How to Host a Trivia Night Tip #3 - Scoring

Keeping score when you are hosting a trivia night or pub quiz can be challenging, especially if there are 10 teams or more! If you score manually after each round, it may take 10-15 minutes for the players to hand in their score-sheets, and for you to mark each team's answers.

The players will get bored and not want to play again.

If you wait until the end of the quiz, then mark it all at once, it may take 30 minutes to mark, and the teams will not know where they stand in the overall competition. Players get bored easily and want to know where they are in relation to the rest of the teams so here is an effective way to remove the boredom, and have the teams know where they stand.

1. At the end of each round, have each team exchange their answer sheet with another team. If you have an even number of teams, it makes it easy because teams located next to each other can exchange. If there is an odd number of teams, at least one set of teams will have to do a 3-way switch.
2. Once the teams have switched, read each answer aloud. This engages the players and also gives them a chance to see how the other teams are doing.
3. After reading the answers aloud, have the teams who are marking total up the points for that round and pass the answer sheets back to the team it belongs to.
4. Ask each team what they scored each round and either mark it on the board/score-sheet if you are doing it manually, or enter the totals in the Quizrunners custom scoring sheet.

Our custom scoring sheet automatically totals up the scores, providing a clear picture for each team, and automatically highlights the top 3 teams. This way of scoring is very effective, and keeps the players satisfied throughout the game...

Please look out for part 4 in our "How to host a successful Trivia Night or Pub Quiz" newsletter series with "Be Prepared!"

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