Monday, May 20, 2013

The BC Cup 2013 - 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 36 question Semi final to narrow down to the top 2 in the finals. A 28 question Finals played over two legs (home and away) to determine the winner.

Report: 
The quiz started with a 30 qn elims set - general feedback indicated that the elim was much tougher than in previous years. The elims also threw up some drama when two-time BC Cup Champion, Anannya Deb did not qualify for the Quarter Finals. Subhankar topped the elims with a phenomenal 17pts and Venkatraghavan (referred to as "Venky" hereforth in this report) came second with 13.5 points. The rest of the quarter finalists were mostly bunched in the 8-10 pt mark.

The Quarter Finals:


The Quarter finalists were :
Shubhankar Gokhale, Ramkey, Anand Sivashankar, Samrat Sengupta, Nishant Chaudhary, Venky, Rohit Suresh and Kaushik Koley


Anand started the quarter finals spectacularly and pulled away with a strong 4 pt lead before losing the plot midway as others - particularly Samrat and Ramkey upped the ante. BC Cup debutant Nishant , the ever consistent Kaushik and "young Rohit" gave some great answers and kept things interesting. In the end,  Venky and Shubhankar's overall good performances (especially in areas of their strengths) helped them finish 3rd and 4th to complete the semi final lineup.

The Semi-Final
Ramkey hit top form as he capitalised on a few critical misses from Samrat and threw in a few amazing answers of his own to win comfortably. Venky held a slender 1 pt lead over Shubhankar going into the last question of the semis which was duly cracked by Shubhankar (hardly surprising since the question involved cycling) to force a tie breaker for the final spot. After the 3 question tie breaker the two were still tied and we went into sudden death. Venky correctly answered his question while Shubhankar missed and we had our other finalist.

The Finals 
Ramkey won the toss and went first. In his first home half he scored 2 goals to 2-0 up and followed this up by scoring a crucial away goal in Venky's  first home half. The second half for Ramkey turned out to not live up to the excitement and high scoring nature. Venky went into his second home half training 3-0 on aggregate and 1-0 in his home leg, thus needing 4 goals to win. Venky put in a couple of superb answers to win his home leg 2-1, but could not complete the spectacular comeback to win the tie. In the end, Ramkey won on aggregate 3-2.

BC Cup Champion 2013 : Ramkey 
Runner Up : Venkatraghavan Sahasranaman 

As for the review of the quiz, I request those who attended to share their feedback in the comments section. 

1 comment:

Samrat said...

Among all Sports Quizzes I have attended, BC Cup is definitely the best. And you guys have maintained the standards throughout, based on the 2 editions I have participated and the one I have questions of.

QF,Semis and Finals were a good mix of questions.
But regarding the elims I feel they were a bit "pop-culturish" in sports, compared to the hard-core or knowledge based final content. So there was a disconnect with the finals. I feel I was mighty lucky to scrape thru, and could have eaily been on the sideline. Unluckily Annanya and Ranajeet missed out.

I guess, this happened because you guys wanted to make it accessible or easy for the quizzers, by putting current affairs/trivia but it ended up being more difficult.

Maybe next time mix it up a bit.
Also next time, it will be good if you can have a 40 ques elims :) . Give less time if you need, as anyways in the finals one has to be relatively quick in answering.

Thanks guys for doing this, it is lot of fun, old-fashioned quizzing on the BC Steps sipping chai and having some good-natured banter.

Regards,
Samrat