Tournament Information!
All teams will be involved in two preliminary bouts at the event venue. One bout will happen on Friday evening, and the other on Saturday afternoon.
Team Bout Format
Each team will participate in two preliminary bouts, one in the evening of Friday and one in the afternoon of Saturday.
There will be four rounds in each bout. There will be no fewer than three, but up to five teams in each bout. The first three rounds will be solo poems the fourth round will be team pieces.
Round One: Solo Poems
Rounds Two: Solo Poems
Round Three: Solo Poems
Round Four: Group Poems (A team piece must include a minimum of 2 poets up to a maximum of 6 poets)
The order for bouts will be determined by a random draw held before the commencement of each bout. In the event of a three-team bout, a second random draw will be performed to determine the order of the 4th Round.
Each bout will have a calibration poet (aka. the sacrifice!) to prepare the judges. This poet will perform before the official competition begins and will receive scores from the judges as if they are a part of the competition.
Each poet is encouraged to introduce themselves (name, school, poem title) before their poem. For example: “Hi, I’m Johnny. I’m from WordPlay Secondary in Vancouver. This poem is called Hullabaloo is Awesome.” The poet may take a pause after the introduction to prepare themselves to perform.
The official time on their poem begins with the first thing they say after this. If they add any additional preamble beyond these basics (ie. “…and I think cats are pretty cool, and I really miss mine, Mr. Fuzzbutt, who’s probably at home crying right now.”), their time may start at the discretion of the timekeeper. The time will also start if the poet engages with the audience in a non-verbal way (ie. by winking, or waving, or something deemed performance art).
Each poem will receive a score out of 30. Bouts will be scored cumulatively through all four rounds. Thus, each team will receive a score out of 120. The highest score wins.
But remember: the point is NOT the points – the point is the POETRY!
Getting to Team Finals
To determine which teams make finals, we look to each team’s combined ranks from preliminary bouts. The top 4 teams with the lowest totals – and thus the highest ranking – will advance to Team Finals Night.
If you place first in both of your preliminary round bouts you earn a total rank of “2” (1+1). If you place first in your Friday bout and fourth in your Saturday bout you earn a “5” (1+4). Lower totals are better. If there are any bouts with only three teams, the lowest possible rank in any bout will be a “3.”
There will be no more than four teams participating in Finals. If needed, tiebreaks will be used to determine which team makes it into Finals in cases where more than one team have tied with the same total rank.
The first tiebreak is “relative strength,” which measures the average total rank of all teams against which a team competed. The team who faced competition with a lower average total rank wins the tiebreak.
If “relative strength” fails to break the tie, the next tiebreak is based on point differential, which measures the combined difference between a team’s total points and those of the team’s that won first place in their bouts.
For example:
Team A finished in second place in both bouts. They were 0.6 points behind first place in bout one, and 1.1 points behind first place in bout two. Their total point differential is a 1.7.
Team B finished in first place in bout one, and third in bout two. Their differential for bout one is 0.0, but their differential for bout three is a 2.2 points. Their total point differential is a 2.2.
If required, the next tiebreak will be “best single rank,” which breaks on the basis of which team has the lowest single rank in any bout. In this case, referring to the above example, Team B would win the tiebreak on the basis of having a rank of “1” in their first bout.
If required, the next tiebreak will be “highest total score.” And if somehow two teams make it through all four of those tiebreaks without breaking the tie, we’ll turn to a chance and have a coin flip.
Team Finals Night
Finals Night will be a four-round bout, the same as every other team bout in the tournament on the Saturday evening. Teams are NOT allowed to repeat team pieces or solo poems that they performed earlier in the festival on the Finals Stage.
The team with the highest score after four rounds becomes the Hullabaloo Champion, winning the Poe A Tree Trophy.
If there is a tie for first, the teams may elect to perform one more round of three-minute solo poems to determine the winner. Any decision to compete in an additional round must be mutually acceptable to both teams involved. With respect to time and venue agreements, the event organizer may elect to call the result a tie without the opportunity of a tiebreaking round.
Underground Indies
About: Underground Indies is the chance for individual slammers to show the breadth and depth of their poetic skills. We’ll take the poetry off the microphone and put it in the round. The audience will be arranged in a circle around the performance area. There will be no stage and no microphone. 16 poets will compete in a four-round, head-to-head format to determine the best slammer at Hullabaloo.
Each school can nominate one poet to represent them at Underground Indies. This might be the winner of your school slam or your team captain. The selection process is up to the school or organization. If we have less than 16 reps, then we will have an open sign-up directly proceeding the competition to bring the number of slammers up to 16. If there are more poets signed up than spots available, we will perform a random draw to determine entry.
There are no judges, or rather, everyone is a judge. 16 poets are randomly drawn into 8 pairings. In each pairing, the two poets play rock/paper/scissors to determine who goes first. After both poets have performed, the winner is determined by audience applause.
To go all the way and complete the final match at Underground Indies, a poet will need four poems. The fourth round is an “Anarchy Round,” meaning poets may break the regular slam rules and perform a poem using props, costumes or musical accompaniment. They can even perform a team piece!
The time limit is three (3) minutes exactly. If a poet goes over time, the host will enter the circle and stop the poem. Any poem performed in Underground Indies is allowed to be repeated during the rest of Hullabaloo.
Explanation of Details & Hypotheticals for Rules Nerds
Team rotation in each bout. After a random draw, letters will be assigned to each team. The teams will perform in a rotating order through the five rounds in the bout, according to the following:
Round one (solo poems): team A, team B, team C, team D
Round two (solo poems): team B, team C, team D, team A
Round three (solo poems): team C, team D, team A, team B
Round four (team pieces): team D, team A, team B, team C
In the event that a bout consists of three teams, this order will be the same (minus Team D) for the solo poem rounds. Before the bout, a random draw will determine the order of the team piece round. In the event that a bout consists of five teams, this order will be the same, with the addition of a Team E. In this instance, Team E will never perform first in a round, and team D will never perform last in a round.
If a judge gives a score outside the range or in increments of hundredths or greater, the score will be rounded down to the nearest tenth or, in the case of a negative score, rounded up to zero.