Case Balance

As we're now going into into November, I thought it would be interesting to look at the case balance thus far. While not many tournaments have released their tab data yet, as far as I'm aware, I have calculated the data from Scarlett and Grey, Charm City, and through round 3 of PSU's tournament (I was unable to see the data for round 4 for PSU). The win breakdown is as follows:

Scarlett and Grey: (56% P 44% D)
Charm City: (56% P 44% D)
PSU (after Round 3): (60% P 40% D)

This case appears heavily P biased from what I can see. Thoughts?

I'm really curious what the breakdown is based on charge. Because against Battery I think the case is actually fairly balanced with maybe a slight P edge. But I think Defending against Negligence is really tough for Defense just because you can't call Harper for fact invention, which really limits the amount of viable theories you can do. Obviously points matter above all, but I think this year's case from a fact perspective is almost as slanted as Ryder last year. And while it was fine for a Criminal Case, I don't think there's enough evidence for Defense to reasonably fight against a preponderance standard for either charge.

Now the case will get more Defense sided as the year goes on like it always does, but if Plaintiff still has an above 5% margin in ballots by December then AMTA may be in the awkward position where they need to make the case more D sided, without also shifting the balance completely in the opposite direction for Regionals. I guess we'll just have to wait and see how that goes.

Thanks for that breakdown -- that's roughly in line with what I'd expect to see at this point in the season. I'm curious to see how the new Battery Pre-Trial Order will affect case balance -- I've seen a handful of teams run negligence defense theories on battery (which were iffy with the old order), I'm wondering if we'll see more of them.

Souper_Soups wrote:I'm really curious what the breakdown is based on charge. Because against Battery I think the case is actually fairly balanced with maybe a slight P edge. But I think Defending against Negligence is really tough for Defense just because you can't call Harper for fact invention, which really limits the amount of viable theories you can do. Obviously points matter above all, but I think this year's case from a fact perspective is almost as slanted as Ryder last year. And while it was fine for a Criminal Case, I don't think there's enough evidence for Defense to reasonably fight against a preponderance standard for either charge.

Now the case will get more Defense sided as the year goes on like it always does, but if Plaintiff still has an above 5% margin in ballots by December then AMTA may be in the awkward position where they need to make the case more D sided, without also shifting the balance completely in the opposite direction for Regionals. I guess we'll just have to wait and see how that goes.

I'm actually going to disagree, I feel as though Battery is the more difficult case to defend mainly because there is a lack of strong evidence to actually show that Peony broke the laws. The Midlands Building Code is very broad, meaning that on the one hand you can broadly interpret many of Peony Estates actions to breaking the rules, yet on the other hand the lack of specifics means it is difficult to point to specific acts on their part and state that they definitively broke the law. I also feel ex. 9 is super helpful for defense. It basically establishes that just having pesticide in wine isn't an issue if the levels are not too high. I think it would be nice for AMTA to have some more specific rules outlining what is and is not an illegal practice, but perhaps the law is vague as a way of leaving more room for argument. For that reason, I believe that the defense has more room for creative arguments than appears at face value.

Battery is rough because arguing intent is difficult to do with the witnesses available, mainly because every witness admits how much Harper hated Genesis. I think if case balance stays so P sided, the best change would probably to make Cannon more viable. Cannon doesn't need much, maybe just one actual piece of evidence to point to alcohol poisoning or maybe he just needs to be stronger in his conclusion. This may be a result of Cannon technically being a swing, but it's really difficult to make Cannon not sound like a conspiracy theorist as it is. Other than that, the only other major changes I can think is to make the swings a little more neutral. As it stands, there isn't really a good reason to call any of them over Blaire or other defense witnesses, so maybe just finding a few small defense points would help make them worthwhile to call.

Here is an update to the case balance based on the recently released tab summaries! I have also updated the PSU (Happy Valley) tournament to include fourth round data.

Happy Valley:       ∏: 60.7% ∆: 39.3%

Habeas Hippopotamus: ∏: 49% ∆: 51%

Colonial Classic:       ∏: 48% ∆: 52%

Grand Ole:       ∏: 55.4% ∆:  44.6%

Colonel Classic:       ∏: 49% ∆: 51%

Mumbo Jumbo:       ∏: 55% ∆: 45%

Sapientia et Doctrina:     ∏: 54.5% ∆: 45.5%



P still seems too strong in my mind. Thoughts?

Things get even worse if you look at either the R3/4 stats or the States between teams that actually did well at the tournament (5-3 record or better. The reason I run this stat early is that it tends to capture the teams that are performing at the level we will expect teams to be performing later in the season).


R3/4
Scarlet & Grey: 59.38% P
Charm City: 50.00% P
GOT: 56.25% P
Colonial Classic: 49.04% P
Happy Valley: 62.50% P
Mumbo Jumbo: 53.33% P
Mock at the Rock: 60.29% P

Overall (of the ones I ran) R3/4: 55.72% P

That's already a pretty bad overall bias (AMTA usually worries a fair bit and issues big case changes if the R3/4 is above around 52%).

Top Rounds
Scarlet & Grey: 83.33% P
Charm City: 42.86% P
GOT: 32.14% P
Colonial Classic: 50.00% P
Happy Valley: 78.57% P
Mumbo Jumbo: 78.57% P
Mock at the Rock: 62.50% P

Overall (of the ones I ran) Top Teams: 60.01% P

Update:

R3/4
Scarlet & Grey: 59.38% P
Charm City: 50.00% P
GOT: 56.25% P
Colonial Classic: 49.04% P
Happy Valley: 62.50% P
Mumbo Jumbo: 53.33% P
Mock at the Rock: 60.29% P
Yale: 60.58% P
ToRo: 58.93% P
Wonk: 51.56% P
Cornshucker: 48.75% P
Classic City: 48.75% P

Overall (of the ones I ran) R3/4: 55.31% P.  

Top Rounds
Scarlet & Grey: 83.33% P
Charm City: 42.86% P
GOT: 32.14% P
Colonial Classic: 50.00% P
Happy Valley: 78.57% P
Mumbo Jumbo: 78.57% P
Mock at the Rock: 62.50% P
Yale: 85.00% P
ToRo: 80.56% P
Wonk: 60.00% P
Cornshucker: 66.67% P
Classic City: 75.00% P

Overall (of the ones I ran) Top Teams: 65.34% P.


This is really really bad compared to past years. I went back and looked at where we were at roughly this time for the lest few years:
Hendricks:
R3/R4: 49% P (51% D bias)
Top rounds: 53% P (53% P bias)

Kosack:
R3/R4: 49.5% P (50.5% D bias)
Top rounds: 41.8% P (58.3% D Bias)

Ryder:
R3/R4: 49.7% P (50.3% D bias)
Top rounds: 50.7% P (50.7% P Bias)

Update:

Capital City: 48.4% P
Tobacco Road: P: 57.6
Soda City: P: 50.4%
GAMTI: P: 59.2%