Sunday, May 12, 2019

BC Cup 2019 - Report

Set by Aditya Gadre, Aniket Khasgiwale and Yash Marathe

Format: 30 question elim to determine the 8 quarter finalists. 60 question quarter to determine the top 4 for the semi finals. 40 question semi-final to determine the top 2. A 28 question final to determine the winner.

Report
The 11th edition of the BC Cup saw about as strong a field as last year. The elims turned out to be bit on the tougher side and Anannya Deb topped with 15.5 points. All other qualifiers were bunched together and the cut off was 10.5 with 2.5 stars. Rajiv Rai just missed out qualification on stars. 

The Quarter Finals

The top 8 in the quarter finals were:
Prithwish Datta, Deepanjan Deb, Venkatraghavan S (Ingit Sir), Suraj Menon, Anannya Deb, Saahil Sharma, Samrat Sengupta, Anand Sivashankar

Suraj, Prithwish and Anannya were a different league and led from start to finish to very comfortably take the top three spots in the quarter finals. All other qualifiers were in the hunt till the very end, with us going into the last question of the quarters with a three-way tie between Samrat, Deepanjan and Ingit Sir. Samrat got knocked out in the tie breaker - but we needed 4 sudden death questions to finally resolve the tie between Deepanjan and Ingit sir. Ingit sir prevailed with a good cricket answer and ensured the semis were a repeat of last year's line up.  

The Semi Finals: 

The top 4 were: Suraj, Ingit sir, Anannya and Prithwish

Ingit sir started well - but Suraj took his game to another level and won the Semis very comfortably. Anannya and Prithwish were tied at 4 points a piece going into the last 2 questions of the quarters. Anannya missed a question on Indian football and Prithwish answered corrected to narrowly go ahead. The last question went unanswered and Prithwish took up the second spot in the finals - another repeat of last year's final . 

The Finals:

Prithwish and Suraj faced off in the BC Cup final for the third year running  - they have been the dominant performers at this quiz - and this final was one for the ages. Prithwish won the toss and went first - he scored on the first question itself to put pressure on Suraj. Suraj too answered his first home question and leveled things. No one scored in the second home leg for Prithwish and we went into the last 7 questions tied and potentially heading to another penalty shootout (like 2017). Prithwish pulled out an outrageous cricket answer to score an away goal meaning Suraj had to score both his last questions to win. Suraj answered the penultimate question to tie the scores on aggregate - but he needed another one to win. The last question went un-answered to give Prithwish the win that has eluded him for the last two years. 

BC Cup Winner 2019: Prithwish Datta 
Runner Up: Suraj Menon 

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 Datta
2015: Samrat Sengupta
2016: Shrirang Raddi
2017: Suraj Menon
2018: Suraj Menon
2019: Prithwish Datta