12/13-12/20: LD & PF Tournament Results and Analyzing the PF Meta for the January Topic
Lincoln Douglas Debate
Tournament Results
This weekend, LD debaters competed at three bid tournaments: the Strake Jesuit Tournament, the John Edie Holiday Debates at Blake, and the College Prep LD Invitational.
Congratulations to Westlake’s Miller Roberts and James Bowie’s Bodhi Rosen for co-championing the 2023 Strake Jesuit Tournament. Additional congratulations to Bodhi for being the top speaker.
Full pairings and results can be found here.
Congratulations to Brophy’s Timothy Jiang for championing the 2023 John Edie Holiday Debates at Blake. In finals, Timothy defeated Greenhill’s Sarah Koshy on a 2-1 decision (Abad, Davis, St. Germain*). Additional congratulations to Jordan’s Kush Vijapure for being the top speaker.
Full pairings and results can be found here.
Congratulations to Harker’s Ansh Sheth for championing the 2023 College Prep LD Invitational. In finals, Ansh defeated Los Altos’s Abhinav Kasturi on a 3-0 decision (Bradley, Kymn, Lange). Additional congratulations to Abhinav for being the top speaker.
Full pairings and results can be found here.
Public Forum Debate
Tournament Results
This weekend, PF debaters competed at two bid tournaments: the John Edie Holiday Debates at Blake and the Holiday Classic at Cheyenne East.
Congratulations to Ezekiel Ehrenberg & Alex Calder from Delbarton for championing the 2023 John Edie Holiday Debates at Blake. In finals, they defeated Ava Dasari & Esha Venkat from Westwood on a 3-0 decision (Vasquez, Motolinia, Perri). Additional congratulations to Lakeville North’s Yezul Maharjan for being the top speaker.
Full pairings and results can be found here.
Congratulations to Emma Baldwin & Aiden Hurst from Loveland for championing the 2023 Holiday Classic at Cheyenne East. In finals, they defeated Sabrina Fox & Liliana Feeny from George Washington on a 3-0 decision (Coggin*, Ward, Craig).
Full pairings and results can be found here.
Best of luck to everyone competing next weekend! Stay tuned for future tournament results.
Registration for VBI 2024 is Open!
We are pleased to announce our initial 2024 dates and locations:
· VBI Philadelphia - June 29-July 12 at Swarthmore College (Public Forum and Lincoln Douglas)
· VBI San Diego - July 14-27 at the University of San Diego (Public Forum, Lincoln Douglas, and World Schools Debate)
· VBI Los Angeles - July 28-August 10 at UCLA (Public Forum and Lincoln Douglas)
Stay tuned for more information as we roll out announcements over the next couple of weeks, including more information about new curriculum offerings and 2024 instructors!
Click here to sign-up or learn more!
Analyzing the PF Meta for the January Topic
by Satvik Mahendra
The vast majority of y’all reading this article still have plenty of time until your first tournaments on the January PF topic about repealing Section 230. However, this past weekend at the John Edie Holiday Debates at Blake, debaters already began debating the topic. In this article, I’ll analyze how the topic meta appears to be shaping up so that y’all can get a better understanding of what your rounds may look like and so that y'all know how to best prioritize your time prepping. We’ll first look at some of the successful arguments debaters were reading, and then we’ll analyze whether one side of this resolution appears to have a statistical edge.
Arguments
For the purposes of this analysis, the only arguments I looked at were those that teams in Octofinals and beyond were reading at the tournament, since that gives us plenty of teams (32) to work with and these arguments are probably effective if they were good enough for debaters to get a gold bid at Blake. However, keep in mind that the skill of debaters is likely more impactful on the outcome of a round than the quality of arguments they read so actually research each of these arguments before you decide whether or not you think it’ll give you a better chance of winning your rounds. Also, since these arguments were being disclosed by teams at Blake, it’ll probably be a good idea to make sure you have blocks to them since I’m sure similar arguments will emerge at future tournaments.
AFF
On the AFF, the majority of arguments that debaters are reading focus on how repealing Section 230 would force online platforms to be more accountable and remove harmful content from their sites. There are a number of specific scenarios related to this bigger idea that debaters have been running. For example, holding companies liable can prevent the spread of extremist content that promotes domestic and international terrorism, misinformation that discourages individuals from getting vaccinated during disease outbreaks, deep fakes and fake news that results in Trump winning reelection in 2024 or polarization that harms American democracy, online campaigns that promote drug use and smoking, and content related to human trafficking. Additionally, there are arguments that repealing Section 230 will combat the big tech monopoly that currently exists, which is beneficial for stopping the growth of unregulated AI and for promoting more discourse online. Lastly, teams are also making arguments about the international implications of Section 230 repeal such as how repealing Section 230 can allow for easier tech cooperation with the European Union by having more closely aligned policies.
NEG
On the NEG, the breadth of arguments appeared to be much more limited, with teams really focusing on two broad ideas. The first is that repealing Section 230 will result in harms to tech companies through lawsuits or stricter regulations. Some teams also argue that this will disproportionately hurt smaller companies who tend to be more innovative. In addition, teams argue that because of these lawsuits, the court system will face backlogs which either weakens democracy or hampers innovation. Additionally, some teams specify that Section 230 is currently responsible for legal protection for cybersecurity companies and that a repeal would leave the US vulnerable to cyber attacks. The other common NEG argument is that repealing Section 230 will result in less free speech online which can be harmful since it makes it difficult for racial justice movements to flourish and can result in less accessible information about abortions.
Win Percentages
To better evaluate which side was actually winning more rounds, I only started looking at results after power-matching began in round 3, in order to try to remove skill disparities from the outcomes of rounds. I also didn’t count any rounds that weren’t debated i.e. byes and forfeits.
Another important consideration is that this analysis does not account for which teams were going 1st or 2nd in rounds, and since speaking order can have a significant impact on the outcome of a round, these results will likely not be the most accurate, but I found them interesting nonetheless.
In prelim rounds (R3 - R6), the AFF won 84 rounds and the NEG won 98 rounds. This meant that the AFF was winning ~46% of rounds while the NEG was winning ~54% of rounds.
In elim rounds, the AFF won 13 rounds and the NEG won 20 rounds. This means that the AFF was winning ~39% of rounds while the NEG was winning ~61% of rounds. This is definitely a larger disparity than what I found in power-matched prelim rounds but in later elim rounds past Octos, the disparity appeared to be in favor of the AFF.
At the start of this topic, I initially felt like the topic would have a slight NEG skew and these results tend to support these assumptions. However, I think that as the topic progresses and teams start preparing better arguments, this disparity should even out.
Satvik Mahendra debated at Jasper and Plano West for four years. Over the course of his career, he was ranked as high as #1 in the nation, earned 16 bids to the TOC, and qualified to the TOC and NSDA Nationals three times. Notably, he finished 4th at the 2022 NSDA Nationals, won the Bellaire, Arizona State, and Holy Cross tournaments, reached semifinals the Harvard Round Robin, Blue Key, and Peach State, reached quarterfinals at Harvard, Grapevine, and Bronx, and was 3rd speaker at Glenbrooks. He's also served as his team's PF Captain and has privately coached over a dozen students to competitive success.