Kai+Yan


 * Kai Yan**
 * Iowa City West ‘14**
 * Dartmouth College ‘18**

I debated for four years as a 1a/2n at most major national circuit high school tournaments for Iowa City West. During high school I only read heg affs and went for politics upwards of 50% of my 2nrs. That being said, I am familiar with most styles of debates but just make sure to explain your arguments more as you go further and further left. I debated for a year as for Dartmouth College.
 * Background:**

--Speech times are set by the tournament not the debaters --Prep time ends when the you are done assembling the cards in your speech doc. If you have cards on 2 different computers, it counts as prep to combine them to one doc before flashing it to the other team. --Clipping is inexcusable but also a very serious allegation—If I catch you clipping I will not stop the debate but you will receive a loss and low speaks—if the other team catches you clipping it depends on the recording—if you are clearly clipping you will lose, but if you are very clearly not clipping, they will lose as to discourage finger pointing; unclear recordings will result in the continuation of the debate --if it’s not on my flow, it’s not in the debate
 * Guidelines that are __non-negotiable:__**

--Do what you do best, although everyone comes in debate with biases, I will do my best to remove those while judging. --Tech> Truth --No risk is definitely possible --Topicality is never a reverse voting issue
 * General Views**


 * Views on specific arguments:**
 * Case debates**—there is nothing I enjoy more than in-depth case debates—2nrs that know the aff as well as the 2a does and base their strategy around case takeouts, especially if they use aff’s 1ac authors, will receive very high speaker points.If you just read impact defense to the case, I will probably be pretty sad, many affs have many advantages with little solvency--punish them for it! Affs that know each of their internal links and how they interact with the rest of the debate will also be rewarded..


 * Disads**: good, obviously. Specific links and internal links to a generic disad can be a persuasive strategy. Specific disads to the aff are even better. Impact calc, especially turns the case, is extremely important.


 * Politics**: love it. Internal link debates are extremely important—who is the plan popular/unpopular with? Why does that affect the agenda? Which group overwhelms the other?—the team that is better able to answer those questions will likely be on winning side of the politics debate. Though winnable if the neg doesn’t make the correct answers, I have yet to hear a convincing aff politics theory argument. Link controls the direction of uniqueness can be a persuasive framing argument, but it cannot replace lazy debating on the uniqueness portion of the DA.


 * Topicality**—fine with it—you should slow down here compared to the rest of the debate. Like any other debate, impact calculus here is important. I find reasonability couched as aff predictability very persuasive, but reasonability as in ‘our aff is reasonable’ unpersuasive and encourages bad and lazy debating.


 * Counterplans**: The more specific the counterplan the better—if a counterplan incorporates 1ac evidence it becomes very convincing. Uniqueness counterplans are an underutilized strategic tool. PICs are great but probably need a solvency advocate. Advantage counterplans with a million planks even if they all have a solvency advocate are borderline unreasonable. Counterplans without a solvency advocate (though there needs to be a debate about what one is—does the 1ac identifying that there’s a problem and the neg coming up with an logical action count, or does it need to say the USFG should?) are very susceptible to theory. International and 50 state fiat are good. Consult and Conditions are not so good.

--the most important part of the debate is substantive framework—why should epistemology/ontology/methodology matter? And why is the aff’s form of epistemology bad enough to outweigh its material change? The aff should have a defense of their 1ac and be ready to bunker down on it. --I find the alternative debate intrinsically tied to framework and vice versa—that is if the aff is crushing you on disads to the alternative—it doesn’t make sense for me to reject the aff just because the 1ac may be flawed in some way if the result of the alternative would be worse. --the more specific your alt and explanation of why that resolves the impact of the K, the happier I will be with you—the more generic your alt sounds the more vulnerable you are to perms.
 * Kritiks**—probably not as bad a judge for these as you may think but you should note that majority of my experience come from answering them on the aff, so just be ready to explain the K more and use less jargon.

—although I am definitely amenable to framework, it certainly isn’t an auto-loss for the aff. However, affs must affirm the topic in some way. While this may not necessarily involve reading a plan, note that **the more anti-resoultional your aff is the harder it will be to win my ballot** ---I view framework debates as having both a theoretical component (limits, ground ect,) as well as a substantive method component (State good bad, policy focus good/bad). When left with no other method to evaluate by the debaters, I default to the impacts of theoretical framework over substantive. --I find the argument that "they read framework, so they're not genuine" as a non-starter. Similarly, I'm not interested in what either team has gone for in the 2nr against non-plan teams or what aff they have read before on the flip side. D ebate is a search for the best answer--answers like these seem a cop-out for the ballot.
 * Non Plan Affs**

--Speaker points are a __function of both pre-tournament preparation and in round execution__—that is, if a generic strategy and a specific strategy are executed equally, I will reward the team reading the specific strategy with higher speakers points as a way to reward research and preparation. Similarly, excellent preparation can make up for some missteps in execution. -- As a rule I reward __technical debate__, but here are specific ways to increase speaker points in front of me
 * Speaker Points:**
 * 1) Slow down and be clear—speed is based upon the number of arguments the judge writes down on the flow—being unclear will slow me down as I try to decipher what you just spewed out
 * 2) Stay organized—flowing is //extremely important//--anything that can go on the line by line goes there—long overviews are a tip off for generic pre-written blocks which make me sad. Totally ignoring the flow will result in low 27s for speaks
 * 3) Eliminate jargon—the words “fiat solves the link” or “fiat is illusory” by themselves do not mean anything and do not constitute an argument—too often jargon is used as an replacement for warrants
 * 4) Make smart analytics—do not give up just because you don’t have a card—the majority of debate arguments are massive hyperboles and finding the hole in their argument demonstrates strong analytical thinking and a breach away from a card war.
 * 5) Be respectful—if you do anything to make debate unwelcoming or unpleasant for the other team you will receive a massive reduction in speaker points.