Prefs, Strikes, and Conflicts

The tournament will operate using an MPJ (mutual preference judging) system. As such, you will have the opportunity to rank the judges in the pool in order of preference from 1-4, with 1's being high prefs (or judges that you prefer) and 4's being low prefs (judges you don't necessary like as much).

Additionally, we will be offering 15% of the judging pool as strikes, or judges you can avoid altogether. These will be designated as 6 or S on the pref sheet.

We encourage teams to enter judge conflicts as well. These will be designated as 5 or C on the pref sheet. Conflicts are defined as situations where debaters are given an unfair advantage by their judge. Situations where you feel a judge is prejudiced against any of your students, for any reason, should be handled by strikes and preferencing, and not by conflicts. A list of judges will be posted online prior to the tournament, and conflicts must be reported by the closing of prefs/ratings/conflicts. Failure to report conflicts will result in penalties ranging from a team losing all its prefs up to and including disqualification and removal from the tournament of a team’s entire school, at the discretion of the tournament staff. A full list of what constitutes a conflict can be found here.