Shah,+Rishi

West Des Moines Valley—Class of 2015; debated for four years on the national circuit Johns Hopkins University—Class of 2019; not debating rishiyshah[at]hotmail[dot]com—yes I still use Hotmail. no you can’t make a joke about it.
 * Rishi Shah**

Speed is fine, I’ll say “clear” if I can’t understand you. T, Theory, Ks, performance, etc. are fine. No prep for flashing. Call me Rishi [Ree-She] please, not some variant of “judge”. Thanks :D
 * Intro**


 * Important Stuff **
 * You do you**—I honestly do not care what kinds of arguments you read. My 2NRs were mostly policy args, but I’ve gone for everything from Heg Bad to the Politics DA to the Consult the Earth CP. Most of the other people at Valley hack for the K, so I have a decent amount of understanding of the lit. The reason I went for policy args was because I was better at them, not because I hate the K. I feel like my role as judge is to decide who won, not to auto-check in for or against certain arguments. I will try my best to hold all predispositions that I have at the door; everything in this philosophy can be changed in a debate. A lot of this philosophy is just what I will default to absent argumentation on both sides.


 * Explain why you win**—Framing issues are super important because they give me a reason to resolve args in your favor. I may not resolve the competing stacks of warrants in your favor; you need to tell me why your warrants are better/subsume theirs. This is true both and the micro and macro level. Please take the first 30-45 seconds of the 2xR to tell me why you’re going to win/useful overviews are awesome. This is especially true in close debates—the easiest way for me to vote for you or get me to resolve a certain argument in your favor is by telling me why I should. You can even be super explicit about this and say something like "uniqueness debate--the reason it goes negative is because all of their evidence is from the Onion" or whatever and THEN extend your warrants/answer theirs.


 * Intelligence > Prep**—99% of debate arguments are laughably absurd. True, smart and/or logical arguments are all better than crappy pieces of evidence, especially when you are indicting their crappy ev. I totally get it if you don’t have a specific neg strat or a super great 2AC block. Obviously specifics are more strategic than generics, but I won’t punish you speaker point-wise if your neg strat is the Cap K, a process CP, and politics if you debate them well. Debating well on NEPA is way more important to me than reading some contrived DA with terrible evidence that your coaches handed to you before the round that you can’t explain. An important part of this is that I think that spin > evidence. I’ll try not to call for pieces of evidence because if your ev is actually as “on fire” as you think it is then tell me about why it’s so great instead of making me read it.


 * Ethos is important**—if I like you as a person I will want to vote for you. Doing things like being prepared, being funny, speaking clearly, saying smart things in speeches and cross-exes, being nice, etc. will help your speaker points and make me want to vote for you. In super close debates where something is very difficult to resolve this will make me want to resolve the issue in your favor.


 * Tech>Truth**--if debate was a search for the truth the Politics DA would always lose. Untrue arguments win debates all the time, and I think that it's your job to tell me why an argument is untrue. If you win that argument, then you win on a tech level anyways. However, true args are obviously way more persuasive than untrue args.

-Your chances of winning on T are a lot higher if you actually isolate impacts and do COMPARATIVE impact calculus. Things like “fairness” and “education” are vague and don’t make sense—explain to me why the ability to more effectively advocate for a position is more important than learning about a wider variety of different ocean policies. -Case lists are super important because they quantify your link/no link args on the limits debate. -Defensive arguments on the other teams standards are very helpful. -Indicts to the other teams evidence should have an impact—why does it matter if the other team’s ev doesn’t have the intent to define?
 * Specific Args **
 * Topicality: **

-Slow down for the CP text please, especially if it's long. -Comparative arguments about why the risk of a solvency deficit outweighs the risk of a net benefit or vica verca are super helpful. -I don’t care for offense/defense framing. There is such a thing as zero risk because of statistical noise. At a very low risk threshold, there's a chance that the change could be positive or negative, so there's even a risk of offense, not just a ton of defense.
 * Counterplans:**

-Process, Conditions, Consult, and Delay CPs Bad are the easiest for the aff to win. I’m pretty agnostic about everything else. -If you can read your CP on another topic, it is probably cheating. If the CP can result in the entirety of the aff, it probably doesn’t compete. -The easiest way to win a theory debate on the neg is with aff-specific solvency evidence. -Rejecting the arg seems to resolve all theory arguments except condo, but feel free to convince me otherwise. -I AM BAD AT FLOWING THEORY--If you're reading a blippy theory arg with 10 subpoints each three words long, you're going to have to slow way down.
 * CP Theory:**

-Impact calculus that doesn't compare your impact to the other teams impact is generally pointless. Turns case arguments that are fleshed out are an important part of this -There are other ways to talk about impacts besides magnitude/probability/timeframe that can be very useful. -Link uniqueness arguments are very persuasive for the aff against generic topic DAs.
 * Disads**­:

-The most important thing is dealing with the aff’s impacts. A lot of mediocre K teams seem to be in a bad spot when the 1AR answers all of their shitty k tricks and the aff gets their case impacts.If the aff does this, a perm and case outweighs strat is very persuasive. This is especially true considering most links are explained in the context of the 1AC not the perm. -I think framework in these debates is a lot more important than most people. I’m not just gonna be like “they get the k and you get to weigh the case” because that doesn’t make sense in a lot of instances. If the neg wins their framework that “the ballot is a yes/no question on neolib” then the aff can weigh their case as a reason why neolib is good, but things like perms and alt indicts make no sense. Affs PLEASE think about your framework interpretation because if it’s something stupid like “we get to weigh the aff and the neg gets counterplans and disads” the neg will be ahead on the framework debate which could screw you over. -Not all, but most kritiks (neolib, security) benefit from case-specific analysis, which most people take as talking about their advantages and the plan. That is great. However, going the next level and indicting their authors based on their quals or taking quotes from their evidence is fantastic and will make me super happy. -if you're reading a kritik against a critical aff, the most important thing is to deal with the perm/link debate. clearly articulate links to specific quotes/main ideas of the affirmative and have a lot of them.
 * Kritiks:**

-The negative needs an external impact to stuff. Whining about fairness is not an impact. I think that it is a lot more strategic for the neg to make arguments about the educational benefits stemming from engaging an opponent over a resolutional question. Of course, talking about how a limited topic is key to this is fine. -i viewed framework as a cp to solve the aff with your standards as net benefits. you need to have some way of resolving the aff impacts. -Affs need to attack the internal links/uniqueness components of neg impacts and not just repeat the cliche "fairness for whom" with no explanation. that is a good place to start, but you can be much more nuanced than that
 * Framework:**

-The easiest way to win these is by winning some sort of uniqueness claim about the affirmative impact being inevitable despite the plan -These generally just come down to card wars where the neg says hegemony causes prolif and the aff says hegemony solves prolif. The framing issues that I rant about above are especially important here. -When you're answering these, make sure to check author quals because a lot of impact turns make no sense (warming good, environmental destruction good, etc.)
 * Impact Turns**