Judge Adaptation

- Adopt a baseline of behaviors that don’t require adjustment

o Respectful behavior
o Act well in cross-x
o Don’t swear
o Don’t be rude
o Don’t say that you are killing the other team
- Observe your judges closely
o It is a major place to get intelligence
- Don’t assume you know your judges without previous experience with them
o Not all information is equally trustworthy
o Don’t trust other people’s judges opinion
- Judge philosophies
o How to read it:
 Don’t read it immediately before a debate
 Look for terminology judges use
 Who judges elimination rounds?
 You will read into the idea what you want to read instead of what is
actually there if you do it right before a round
 Ask judge questions for:
 If you have no info and require info for a debate
 If there is no philosophy
 Don’t ask questions with only one viable answer
 Pay attention to the style in which the judges write their philioiphies
 The style that it is written tells you about the judge
 What did they comment on tells you about what type of arguments
they like
o If they don’t write about Ks then they don’t judge Ks a lot
 Check the philosophy based on the types of arguments that interact
with your strategy
 The issues that a judge writes about are what they believe is correct
about debate based on the time period that they debated
 The tone of the judge philosophy tells you a lot about the way they
like debate
o If someone devotes a lot of their philosophy on a specific
concern you must adapt to that
o I will vote on anything means that they may be absolutely
honest about that and some people put that in there and
then start to go against that
 The old and the young are the most ideological commited
o Young – people lose on arguments and win on arguments
when you just finished the fire about how you debated and
what you lost on and this will be integrated into your
debate judging
 o Old – you have judged a lot of debates and you have an
opinion on how debate should be
 Looking for things within the judge philosophy
o T – Does the philosophy show an overall standard for
viewing T debates? A principle that can make a difference
in the way you debate. Also look for things on language of
topicality that can be used
 Ground v. Limits
 If someone likes reasonability they are more likely
good for aff on t
 Competing interpretations means they are good fr
neg on T
 Don’t use T tactically for a judge that wont like it
 If they mention specific cases use that to assess if
their core of the topic is similar to yours
o Ks – The terminology that is used is very important
 If the judge talks about specific T strategies and
stuff like that they know about Ks
 If it is clear that they don’t know about Ks don’t
read it
 Define terms in Ks for bad judges
 Change your shell for judges
 Write 1NCs with judges in mind
 There is a kritik spectrum similar to the topicality
spectrum
o Cirucmstances in which you have to adapt the 1AC
o CP – do they write about specific CPs and do they look are
competition very in depth
 Look for international fiat
o Theory
 No one likes poor theory debates
 “Blip” “Block” “Voting issue needs explanation”
this judge wants you to adapt how you argue theory

 Reject the argument? Or the team?

o Evidence
 How much evidence does the judge read
 What type of evidence do they read
 If a judge tends to call cards then make sure you
talk about the evidenve in the round so they will call
for it
 Does a judge call for evidence by name or label
 Take notes on all of the above for the type of
evidence they call
 Does the judge give arguments with evidence more
weight
 o Risk
 How a judge assesses risk and whether or not they
believe debate is an activity in which they think
about risk rather than truth

Keep a list of judges for yourself

It can help you and your squad

Don’t write down judge comments only in anger or in hate

Don’t have grudges against judges that dropped you

Given the type of discussion they gave for an RFD what types of arguments did they vote for

Pay attention to how your opponents are adapting