Sign-ups are open for the first season of TSFH Jeopardy League. I need at least 32 players for this competition to work, so I'm opening it up to non-TSFH competitors as well so we're able to start in a timely manner.

Link: https://challonge.com/tsfh_trivia
Prize: Lifetime Membership (1st), Yearly+1500 coins (2nd), Yearly (3rd), 500 coins (4th), 500 coins (Group winner), Yearly (one random participant); prizes can be pooled and exchanged for equivalent-valued items*
Game: Harmonbot Jeopardy 1v1 real-time
Format: group stage (play everyone else twice in best-of-5 matches), followed by double-elimination finals stage (best-of-7)
Sign up: Reply to this thread telling me you want to join or join directly at https://challonge.com/tournaments/signup/dPCgARJmFw#/signup/hbkaktsl3sr
Starts: May 15 or when we get at least 32 players, whichever happens later (yes, later)
Seeding: FIFA style (I'll separate out people who are known to be good at trivia/Jeopardy so they don't all wind up in the same group), then random
Rules: See description of tournament on Challonge; very similar to how Jeopardy tournaments work in FCC Discord
Site: Games can take place in WZ Public Chat (#harmonbot), the TSFH server (#jeopardy-league), the FCC/Discovery server (#trivia), or the Optimum server (#trivia)

* Winner can ask for any (legal, sensible) prize that's equivalent in value to your prize. So, for first place, a Warzone LTM, the premium colors, a $58.99 donation to the lawsuit GoFundMe on your behalf, $58.99 in dogecoin, whatever. I have the right to decline your form of prize if I deem it unreasonable (and force you to get it in a different form). See https://www.warzone.com/Forum/548291-discord-jeopardy-lifetime-membership?Offset=18 for more details.

These will be real-time matches played on Discord. You and your opponent are responsible for ensuring that they happen in a timely manner (a week); if you fail at this, I may choose to decide the winner randomly or penalize whoever is holding up the match, although I may also be gracious and grant extensions as needed in the interest of the tournament. Expect this to last a few months.

Each game takes at most 6 minutes (10 seconds question * 36 questions), so at most you are committing to 6 hours over likely several months.

Harmonbot's Jeopardy is a bunch of auto-generated boards from past Jeopardy questions scraped from the internet. They are entered by human users and may have typos (e.g., one of them has "Alburquerque" instead of "Albuquerque"). The questions tend to be a little bit America-centric (although non-Americans can 100% do really well - rakleader is pretty good at this and many of the categories, like cuisine and public transit, advantage Europeans and Asians) and Harmonbot's parsing isn't perfect (you might have infuriating misses or hilarious misparses- this just happens). I won't correct for Harmonbot problems in a match unless they are egregious since you have plenty of time to make multiple guesses. Some of your results will also just be decided by who types faster. That's part of the game.
And of course, don't cheat. It's pretty hard to, with the 10sec time limit per question, but still. Don't do it.

If you're not familiar with Harmonbot, I recommend going to the WZ Public Chat Discord (https://discord.gg/437A9RRaeY) and playing a few games on #harmonbot (type !jeopardy to generate a board) to familiarize yourself. It gives the points to the first person to get a question right.

Let me know if you have any questions. Good luck!

Edited 5/14/2021 19:32:36

I'm interested, but how do I find Harmonbot? I can't send messages in the off topic forum of the Discord server.

Are you on WZ Public Chat? Once you join it, you may need to go through verification (link your profile in #verification) to get access to the important channels. There's a #harmonbot channel that has Harmonbot. Once you're on #harmonbot, type !trivia to get one question or !jeopardy to get a full board. Someone else may already be in the middle of Trivia or Jeopardy in which case you can just snipe their game or answer their question. (Note that !trivia still counts it as a correct answer if someone gets it before you, but in !jeopardy the points to go whoever gets a right answer first.)

Also, to answer someone else's question, if I win, the LTM prize will go to the 2nd place winner. Don't worry, this will be kept very fair and square. If you read the rules on Challonge you'll see we already have a system for dealing with cheating as well as specific rules about how games will work.

Edited 5/6/2021 03:27:07

Count me in!

Thinking of changing finals stage from Swiss to double elimination. Swiss has the advantage of giving us a good ranking of the top half of the bracket, but it'll be harder to keep players motivated to compete in the Swiss bracket since about half the players will be out of the running for #1 after just one finals match. With double elimination the LTM should be sufficient to keep everyone motivated in the finals stage and I guess we could extrapolate rankings from Group Stage results.

My buddy Jefferspin already has Lifetime Membership.

Then he can opt for the prize in some other form. E.g., have me donate to the GoFundMe on his behalf, get $58.99 worth of collectible "vintage" Hot Wheels toys, donate $58.99 to some charity he supports, get $58.99 in cash, get 5899 coins, even have me try to send $58.99 to Activision's lawyers if he believes strongly in their case, or give someone else an LTM. He could even create a thread where someone has to create a nice poem about his clan in order to claim a LTM. The prize here is pretty flexible within reason. It's basically $58.99 however you want it, as long as it doesn't create a burden for me (I will not send you 5,899 pennies or contribute $58.99 toward a fund to hire a samurai to intimidate your estranged ex-wife so she worries about the kids' safety and lets you spend more weekends with them).

Edited 5/6/2021 04:57:31

I am willing to try this out.

did you say Hot Wheels

2 changes:
1. Final stage will be double-elimination. With Swiss, I anticipate there will be some people who will stop playing once they're no longer in the running for a prize. Knockout guarantees that everyone in finals at any point will be in the running for the grand prize. Additional prizes may still happen to keep things fun.

2. FCC Discord (#trivia) is also an acceptable avenue for matches to take place

Add me!
I will spend prize on hookers and cocaine

By vintage, what do you mean? I do like the Matchbox and Hotwheels models. The fictional ones, not so much, but the ones based on actual cars I like. My brother and sister think I'm crazy since they view them as toys to play with, while I not so much. (I'm running on about Mattel in a Jeopardy thread, seems odd.)

dont let me in

Edited 5/21/2021 12:45:44

By vintage, what do you mean?

Whatever you want, my dude. If you win, you can pick whatever as long as it's about $60.

To sweeten the pot I'm thinking of adding a lottery for participation and/or a prize for group winners. Any ideas?

I'm only on for a few hours at one time per day, will it still be possible for me to participate?

Yes. If there's difficulties, I can work on scheduling or make adjustments as needed. I might shuffle groups especially for this.

Then yes, I'd like to participate.

We need at least 15 more participants before we can start (and ideally a lot more), so I'll sweeten the pot a bit. Here's some additional prizes (1st still wins LTM):

Lottery (Participation Award): Everyone who plays all their matches (in group and, if they make it, knockout stage) and didn't place 1st/2nd/3rd will be entered in a drawing for Yearly Membership (or equivalent)
Group Winner Awards: The 8+ Group winners get 500 coins each (or $5 equivalent)
2nd Place Prize: Second place winner gets Yearly Membership + 1500 coins (or $30 equivalent)
3rd Place Prize: We'll have a 3rd place match between the two people who got eliminated before finals for Yearly Membership (or equivalent)
4th Place Prize: 500 coins (or equivalent)

You can pool your prizes together (e.g., if you win a group + win the lottery + place 4th, you are entitled to $25 worth of prizes in some form). To allow for pooling, the prizes will all be distributed when the whole tournament finishes. I'll DM everyone who wins a prize on Discord and on Warzone (assuming I am not permabanned by then) and we can work out the details of how you want to receive your prize. You're welcome to be creative as long as it's not inconvenient or troublesome for me.

The total prize pool has now gone up from $60 to $165+ (we might get more Group Winner prizes if we get more than 8 groups). I hope this spurs some participation, ideally in the next 24 hours so we can start on time. :)

I notice a lot of you Europeans are shy to compete against us Americans in a trivia contest. Come prove the superiority of your education system! Even if you don't know the answers to the music and film questions, you might be able to just guess your way to the top by typing fast. Plus there's all sorts of categories- like cheese, French names for things, classical composers, European cities- that advantage people outside the US.

Edited 5/14/2021 18:56:52

Count me in