Movies: Thirteen | Main | Links: Usage of Words around the Country (Soda vs Pop vs Coke)

January 29, 2004

Trivia at the Kinvara

Returned to the Kinvara pub last night for trivia for the first time since December. Unfortunately, they have now switched Trivia hosts from a person (DJ Michael), format and questions we really liked to a really stupid format so we likely won't be back, which is also too bad in that we like the pub and our waitress, Leah, a lot. Still, they were extremely busy last night so this change may be a good one for them, but alas not at all for us. We did manage to take second despite the bad format.

As a gamer and strategist, a brief description of the format and why it is poor seems in order. The previous bidding element which added a ton of strategy to the game is now gone for the 16 'standard' questions, so mostly it is just a simple matter of knowing a question or not knowing it. They have also now added two shot questions which basically allow you to buy points in the game by buying shots at the bar. A funny idea, but one I still don't particularly like is the cell phone question which legalizes for one question the common cheating practice of many teams of calling friends for answers or to do Google searches.

Worst of all, though, is the change to the multiple of 5 questions (#5, #10, #15, #20). These questions now allow you to bid as much as you want of points you have previously earned and thus either double them or lose them. Also, based on last night, these questions are all related to a single theme (last night's was the New England Patriots). This has all sorts of problems: 1) Rewards the teams ahead as they can gain more if they know the answers. 2) Tells you you should instantly give up if you are really bad at the theme as these questions become the deciding point of the game and if you don't know them, you have no chance (we were 2nd last night only because Matt knew the answers to all of these so we doubled our score every time). 3) Causes you to be unrecoverably out of it if you bid it all and miss one of these.

Posted by aarondf at January 29, 2004 04:50 PM

Comments

Post a comment