Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Goa Open 2010 results



The Goa Open 2010 quiz saw the Bombay teams come, see and conquer. Time for Goa quizzers to raise the bar, and get their own back.
  • 1st: Kartik Bose FC (Anannya Deb and Srinath TB) -- 100 points
  • 2nd: Banker and Shoe-Banker (Abhinav Dasgupta and Shubhankar Gokhale) -- 45 points
  • 3rd: Vikram aur Vetaal (Vikram Joshi and Vibhendu Tiwari) -- 35 points
  • 4th: By the Boat Club (Meghashyam Shirodkar and Anand Shivshankar) -- 30 points
  • 5th: Lumbar Puncture (Adish Talwadker and Anant Lawande) -- 15 points
  • 6th: Over the Hill Brothers (Rajiv D'Silva and Harshvardhan Bhatkuly) -- 5 points

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Glad that you high-lighted the mis-doings of some team that we witnessed seating in the audience....

Anonymous said...

1. Why were teams allowed to use cellphones on stage to begin with? Most KQA/Landmark quizzes specifically ask for cellphones to be switched off before the quiz starts.

2. If any member of the audience had suspicions of wrongdoing,shouldn't they have brought it up during the quiz instead of creating a ruckus after the event?

3. These are pretty serious allegations and you're putting it out on a public forum like Blogger WITHOUT any proper proof. Not cool.

4. Shubhankar and Abhinav were part of the team that finished second in Mega-Whats Mumbai with a score of 46 and are definitely not mugs when it comes to quizzing.


"Glad that you high-lighted the mis-doings of some team that we witnessed seating in the audience"

And you just chose to sit there and watch? Well played.


-A

Rajiv D'Silva said...

A,
1. The point is, teams were NOT allowed to use cellphones, just like any other quiz. Short of physically frisking the contestants to make sure that their cellphones were off, all the usual announcements were made.
2. They did, several times, and vociferously. 5 or 6 people seated in the section directly behind the team in question were absolutely convinced that something fishy was going on.
3. True. I have now taken off that particular line from the post. The issue should have been sorted out then and there, its too late now to bring it up when the team in question can no longer defend themselves.
4. Frankly, that counts for nothing. I have spent enough years on the quizzing circuit to know that cheating occurs on all levels and is even more effective when used by a good quizzing team.

Meghashyam said...

1. There were NO, repeat NO CELLPHONES - I was sitting in the team at the next table & clarified that twice in-quiz myself. It was a digital camera, and they were just taking pics of everyone & the stage/audience as well, for the record.
2. We wanted to win as desperately as anyone else, came 4th & could've mucho benefited by pointing out cheating - if there WAS any, which there definitely was not.

So there...

Anonymous said...

Dear Mr. Rajiv D'Silva,

I just think its a clear case of sour grapes as your team barely managed to make its presence felt

And regarding your pt.4 are you talking from personal experience through all the years of Tata Crucible? :P

Anonymous said...

Rajiv
Seriously disapointing to see this kinda behaviour.
Meghashyam who was next to the team has clearly clarified on FB as have some of the others who were on stage that team 2 did not have any help from google( Mainly because they were using a Digital Camera, which by definition cannot access the net).Why would u/ameya and whoever else be hell bent on not believing what the guys who were next to team 2 had to say? If you are putting up a post like this, you could at least check with shubhankar to show the device..if it genuinely was a digicam, would u post an apology

Its a bleeding quiz, you might really believe you got screwed out of a prize but you werent. You just got beat by a far better team. The honorable thing to do is suck it up and move on.

Rajiv D'Silva said...

Hey,
I thought I'd done the right thing by Shubhankar and co. by deleting that line (the original post wasn't mine) so i didn't expect to get flamed myself. For the record -
@ Megashyam: I agree with you. I certainly saw nothing overtly fishy from where i was seated and find it hard to believe that such a thing can happen. All the same, the members of the audience who protested several times are convinced, so i don't really know what to believe.
@ Anonymous1: This is not the first time i have been comprehensively beaten at a quiz and it won't be the last. This is not an allegation i have made to begin with, and i have gone the extra mile (and had to go against the opinion of other members of SEQC) to delete that allegation from the post. Regarding my "personal experience", give me a call sometime when you are in Goa and we will have a chat over it over a beer (on me). Unless you prefer to remain anonymous.
@Anonymous2: I'm not saying I believe in the allegation. Whatever actually occurred, Shubankar in my opinion certainly compounded the problem by a. persisting with using whatever device they were using even after they were warned a couple of times by the QM. b. having his hands under the table and his head bent over the device while the questions are being asked. Now he may have only been checking his pictures or sending sms or whatever but that kind of behaviour is unusual at a quiz so you can't really blame the audience for being suspicious.
Regarding the "sour grapes" allegation, we went to extraordinary lengths to make the quiz attractive enough for outstation teams to participate, and even delayed the prelims until the Bombay teams could get to the venue. If all we were interested in was in winning the quiz ourselves, I don't think we would have done that. In fact, i fully expected to be beaten when quizzers of the calibre of Vibhendu and Vikram confirmed their participation (I don't rate myself and Harsh highly as general quizzers, we are primarily a bizquizzing team). Believe me, I had "moved on" even before the event began.

Ameya said...

It saddens me that Rajiv is being vilified without any fault of his. Rajiv (like other teams in the final) wasn’t privy about the happenings while the quiz was on. I have seen Rajiv over all these years and I can say without an iota of doubt that he is ‘the most humble’ among the quizzing lot. In fact he is the one who took off the ‘starred’ (offending to some) section from the original post.
As with Meghashyam who is convinced beyond doubt that there wasn’t any fishy, there are many of us (sitting right behind the ‘shoe-banker’) who have witnessed the foul play. And regarding the case of ‘Sour grapes’, why would we single out just the #2? There were these other 3 BQC teams who were applauded unequivocally (esp. Anannya who was exceptional).
Finally, as I mentioned to Meghashyam on FB that this argument and counter argument will stretch onto eternity (especially by some Mr.Anonymous who doesn’t have the courage to put up his name). And in absence of any “documented” evidence, we all have the right to persists with our beliefs.
On the closing note, “We all can be cheated, but the cheater can’t cheat oneself”.

Anonymous said...

@Rajiv-
If Anirudh and yourself are both reasonably convinced that there was no foul play involved, shouldn't that be enough of for the rest of the quizzing fraternity in Goa?

And how in God's name can you use a digital camera to cheat in a quiz? I'd really like to know Ameya, since you're so cock sure that there was "foul play" involved. You make some serious accusations here and on FB without any proper proof.

And what's this BS about courage Ameya? You keep shut during the quiz and act like a big hero after the event by posting some tripe on FB/Blogger.

"And in absence of any “documented” evidence, we all have the right to persists with our beliefs."

Yea, that's why I still believe in FSM. What tosh. You're doing a fine job of discouraging people from attending future quizzes in Goa with your infantile behavior.


-Atul

Anniesen said...

I think this issue has gone further than it needs to have. As someone said in one of the comments, it's just a quiz.

Eventually, it comes down to two mistakes on my part. One was not to have taken firmer action when the supposed cellphone activity was first brought to my notice during the quiz. And I then compounded that mistake by posting here that footnote to the results when I had no proof of anything untoward.

Apologies are due, but they're due from me, certainly not Rajiv, who was simply trying to clear the air. So I'd like to apologise:
(1) to the finalists at the quiz, and to those members of the audience who came to me with allegations of wrongdoing, for not acting firmly at the time; and
(2) to Shubhankar and Abhinav for posting that comment here when I had no proof of their wrongdoing. Rajiv did the right thing in removing that bit from my post.

Let's close the matter now.

Annie