Lai,+Charles


 * Debate Experience Summary:**
 * 3 Years with Houston-Memorial High School
 * Broke to elimination rounds in both Texas state tournaments (UIL/TFA) as well as NFL Nationals. Reached bid rounds/won speaker awards at a few TOC qualifying tournaments.
 * Wished I started one year earlier :P
 * 1A/2N life


 * Things I believe :**
 * **Overall Strategy**
 * **Tech > Truth:** I will typically vote for whatever is on my flow over the truth of a particular argument. I believe that even if an argument is true, if it was not argued for sufficiently, you should not win said argument. You should always be doing impact calculus, drawing comparative arguments, and pre-empt what your opponent will say next to essentially write my ballot for me so that there is no ambiguity in who won the debate. The only time I'll consider Truth > Tech is when both teams drop the ball on critical arguments and I have no choice but to analyze and read the cards to see what is actually happening. tl;dr work on your impact calculus and your line-by-line argumentation and you'll win me over :). The following sub-points branch from this overall statement on Tech > Truth.
 * **Make Warranted Arguments:** Every argument should have a claim and a warrant. Never rest your laurels on conjecture - please tell me why your taglines and buzzwords are true for me to consider them. Moreover, if you do this more than a team that doesn't do this, your probability of winning my ballot substantially increases. This means good impact calculus, good evidence, and good line-by-line argumentation.
 * **Every Argument is a "DA"**: Sometimes your thinking changes when you run certain arguments. A lot of debaters separate the methodology they use when running T, theory, kritiks, DAs, CP, etc. Yes, the type of argument is "different". But the key thing I think is that every argument is a DA against me voting for the other team. Theory is a DA to their strategy. Kritiks are DAs to their method of thinking/presentation. Topicality is a DA to their approach to the resolution. Thinking in this paradigm will help improve your impact calculus and clash in the debate, and subsequently help win my ballot.
 * **Specific Arguments**:
 * I feel like I've written enough for you to get a good sense on what kinds of debates I like to see. In terms of arguments you want to run, pretty much anything flies with me. I've run everything from militaristic, hegemony based affirmatives to playing music by Sun Ra for 8 minutes. Just be technical, win line-by-line battles, and **have good impact calculus**. That being said, I'll list out a few arguments I'm probably more comfortable evaluating
 * Excellent, well researched PICs (I ran some type of PIC against some of the more common affs)
 * IR based kritiks (I ran Gender IR in pretty much 98% of my Negative rounds senior year)
 * CP/DA/Case (I had some kind of CP/DA/Case debate in 98% of my Negative rounds)
 * Topicality
 * Theory
 * That being said, feel free to run anything you want. Don't assume I know your author/literature base. Be clear and make flowing the line-by-line easy. **Impact Calculus.**
 * **Random stuff**
 * You probably wont speak faster than I can flow, but I can't flow unclear speakers
 * I think terminal impact defense is possible in a debate round
 * Ethos is very important; being rude is not the same as having good ethos
 * I usually default to not killing a lot of people
 * Speaker points are based on how easy you make it for me to flow (RE: argument organization, line by line, clearness)
 * "Even if" statements are really powerful because it allows you to pre-empt opposing arguments while developing your own. Please use them.
 * If you do well with the theory debate, you can very well convince me that it's a voting issue
 * **//tl;dr://** //tell me why i should vote for you so i don't have to figure it out myself//


 * Speaker Point Policy:**
 * 30 - Speech of the year
 * 29.5 - Top 5-10 speeches I've seen at this tournament
 * 29 - Superb
 * 28.5 - Great
 * 28 - Good/Above Average
 * 27.5 - Average
 * 27 - Slightly Below Average
 * 26.5/26 - Below average
 * <26 - You were probably necessarily being a jerk
 * 0 - Some kind of ethical violation happened
 * //Show me your flows at the end of the round for an extra .5 speaker points//

I'll try to figure out a consistent criteria from the other judges who judge the event. Otherwise I'd probably vote on my gut.
 * Events other than debate:** http://i.imgur.com/fkLF9.gif

//For anything else, just ask.//

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