Ramakrishnan,+Rahul

Debate Background: Debated for four years in high school, three of them were on the national circuit, and qualled to T.O.C. twice. I look at debate as a game first and foremost. The round is yours, do with it whatever you want. RESOLUTION AFFIRMING AND NEGATING: Provide a framework or some way to evaluate and filter through impacts, whether theory, critical, etc. and have a comparative advantage of offense linking towards that framework to win the round. The framework is defaulted towards a desirability/offense-defense calculus, so whoever has a comparative advantage at the end of the round wins, complete solvency is never required. SO, burdens and other "aff has to meet all of these things before affirm" become DISADS to affirming not on face reasons to NEGATE. BUT, IF YOU provide reasons to look at the resolution as truth testing along with these arguments i will vote on them. You have the freedom to frame the round any way you want to, just provide and win warrants for them.

I think that weighing and strong comparative impact analysis gets people past the bid round deep into the tournament. Instead of blipping an extra two turns, spending time on a couple turns and impacting it, and weighing it (not stupid weighing like "i outweigh on magnitude because this is a big impact" but comparative weighing with different impacts on the flow like author credibility, time frame, strength of link, magnitude, etc.") will help you so much since it gives me an easy out because it automatically puts your argument at the top of the argument list i am filtering through, and if your winning it, then i pull the trigger there immediately. Collapsing in debate is becoming more and more rare. At the end of the round, going for all six layers of the debate is the easiest way to lose. Choosing one to MAX three or four and spending lots of time prioritizing those layers above others and winning them down is the FASTEST way to "game over" in debate and for you to win.

I never default neg or aff, because there is always comparatively more offense linking to a framework than the other side.

THEORY: Abuse stories should be clear, potential abuse requires a lot of warranting but I am definitely open to voting on it especially when abuse happens in cross examination. I am not very receptive to fairness is NOT a voter arguments, you have to do a lot of work on them for me because I think it checks back abusive negatives. In the 1ar, affirmatives don't have enough time to explain fairness is a voter for ten reasons, because they either have to cover and provide a theory shell, and negatives can dump reasons why fairness is not a voter and never have to answer the actual shell. The aff is screwed in 2ar everytime without going all out on theory in the 1ar. Discourse and education as voters have to be very well warranted.

CRITICAL ARGUMENTS: I am open to and will vote on any type of argument. I am not extremely learned in dense philosophy so if you are using dense critical cards, be very clear in explaining what it means AND HOW IT FUNCTIONS IN THE TECH PART OF THE ROUND, or else i won't know how to evaluate them compared to a regular impact analysis. I never vote on arguments I don't get, so the critical warrants have to be clear.

SPEED: You can go as fast as you want,speed is essential in strategic debatge. I judge the round based on clarity not speed. To make sure you are being followed 100% slow down on tags and card names.

SPEAKER POINTS: There are three ways to get very good speaker points. 1) If you combine persuasiveness with tech 2) You are funny 3) You are very strategic.

Things I hate to see and will affect speaker points but will not affect who I choose to win. 1] Bad theory, running shells on stock arguments, and beating back theory with defense i.e. no link, no abuse. Use counter standards and offense on theory to beat it back it is a lot more persuasive. 2] Bad apriori arguments3] Risk of link is the only thing needed to vote neg/aff arguments 4] Rude/ Not respectful/ Annoying/ Cocky

Things I love 1] I love strategic debate combined with solid substance 2] creative arguments that answer back or interact with multiple different types of opposing offense to give you maximum strategic value 3] Collapsing in debate, debaters always try to go for everything. Especially negative debaters create multiple layers in the nc i.e. theory, burdens, nc, aprioris, standard, case debate, off which is very strategic sometimes. But if you want to win in the 2nr, collapse to one to three of them and shut them down to have a game over 4] I LOVE negative debaters who also have the brute force method, of one negative case with no off or theory shell, and having a 5 to 6 minute dump on the affirmative case with dense and high quality non bilippy responses. 5] I love aff debaters that choose one to two layers of the debate in the 1ar itself after a dense negative spread, use warrants to prioritize them over the other layers and collapse on them throughout the rest of the debate. But whenever you choose to collapse YOU HAVE TO collapse in the 2ar. 6] Speakers that combine clarity and speed WITH persuasiveness which is difficult to do. Please provide voters, because you tell me where to look without me looking for you which is better for you. It clarifies the round for me.