Chen,+Yao+Yao

[Pre-Harvard 2016]

I have been coaching debate at the Liberal Arts and Science Academy in Austin, TX since 2005, where my focus is almost exclusively on policy debate. I was a three-year policy debater at Plano Senior High School in Plano, TX, and debated policy for one year at the University of Texas at Austin. I judge an average of 70-80 debates per season.

If there’s an email chain, please add me: yaosquared at gmail dot com

If you’re using a flash drive, **prep stops when you pull the flash drive out of your computer**. If you’re using an email chain, I won’t count attaching and emailing as prep time. **Please do not steal prep**.

If you have little time before the debate, here’s all you need to know: **do what you do best**. I try to be as unbiased as possible and I will defer to your analysis. I would rather listen to a politics+CP debate than a kritik debate, but I would also rather listen to you debating your strongest argument than you adapting to my preferences. As long as you are clear, go as fast as you want.


 * __Meta Issues:__**


 * I’m not a professional debate coach or even a teacher. I work as a finance analyst in the IT sector and I volunteer as a debate coach on evenings and weekends. I don’t teach at debate camp and my topic knowledge comes primarily from judging debates. My finance background means that, **when left to my own devices, I err towards precision, logic, data, and concrete examples**. However, I can be convinced otherwise in any particular debate, especially when it’s not challenged by the other team.
 * **Tech over truth in most instances**. I will stick to my flow and minimize intervention as much as possible. I firmly believe that debates should be left to the debaters as much as possible. I rarely make facial expressions because I don’t want my personal reactions to affect how a debate plays out. I will maintain a flow, even if you ask me not to. However, tech over truth has its limits. An argument must have sufficient explanation for it to matter to me, even if it’s dropped. You need a warrant and impact, not just a claim.
 * **Evidence comparison** is under-utilized and is very important to me in close debates. I often call for evidence, but I’m much more likely to call for a card if it’s extended by author or cite.
 * I’m now over a decade removed from my own debate career and I don’t judge or coach at the college level, which means I’m usually a year or two behind the latest argument trends that are first broken in college and eventually trickle down to high school. **If you’re reading something that’s close to the cutting edge of debate arguments, you’ll need to explain it clearly**. This doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear new arguments. On the contrary, a big reason why I continue coaching debate is because I enjoy listening to and learning about new arguments that challenge my existing ways of thinking.
 * **Please mark your own cards**. No one is marking them for you.
 * If I feel that you are deliberately evading answering a question or have straight up lied, and the question is important to the outcome of the debate, I will stop the timer and ask you to answer the question. Example: if you read condo bad, the neg asks in CX whether you read condo bad, and you say no, I’ll ask if you want me to cross-out condo on my flow.


 * __Framework:__**


 * I’m a better judge for topic education-style framework than for decision-making/portable skills. I’m somewhere in the middle on fairness.
 * **If a topical version of the aff is presented, I default to viewing this as a counterplan** to the aff’s interp. Please line up your offense and defense accordingly.
 * When I vote neg, it’s usually because the aff team missed the boat on topical version, has made insufficient inroads into the neg’s limits disad, and/or is winning some exclusion disad but is not doing comparative impact calculus against the neg’s offense.
 * When I vote aff, it’s usually because the 2NR is disorganized and goes for too many different impacts, there’s no topical version or other way to access the aff’s offense, and/or concedes an exclusion disad that is then impacted out by the 2AR.


 * __Topicality:__**


 * Over the years, “Tech over truth” has led me to vote neg on some untruthful T violations. If you’re neg and you’ve done a lot of research and are ready to throw down on a very technical and carded T debate, I’m a good judge for you.
 * Reasonability is a debate about the aff’s counter-interpretation, not their aff. **The size of the link to the limits disad usually determines how sympathetic I am** towards this argument, i.e. if the link is small, then I’m more likely to conclude the aff’s C/I is reasonable even without other aff offense.


 * __Kritiks:__**


 * Just like most judges, **the more case-specific your link and the more comprehensive your alternative explanation, the more I’ll be persuaded by your kritik**.
 * I greatly prefer the 2NC structure where you have a short (or no) overview and **do as much of your explanation on the line-by-line as possible**. If your overview is 6 minutes, you make blippy cross-applications on the line-by-line, and then you drop the last three 2AC cards, I’m going to give the 1AR a lot of leeway on extending those concessions, even if they were somewhat implicitly answered in your overview.
 * **Framework debates on kritiks rarely factor into my decisions**. Frequently, I conclude that there’s not a decisive win for either side here, or that it’s irrelevant because the neg is already allowing the aff to weigh their impacts. Usually, I find myself somewhere in the middle: the neg always has the right to read kritiks, but the aff should have the right to access their advantages. Kritiks that moot the entire 1AC are a tough sell.
 * **I’m not a good judge for “role of the ballot” arguments**, as I usually find these to be self-serving for the team making them. **I’m also not a good judge for “competing methods means the aff doesn’t have a right to a perm”**. I think the aff //always has a right to a perm//, but the question is whether the perm is legitimate and desirable, which is a substantive issue to be debated out, not a gatekeeping issue for me to enforce.
 * **I’m an OK judge for K “tricks”**. A conceded root cause explanation, value to life impact, or “alt solves the aff” claim is effective if it’s sufficiently explained. **The floating PIK needs to be clearly made in the 2NC** for me to evaluate it. If your K strategy hinges on hiding a floating PIK and suddenly busting it out in the 2NR, I’m not a good judge for you.


 * __Counterplans:__**


 * Just like most judges, I prefer **case-specific over generic counterplans**, but we can’t always get what we want.
 * I lean neg on PICs. I lean aff on international fiat, 50 state fiat, condition, and consult. These preferences can change based on evidence or lack thereof. For example, if the neg has a state counterplan solvency advocate in the context of the aff, I’m less sympathetic to theory.
 * **I will not judge kick** the CP unless //explicitly// told to do so by the 2NR, and it would not take much for the 2AR to persuade me to ignore the 2NR’s instructions on that issue.
 * Presumption flips if the 2NR goes for a CP.


 * __Disadvantages:__**


 * **I’m a sucker for //specific// and //comparative// impact calculus**. For example, most nuclear war impacts are probably not global nuclear war but some kind of regional scenario. I want to know why your specific regional scenario is faster and/or more probable. Reasonable impact calculus is much more persuasive to me than grandiose impact claims.
 * Uniqueness is important, but **I will default to “link controls the direction of the disad**” unless told otherwise and conceded by the other team.
 * **Zero risk is possible** but difficult to prove by the aff. However, a miniscule neg risk of the disad is probably background noise.


 * __Theory:__**


 * I actually enjoy listening to a good theory debate, but these seem to be exceedingly rare. I think I can be persuaded that many theoretical objections require punishing the team and not simply rejecting the argument, but substantial work needs to be done on why setting a precedent on that particular issue is important. You're unlikely to win that a single intrinsic permutation is a round-winning voter, even if the other team drops it, unless you are investing significant time in explaining why it should be an independent voting issue.
 * I think that **I lean affirmative compared to the rest of the judging community on the legitimacy of counterplans**. In my mind, a counterplan that is wholly plan-inclusive (consultation, condition, delay, etc.) is theoretically questionable. The legitimacy of agent counterplans, whether domestic or international, is also contestable. I think the negative has the right to read multiple planks to a counterplan, but reading each plank conditionally is theoretically suspect.