I headed down to Derby on Saturday to take part in the British Quizzing Championships. Although I have been attending GP's for over a year now this was my first British Quizzing Championship. The venue was the lovely Hilton House Hotel in Derby which is one of the best venues I have played in. Spacious, great food and nice facilities.
The event differs from the usual GP's in a few ways. Namely more time is given and the quiz is conducted in two halves as there are more questions to consider. Actually that is not quite right, there are still 240 questions but the usual 10 tiebreakers (toughest questions worth .1 intended to separate the big guns!) are gone and replaced by 10 tough questions which are worth a full mark. Thinking about it, with 50 minutes given per half there is only an additional 10 minutes added onto the quizzing but the half-time break for marking works well as it gives players, I think, a chance to relax a little. There are many a times in normal GP's when I have produced nothing in the past 20 minutes as my concentration starts to dip but this structure worked for me!
I somehow managed to score 114 points in total with 102 counting (lowest score is dropped - Lifestyle). The general consensus, and certainly what I found, was that the second half was much more brutal. I did manage to score my highest genre total, 26 (with 7th place being my highest ever genre finish) in Sport which I was happy with but struggled big time on Lifestyle which I usually use as one of my top scores. Physical World (Sciences and Geography etc) is usually dropped every time and I rarely spend too much time on it. That is one strategy to use and I considered doing it again this time but given Lifestyle's difficulty I managed to spend some more time with Physical World and indeed it reaped rewards.
My aim before the end was 82 points or above as in recent GP's I had been raising my score steadily and perhaps a finish in the Top 60. I outdid myself completely with the 102 and 28th place. I thought the score might scrape me into the Top 40 but was over the moon yesterday when the results came out.
Full Results can be found HERE
Congratulations to Kevin Ashman on a superb win!
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After lunch the pairs competition began and via the wonders of the world wide web I had managed to find a partner to pair with prior to the event. Thanks to Paul Hillman for putting up with for the afternoon. We paired quite well actually and scored highly in the opening round. The competition then progressed to knockouts. 15 questions per team and the highest scoring pair advance. We made it through the first round beating some very strong opposition but our one bad round came next and we were out. We played along anyway and managed some great answers. Pat Gibson and Kevin Ashamn took the title so congratulations to them on winning what was a difficult contest.
The pairs format was very interesting indeed and it was unique compared to anything I have previously played in. The time restrictions meant there were different ways to play it and it made for a good experience. I certainly will be keen to take part next year!
All in all the British Quizzing Championships were a fantastic experience and with venues in Derby, Edinburgh and Dublin over 120 people took part eclipsing the record I believe. Onwards and upwards.
Great result Dan, well played!
ReplyDeleteHi Dan. It was lovely to meet you in person yesterday. Congratulations on this and your fine 3rd place in the CIU- just too good for us in the end.
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