams should have at least three players, but may have up to six (two alternates). If we have any no-shows, or need an extra team to avoid having more than one bye per team, the tournament director reserves the right to draft a "spoiler" team, though this shouldn't be necessary.
9. The match is over when twenty toss-ups (barring extras) have been read. Time is not kept.
10. We will use a Swiss-pairing format in the tournament, meaning that after the first round, teams will be matched up randomly by a computer program which tries to pair teams with similar records. Over the course of 12-15 rounds, the best teams should play all the other best teams, allowing for a true champion to be determined.