We play in a few quizzes where they are "huge" and I mean "huge" teams. Anything upwards of 10 and not surprisingly the big teams are always in the top two positions. The fact that such big teams makes it harder for us to win does not bother me, I am still learning and gaining experience so not winning every week does not concern me. But the team of 10 who only play when there is a large number of them really puzzles me and annoys me in some ways.
I am not overly concerned with winning as I said but for us and other teams it would be nice to think we had a "chance". The team have quizzed before with 4-5 players and came about half way but at full strength they are hard to beat (made harder by a quiz in which 20 of the 60 points on offer are from pictures.....a round where more players helps incredibly).
Now I do not want to turn this into a rant about big teams or sound bitter in anyway, I hope I made that clear. I just cannot seem to work out the logic as to why someone would want to play in such a large team and what pleasure they get. If in such a big team surely most questions more than one player will know the answers.....I would feel like I was not contributing. I would not like such a big team even if it meant guaranteed victory every week. But that is just my preference!
I could maybe understand if the prize was big but it isn't. Even a win in every round and tiebreak bonuses would not cover their costs.
I know I should not pick on this one team in particular as for all I know it could be a family who only get one chance a week to socialise and use that time to quiz but this leads me on to a post I will consider tomorrow.....should team sizes be limited?
Hi Daniel
ReplyDeleteInteresting post. As regards the question rounds, conventional wisdom has it that the optimal number of players in a quiz team is 4 or 5 – some prefer 4, and others 5. Less than that and you risk having gaps in knowledge exposed, more than that and you’ve probably just got more people to argue with.
I take your point about pictures, where more people in a team must give you an advantage.
Still, here’s a point to think about. Yes, it’s really annoying to be beaten by a team of 8 to 10 players. Also, when you think about it, there’s more place for a ‘cheat’ to hide within such a big team, and look up answers on their phones. But as much as other players dislike being beaten by a huge team like this, they also dislike being beaten by a team of one.
I agree that it is annoying being beaten by what looks like sheer weight of numbers. In the rugby club on a Thursday night the usual winners now are an excellent team of 6 players. 2 are decent, all round quizzers. One of them is a good all round quizzer. And one of them is a very good all round quizzer – joint runner up in Brain of Britain this year no less. The other two might not be such good all rounders, but have in depth areas of knowledge in their own subjects, and cover ground the others don’t. On my team, there’s usually me, and two social quizzers who, with the best will in the world, don’t supply many answers all evening. Sometimes Brian plays when he’s not doing the quiz, and he’s a good all rounder. But even then we can only ever really get within a couple of points of them, and even then we’re crap at pictures. Every now and then, I won’t lie, I get an urge to shout out – ‘let’s take on any three of you and see what the outcome is ‘ , but that would be ignorant and churlish. It’s bad enough thinking it, let alone saying it.
I’ll be honest, I don’t see the enjoyment of playing in such a large team, but there we are. If people want to play that way, and want to play together it is difficult stopping them. I mean, where do you draw the line. If you set a team limit of 4 players, what about the poor devils who always play with 5 ? You can introduce handicaps , and I’ve seen it done where you are permitted 4 players, and then for each player over that number you get docked a certain amount of points from your final total. That worked quite well in the place where I saw it done.
It's interesting to compare this aspect of quizzing with sport. Such disparities in team size are not generally tolerated in sport of course, but then again there is usually some effort to grade teams appropriately.
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