LL68: For the LLamas

[This Is Kirk!]

Old Billings Learned's parents should have had some fun and named him Sleight Of Hand.

[schoe]

Does anyone know how Learned Hand pronounced his name? If it were my name, I'd definitely go with two syllables on Learn-ed.

One could ask the same question about the League as a whole.

[econgator]

Does anyone know how Learned Hand pronounced his name? If it were my name, I'd definitely go with two syllables on Learn-ed.

I almost answered "one word titles with an exclamation point" before remembering it was Oh! Calcutta!. I totally forgot that Hello Dolly! had an exclamation point, but new the others, so changed it to the right answer.

Off to a good start, but even with stellar scores, defense prevents me from getting higher than 4th. A rundle is tough, folks. Tough.

In law school all the professors pronounced his name "Learn-ed".

That's the only way I've ever heard it pronounced.

[naurae29]

Does anyone know how Learned Hand pronounced his name? If it were my name, I'd definitely go with two syllables on Learn-ed.

In law school all the professors pronounced his name "Learn-ed".

That's the only way I've ever heard it pronounced.

+1.

[ouachiouat]

After my first week of LL, I'm finding out the most frustrating thing isn't so much a lack of knowledge (which is what I thought would kill me, and probably will later), it's that I'm terrible at this whole defense thing. I'm 6th in my rookie rundle in TCA, but 3rd in TPA and have the most CAA. That makes me 1-3-1 and 13th in the standings. Ugh.

[seaborgium]

After my first week of LL, I'm finding out the most frustrating thing isn't so much a lack of knowledge (which is what I thought would kill me, and probably will later), it's that I'm terrible at this whole defense thing. I'm 6th in my rookie rundle in TCA, but 3rd in TPA and have the most CAA. That makes me 1-3-1 and 13th in the standings. Ugh.

You shouldn't be discouraged by this, because defense is such a crapshoot in one's first season. You're stuck trying to gauge absolute difficulty of the questions, whereas in subsequent seasons your opponents will have more meaningful stats for you to tailor your defense to.

[cmp146]

After my first week of LL, I'm finding out the most frustrating thing isn't so much a lack of knowledge (which is what I thought would kill me, and probably will later), it's that I'm terrible at this whole defense thing. I'm 6th in my rookie rundle in TCA, but 3rd in TPA and have the most CAA. That makes me 1-3-1 and 13th in the standings. Ugh.

I agree with Seaborgium. My first two seasons were awful defensively. You will learn to gauge your opponent's question history versus question difficulty after you get some practice. Right now, you have hardly any data on your opponents, so it is just on how hard you think the question difficulty is versus their geography. So, don't give 3 points on French Canadian film or food to the guy from Montreal.

[mrexley]

After my first week of LL, I'm finding out the most frustrating thing isn't so much a lack of knowledge (which is what I thought would kill me, and probably will later), it's that I'm terrible at this whole defense thing. I'm 6th in my rookie rundle in TCA, but 3rd in TPA and have the most CAA. That makes me 1-3-1 and 13th in the standings. Ugh.

My first week as well, and I've already allowed and lost to a 9(5) -- that hurts. But as the LL veterans have stated, there's not much we can do about it with the limited information we have at the rookie level.

[schoe]

After my first week of LL, I'm finding out the most frustrating thing isn't so much a lack of knowledge (which is what I thought would kill me, and probably will later), it's that I'm terrible at this whole defense thing. I'm 6th in my rookie rundle in TCA, but 3rd in TPA and have the most CAA. That makes me 1-3-1 and 13th in the standings. Ugh.

While DE becomes easier once you're out of the rookie rundle and your opponents have history that you can mine, CAA is not a stat that's ever within your control at any level unfortunately. On the other hand, however, take comfort in the fact that your CAA is likely to regress to the mean over the course of the season; if you have the top CAA in your rundle, your schedule may just have been skewed where you're facing all the strongest players in your rundle right at the start, and it should mellow out as you play the rest of the rundle (including weaker players) over the rest of the season.

[econgator]

After my first week of LL, I'm finding out the most frustrating thing isn't so much a lack of knowledge (which is what I thought would kill me, and probably will later), it's that I'm terrible at this whole defense thing. I'm 6th in my rookie rundle in TCA, but 3rd in TPA and have the most CAA. That makes me 1-3-1 and 13th in the standings. Ugh.

Defense is nice, but it isn't the end-all, be-all. Last season, I was 2nd in my Rundle in DE (.770, just .003 behind Mennonknight), but I finished 22nd and was relegated.

[RichmondJ]

After my first week of LL, I'm finding out the most frustrating thing isn't so much a lack of knowledge (which is what I thought would kill me, and probably will later), it's that I'm terrible at this whole defense thing. I'm 6th in my rookie rundle in TCA, but 3rd in TPA and have the most CAA. That makes me 1-3-1 and 13th in the standings. Ugh.

While DE becomes easier once you're out of the rookie rundle and your opponents have history that you can mine, CAA is not a stat that's ever within your control at any level unfortunately. On the other hand, however, take comfort in the fact that your CAA is likely to regress to the mean over the course of the season; if you have the top CAA in your rundle, your schedule may just have been skewed where you're facing all the strongest players in your rundle right at the start, and it should mellow out as you play the rest of the rundle (including weaker players) over the rest of the season.

Agreed. If (as you report) your TPA rank is better than your CAA rank, you're doing something right. Also, and maybe most important, we are just five days into the season. The sample size is so small that stats are bound to be all over the place. I've historically been pretty good at defense. But my DE for this season so far is a terrible .412. Does that mean I've forgotten how to defend? Maybe, but more likely it just means that we're only five days into the season.

[dnbguy]

I am doing a lot better in terms of TCA than my rookie year, but my defending has been pretty horrible. My DE is at .524 so far, with 10 UfPA. My opponents seem to have high get rates in categories with really tough questions, and low get rates in categories with really easy questions. Oh well!

[Bamaman]

You do have their name, gender and hometown, so that can be of some help even with little or no question history. Some questions skew towards one gender or the other. Or if the question relates to California and your opponent is from California, you might want to assign a low score there.

[dhkendall]

You do have their name, gender and hometown, so that can be of some help even with little or no question history. Some questions skew towards one gender or the other. Or if the question relates to California and your opponent is from California, you might want to assign a low score there.

Or if, say, they're from California and it shows they went to Cornell, a question about upstate New York is off the table too.

[reddpen]

Well, my question percentage so far is .667 and I'm 0-4-1 in C. It's rough when you're not only near your rundle's lead in CAA but your 20 correct answers have yielded only 21 match points (1 more than the minimum I could have earned). If my defense had been absolutely-magically-perfect, I could have a record of 1-1-3. My defense feels as if it's been soft/unlucky rather than abysmal, but maybe I'm just bad at it.

I'm already dead last in my rundle, and, once we get to the questions I don't know, I'm toast.

Being near the top of the rundle in CAA tends to even out over the course of a season, but not always. Sometimes people just have their good days against you. At this point you're tied for second in CAA and tied for second-to-last in DE; the latter is the one of those you can influence.

Color me impressed that both you and econgator have but a single lifetime miss in Math.

[Cat Hammarskjold]

You do have their name, gender and hometown, so that can be of some help even with little or no question history. Some questions skew towards one gender or the other. Or if the question relates to California and your opponent is from California, you might want to assign a low score there.

Or if, say, they're from California and it shows they went to Cornell, a question about upstate New York is off the table too.

However, it seems that if it's listed that you live in Ohio and both of the colleges listed are in Ohio, opponents like to still give you two or three points on Ohio-centric questions.

[MarkyMarkm]

Alright, alright, alright.....a 2(1)-1(1) win.

[mpahu]

MD6: W 7(5)-0(1). Missed out on my first 9(6) because I was so certain that standard temperature and pressure was 20°C, and thus 293 Kelvin.

Huge Pirates fan, so I loved the Dock Ellis question. If you don't have time to watch the whole documentary on Neflix, there's a great short narrated by Dock himself.

[SBurrus]

Notched my first 3-pointer on the Kelvin question, which was a surprise, and recorded a 5(3)-2(2) win on MD6.

[BennyBXB]

I'm proud of surviving the first week without dropping to position 20, but one more 0(1) seals my fate, and with the third-worst defense and second-worst offense, I hit bottom on point differential. In fairness, my CAA is also highest in the league, but my record would probably still be 0-6 against anybody but the absolute worst in the Rundle.

I'm scratching my goal to finish in the top 12. My new goal is to win something.