{"id":13963,"date":"2012-12-29T16:28:40","date_gmt":"2012-12-29T15:28:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.achteminute.de\/?p=13963"},"modified":"2013-02-06T13:45:20","modified_gmt":"2013-02-06T12:45:20","slug":"wudc-2013-break-rules-revised","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.achteminute.de\/en\/20121229\/wudc-2013-break-rules-revised\/","title":{"rendered":"WUDC 2013: Break rules revised"},"content":{"rendered":"

The break is now bigger than ever! 48 instead of 32 teams do break after nine preliminary rounds at this World Universities Debating Championship (WUDC or Worlds). That is twelve percent of all teams breaking instead of only eight percent. \u201cThus, the system we have now is fairer than any of the other proposed systems for the WUDC break,\u201d Marcus Ewald<\/strong>, president of the EUDC Council, is sure.<\/p>\n

\u201cHuh?\u201d you may go, \u201chow, mathematically speaking, can 48 teams break to octo-finals? How do they fit into eight rooms?\u201d Well, with the new system, the first 16 teams break save to octo-finals. The other 32 teams of the 48 have to compete in so-called \u201cpartial double octo-finals\u201d, or mockto-finals, as vernacular has it \u2013 the then 16 first teams fill the residual team slots in the regular octos.<\/p>\n

\"Ex-EUDC-Pr\u00e4sident<\/a>

Former president of the EUDC Council Jens Fischer (left) and current president Marcus Ewald at Euros in Belgrade. (Picture: Henrik Maedler)<\/p><\/div>\n

So far, the old WUDC break rules said that the first 32 teams simply broke to octo-finals. At a competition with 400 teams that meant only eight percent of participants who got the chance to make it to the out-rounds. Hence, many cried for a break expansion: At least ten percent should have the chance to break \u2013 with twelve percent the new rule is even over-fulfilling that cry.<\/p>\n

Last year\u2019s proposal, confirmed by the Council at Worlds, but of course not enacted in Manila, allowed all teams at a score of 18+ points to break, leaving the eventual arbitrariness of speaker points unconsidered. That was 18 points because this number means that in nine prelims, on average you’ve always made it second in your rooms. But on the whole, with 400 teams participating, that would have meant up to 80-something teams breaking \u2013 with exact planning ahead impossible for the hosts: For instance, the number of rooms and the number of breaking judges depended on the exact number of teams that actually broke. That\u2019s when the term \u201cmockto-finals\u201d was first heard among debaters, mocking the up-to-then strange combination of octos.<\/p>\n

So to give participants what they wanted \u2013 a break expansion \u2013 but at the same time meet the host\u2019s need for secure planning and still have a fair break, a new system was necessary. Hence, now 48 teams break to partial double octos and octos. So, when delegates sat in pre-Council on December 27, a \u201cspecial session\u201d was opened with a majority of two thirds of delegates present. Before the special session was closed, everybody had the chance to discuss the new proposal and a vast majority consented to the idea of 48 teams breaking. The new system is now executed immediately at Berlin Worlds meaning that we will see the names of 48 teams at break announcement on New Year\u2019s Eve. It is also mandatory for next WUDC \u2013 \u201cunless a two-third majority of delegates will decide otherwise at the next Council or pre-Council,\u201d Marcus explained.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The break is now bigger than ever! 48 instead of 32 teams do break after nine preliminary rounds at this World Universities Debating Championship (WUDC or Worlds). That is twelve percent of all teams breaking instead of only eight percent. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13094,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1017],"tags":[88,152,1037],"class_list":["post-13963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-2","tag-ewald","tag-wudc","tag-wudc-2013"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.achteminute.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.achteminute.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.achteminute.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.achteminute.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.achteminute.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13963"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.achteminute.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14730,"href":"https:\/\/www.achteminute.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13963\/revisions\/14730"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.achteminute.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.achteminute.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.achteminute.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.achteminute.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}