10/4-10/11: LD & PF Tournament Results and Mastering Weighing: Common Pitfalls and Strategic Approaches
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10/4-10/11: LD & PF Tournament Results and Mastering Weighing: Common Pitfalls and Strategic Approaches
Lincoln Douglas Debate
Tournament Results
This weekend, LD debaters competed at the Nano Nagle Classic. Congratulations to Harker’s Ansh Sheth for championing the tournament. In finals, Ansh defeated Prospect’s Sophia Tian on a 3-0 decision (Bradley, Butler, Mishra). Additional congratulations to Sophia for being the top speaker.
Full pairings and results can be found here.
Public Forum Debate
Tournament Results
This weekend, PF debaters competed at three bid tournaments: the Georgetown Fall Invitational, the Nova Titan Invitational, and the Nano Nagle Classic. Here are some notable results:
Congratulations to Brielle Jani & Leeya Chaudhuri from DebateDrills and Rahim Kahloon & Victoria Fu from DuPont Manual for co-championing the 2023 Georgetown Fall Invitational. Additional congratulations to Alliance’s Aryan Bavera for being the top speaker.
Full pairings and results can be found here.
Congratulations to Ilan Arias & Sofia Teifeld from NSU for championing the 2023 Nova Titan Invitational. In finals, they defeated Gavin Poore & Aakash Suresh from Pembroke Pines Charter on a 2-1 decision (Cerullo*, Kulawik, Orlowski). Additional congratulations to Pembroke Pines Charter’s Gavin Poore for being the top speaker.
Full pairings and results can be found here.
Congratulations to Aumrita Savdharia & Stavan Shah from Fairmont Prep for championing the 2023 Nano Nagle Classic. In finals, they defeated Skyler Mao & Anthony Luo from Saratoga on a 3-0 decision (Campbell-Hodgman, Cruz, Schletzbaum). Additional congratulations to Fairmont Prep’s Stavan Shah for being the top speaker.
Full pairings and results can be found here.
Best of luck to everyone competing next weekend! Stay tuned for future tournament results.
Mastering Weighing: Common Pitfalls and Strategic Approaches
by Akhil Bhale
Weighing is a must-have skill. When debaters from both sides are winning a risk of their argument(s), the judge should have some comparison (weighing) to evaluate the round on. Thus, more often than not, executing the weighing debate well will win you rounds. However, the approach that debaters have to weighing is often misguided. In this article, I will discuss some common problems with weighing and what debaters can do to better set up the weighing debate in their rounds.
Problem #1: Overreliance on Weighing
The above still holds true; weighing is important, and debaters should do it, but there are times when it’s overdone and unnecessary altogether. Weighing primary involves comparisons of impact scenarios. To compare your impact scenario to your opponent’s, you must win your link. This is exactly where the problem lies- debaters will spend minimal time on the link debate and instead use that time to weigh. This is a bad practice as winning your link is always a prior question. If you decide to spend 30-45 seconds on weighing without properly responding to defense, your opponent can easily spend just as much time implicating that piece of defense and zeroing your link, thereby taking out your weighing. This obviously holds true the other way too. If you have substantial defense on your opponent’s link that is functionally unanswered, don’t be afraid to push them on that defense.
Gloss over the arguments and be strategic with what you have before you go down the weighing rabbit hole. Defense can win you just as many rounds as weighing.
Problem #2: Obsolete Weighing
With the current state of topics and the meta of reading big-stick extinction impacts, the days of impact weighing are gone. Scope, clarity of impact and any other made-up “weighing mechanism” is obsolete. What matters now is link weighing. There’s some ways you can approach link weighing.
First is straight up comparing your links. For example, in escalation vs. deterrence debates, you’d compare the two links, whether it be through timeframe or actor analysis. Note: Don’t be fooled when teams do “probability weighing” as link weighing, this is just an excuse for teams to read new defense and phrase it as weighing, so call them out on this.
The second way you can weigh is through link-ins. This mostly works if two impact scenarios are different but their terminal impacts are the same (for example, nuclear war leads to extinction vs. climate change leads to extinction). In these situations, you can read “link-in” arguments. Using the nuclear war and climate change example, either side can link into the other by saying “nuclear war leads to climate change because it would lead to massive amounts of soot and carbon being released into the atmosphere” or “climate change leads to nuclear war by exacerbating resource wars around the planet”. The main thing about link-ins is that they need to be paired with extra analysis that explain why your link-in outweighs their impact standalone. Piggybacking on the same example, you’d need to explain why climate change leading to nuclear war would be worse than nuclear war standalone and vice versa. Again, this can be done with timeframe, actor analysis, and in this case scope too. You could explain that their nuclear war scenario involves two countries getting into a confrontation whereas climate change would lead to resource wars all around the world therefore increasing the risk of war everywhere.
Note: You can do link weighing even on topics where there are a diverse set of terminal impacts. Links will always supercede impacts.
Problem #3: Unwarranted Weighing
Every weighing argument you make has to be warranted. If you’re in a allied proliferation vs. nuclear terrorism debate and you’re doing actor analysis, you’d have to warrant out the fact that terrorists are more likely to launch a weapon vs. a state actor proliferating. Similarly, it is insufficient to say “we outweigh because our link happens first”. You’d have to explain why (perception, etc.).
Weighing when done right is beautiful, and it will make it easier for the judge to adjudicate your round. Weighing rewards good debaters but also those that are strategic and creative, and that is what is so great about it.
Akhil Bhale debated for Westwood High School in Austin, Texas for 3 years. In his career, he qualified to the TOC twice and earned 8 career bids. Serving as PF captain for two years, his notable achievements include getting 7 bids his senior year, winning the Longhorn Classic at UT Austin, winning the Kandi King round robin, semi-finaling the Palm Classic at Stanford, and finaling the Cal Invitational at UC Berkeley. He made elimination rounds at Bellaire, Plano West, Blue Key, Emory and Churchill and was the 1st seed and an octofinalist at TFA state his junior year. Overall, Akhil was ranked #3 in the nation and #1 in Texas his senior year.