by Kizzy on Mon Mar 12, 2007 4:10 pm
You may have a point about the bias, Dave, but I'm not sure it's all that strong in the good rooms.
Open motions, I think, can be highly useful, particularly as a training tool: teaches 1opp to rebut whatever's thrown at them, and usefully for more advanced speakers, teaches them to make strategic calls, like determining an opp line, on their feet. All of this stands you in good stead when you're speaking further down the table.
I'm also not certain that they give a massive bias to 1prop - any judge worth their salt will bear in mind, when assessing the debate, that it's an open motion.
Also, unless you're very talented at getting all the prop material that exists in the debate into the case in the first two speeches, second prop (if the 1prop team is good) will have room present deep, clever analysis (as happened in my debate at the weekend), and have room to clash directly with 1opp (who tend by necessity to revert to mechanistic stuff and principled args) in a way that the second speaker on prop, by definition of having to get the majority of the material for the side in, simply hasn't time to do.
This can mean that 2prop get the credit for working with an unknown prop and making clever arguments. If they fail to do this, assuming that 1opp haven't gone completely mad, they leave a goodly portion of the opp line standing, and 1opp can beat them by bringing in big, uncontested arguments.
2nd opp in this case have the longest time in the debate to get a handle on what they need to do to win, and have the room to build on what's become important in the debate. If they do anything approaching a good job of this, then it's not so difficult to take the 1prop team out of the debate, create interesting clash with 2prop, and go for a bottom half debate. However, this is the case with any debate, so the openness of the motion doesn't really have such a strong influence here.
So yes, 1prop does have an advantage of time, but it's not like this outweighs everything else in the debate. They still have to beat the other teams in order to win. Factor in debaters prepping cases that haven't seen the light of day before the debate, which may under debate be less watertight than they originally thought (see Bob Nimmo's 'WHO rumour list' prop), and it tends to balance out. For what it's worth, on a quick glance over the books of doom that have the last 3 opens comps in, the rooms I've judged has a fairly even spread of 1prop/1opp wins, but seem to yield a surprisingly large number of 3rds for 1prop.
I think this applies most effectively when you're at an opens comp like Cambridge or Durham opens and can expect a fair spread of table positions, but that the potential bias that can exist (particularly in mid-tab rooms, where the spread of abilities can be vast) is exacerbated by having only one motion open at the competition.
This thread really is bringing out the inner geek in me!