Preparation and Dropped Bankers

If you’re a long time reader you may recall me saying in the past how much I’d love to play properly in the highly respected Bridgend Quiz League, rather than just guesting. This Autumn my wish has come true, as I’ve been invited to play for the Llangewydd Arms , promoted from the second division last year after a well earned second place. We had our first league match last week.

I’m not going to go on about the match. However what I did want to say was to make an observation which has occurred to me in the last few days. I’m not going to lie to you. I’m a lazy quizzer. I really don’t prepare for quizzes. I tend to say to myself that I go to so many quizzes, and I set quizzes quite regularly, and this serves me well enough for preparation. Most of the quizzes I take part in are social pub quizzes, so its fair enough. However embarking on a league season gave me some pause for thought. It’s a good 5 years or so since I played in a league quiz week in , week out, but that’s not so long ago that I’ve forgotten about the differences between league quizzes and social quizzes. There are things which you know you can get away without knowing in a social quiz, which you really have to know in a league quiz – because if the opposition have been preparing properly they will definitely know it as well.

Cut to the chase. Last weekend I spent quite a bit of time learning some stuff I’d picked out as being the sort of thing we’d need to be up to speed with. I shan’t bore you with the details, but amongst other things a lot of more recent political and sport stuff seemed to be a good place to start.

Of course, in the match itself, none of my carefully prepared answers were required ! What was even more galling was that we dropped points on subjects I would normally expect to be bankers – Greek Mythology – National Flags – American Geography. That’s the way it goes. I still think there’s a good bet that some of the stuff I worked on last week and this week again will bring us some points before the season ends. However, that’s not quite where the story ends. In all 3 social quizzes I’ve played in since this time last week, at least one of the things I learned has come up. Which is a nice bonus, but not why I did it in the first place !

I thoroughly enjoyed the match on Monday, and our opponents proved themselves to be a very good team, and genuinely nice people as well.