Online Tournament Guide

Preparations

Contents

    This page of NAQT’s online tournament guide details tasks specific to online competition that a tournament director will need to perform prior to the start of the tournament.

    This page glosses over (or entirely omits) a large number of preparatory steps that apply to both in-person and online tournaments. If you haven’t previously run a tournament, feel free to ask for guidance from other coaches, your local quiz bowl association (if any), and/or NAQT itself.

    These steps are presented in rough chronological order.

    Far in Advance

    Staff

    Zoom

    Familiarize yourself with using Zoom to manage users and create meetings. You should also know all the basic bits of Zoom meeting functionality (like how to change your display name).

    Scheduling

    Results and Statistics

    As for in-person tournaments, you will need to tally results to determine the winner, playoff teams, all-stars, etc. NAQT recommends SQBS, a free, quiz bowl-specific statistics program. Scorekeepers can share their online scoresheets with your statistician, and they can enter them into SQBS. Tournaments using NAQT’s registration system can download a SQBS template with all the team and player names, and NAQT can accept the completed SQBS data file at the end of the tournament in fulfillment of most results-reporting requirements. NAQT also has a page of hints about how to use SQBS most efficiently.

    Buzzing

    Players should signal by using BuzzIn.live as a replacement for a buzzer system. You will need to decide whether your tournament can get by with the free version of BuzzIn.live or whether you want to pay for a premium key ($0.99 per room per day). NAQT recommends paying for the premium keys. You can either email the maintainer of BuzzIn.live a week in advance to make a bulk purchase, or you can purchase keys one at a time on the day of your tournament.

    If you are using the premium version of BuzzIn.live, you will need to send each moderator a premium key so they will be able to create BuzzIn rooms.

    Communication