Order, Order!!

One little-explored facet of an Infinite Rebound format quiz has been the order in which teams are seated. In most quizzes, the order is decided by randomly picking chits. However at Quiz-o-mania, the organisers tried an innovation in which the teams got to pick their position on the stage. This was done in the descending order of elims scores, i.e the team which topped the elims got to pick first, and so on.

Now the innovative idea here was to try and give the top scoring teams a reward by giving them a choice in seating. However, I am not sure if that indeed happened. In fact I am quite sure that the opposite is what happened. I'll explain how by citing my own example.

Sarika and I were 3rd (or 4th) in the elims. When it was our turn to choose, we decided to take the spot to the right of Ramanand and Harish, who topped the elims, and in my books, were favourites to win the quiz. My logic behind this choice was that except for their "directs", we would get a shot at every question, before them. So if there were any questions which both R&H as well as Sarika and I knew answers to, we would benefit. Of course, this benefit would apply only in the first half of the quiz, following which the order would be reversed, and they would get a similar benefit.

This is exactly what happened. Ramanand and Harish were trailing in the first half, not because they didn't know much, but because we gobbled up most of the answerable passes. In the second half, they caught up superbly, but our ability to answer our directs better than they answered theirs in the first half, saw us through.

Thus our being able to position our team relative to theirs helped us in the first half at least.

This happened because in an infinite rebound quiz, the teams might as well be seated in a circle. because after the first question, the "1" in "team 1" ceases to be a number, and becomes a name. In Direct-and-Pass formats, yes, Team 1 has an advantage because it will get the first question in every round. But in infinite rebound the absolute position is not important.

What is important is your position relative to the other teams. If you think you can position yourself before your potential closest competitor, and build a good lead in the pressure-free first half of the quiz, then you can do that. It is somewhat like batting first in an ODI.

So the team that is at an advantage is the team that has most knowledge about the position of their competition, and not the team choosing first. As a result, when R&H picked a spot, they benefitted the least from the system, rather than the most, as the organisers might have intended.

If organisers of future quizzes want to implement a system where the elims topper is rewarded, then they should ask the team with the least score to just write their name on a blank paper. the team higher than them should then write their name on that team's left or right. the next team can place themselves either between the two teams, or on their right or left. And so on, until the last team is the topper which can position itself at the edges, or between any team it wants. This order should then be reproduced on stage.