Monday, May 08, 2017

BC Cup 2017 - Report

Set by Aniket Khasgiwale, Yash Marathe and Aditya Gadre

Format: 30 question elim to determine the 8 quarter finalists. Then a 60 question quarter final to determine the top 4 i.e. the semi finalists. A 40 question Semi final to narrow down to the top 2 in the finals. A 24 question Finals played over two legs (home and away) to determine the winner. 

Report
The 2017 edition of the BC Cup was amongst the toughest we've ever seen both in terms of the field as well as the close-ness of the results. The elims itself produced two huge shocks with two time BC Cup winner Anannya Deb and pre-quiz favourite Shouvik Guha both missing out on qualifying. Rahul Kottalgi, Kaushik Koley and Deepanjan Deb narrowly missed out by 1 point. The elims seemed to favour the younger lot with the most of the experienced folk losing out. 

The Quarter Finals:
The Quarter finalists were Shrirang Raddi, Venkatraghavan S (aka Ingit Sir), Gokul S, Shubhankar  Gokhale, Suraj Menon, Pratyush Jha, Prithwish Dutta and Samrat Sengupta 

Gokul performed brilliantly right from the get go and led from start to finish - ending the quarters with a phenomenal 11 points. All results were possible at the end of the first half of the elims, but Suraj, Prithwish and Samrat kept chugging along to finish joint second to make it to the quarters. 

The Semi Finals
The Semi finalists were: Gokul, Prithwish, Suraj and Samrat

The semis were remarkable low scoring with all participants at 1 point at the end of the first half. We saw some excitement towards the end - when in the last 10 odd  questions, all participants scored, and Gokul answered the last question correctly to force aa four way tie! A first in the BC Cup. Suraj and Prithwish won the 3 question tie-breaker and went through to the finals. 

The Finals 
The finals picked up where the semis left off - with both finalists struggling to score. In the last leg, Prithwish came perilously close with two answers off by just a syllable. Sadly this was equivalent of hitting the post, and not good enough for points - especially in the final. In another first at the BC Cup, the finas ended in a tie and we had the first ever penalty shootout. Suraj took the lead on the second kick, and held on for the next three questions to win the 2017 edition of the BC Cup. 

BC Cup Champion 2017 : Suraj Menon
Runner Up : Prithwish Dutta

List of BC Cup Winners: 
2009: Sameer Deshpande and Suraj Menon
2010: Anannya Deb
2011: Anannya Deb
2012: Sumant Srivathsan
2013: Ramkey V
2014: Prithwish Dutta
2015: Samrat Sengupta
2016: Shrirang Raddi
2017: Suraj Menon

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