Learned League

[Liu Yuante]

Learned League is an online trivia game/competition website (www.learnedleague.com) where at this point several thousand people compete in four regular competitions per year, plus countless 1-Day and Mini League competitions. I became a member back in 2017 at the invitation of a former college classmate and have been playing off an on since then. It is, unfortunately, by invitation only but every member in good standing gets invitations to provide and I currently have one available in case anyone would like one.

One's rookie competition is free, but after that you have to pay $20/year to continue to participate. There is an enormous emphasis on not cheating and also on not forfeiting - each of the quarterly seasons is five weeks long and your answers are due by 1 AM EST each day, save on weekends and holidays. 2.5 week-long Mini Leagues and 1-Day specials have similar terms. The questions are difficult - I have always considered myself to be a broadly-educated person, but I perform somewhat below average - in the most-recent season I only got 43% of the questions correct, vs an average of 47% for the entire league.

The other thing that makes LL unique is that it's not just a strict contest for who gets more questions correct - you compete head-to-head against another player on each match day and there are six questions to answer. Everyone has the same questions to answer but you get to decide how many points your opponents' questions are worth (and the same for them to you). You get to assign 0 points to one question, 1 point to two questions, 2 points to two questions and 3 points to one question. You have access to your opponents' past history (as they do yours) and you have to try and make your best guess at assigning low points to questions you think they will get and higher points to ones you think they are more likely to miss.

Which adds an element of luck that changes it from a trivia contest into an actual game. 1 Day specials have a slightly different format, being a free-for-all rather than head-to-head. You also get 12 questions to answer and get to choose 5 questions as your "Money" questions - each correct answer is worth 15 points but if you get a money question correct you also get points added equal to the % of players who got it incorrect. For example, if you answered one of your Money questions correctly, and 51% of all players did not, you would get 15 + 51 = 66 points. 1 Day specials then become about not just answering correctly but also risking extra points on answers you may be unsure of but which most are unlikely to get correct.

Anyone else already a Llama (the informal name for LL members) or interested in getting an invite? In case anyone is interested in the type of questions asked, https://learnedleague.com/samples.php contains a random assortment of past questions and answers.

[pickledauditor]

It's great for a tournament of such a large scale.
the backrooms

[Niahak]

This sounds interesting! The sample questions are a little rough to me - I think I probably got 3 or 4 at the most (the hardest sample question that loaded up for me was about the Four Chinese Classics and was by far the easiest, as I'm sure it would be for anyone on this forum )
My lack of interest in sports and pop culture will probably prevent me from starting this, although I do enjoy trivia. It seems like a cool format for it.

[Kong Wen]

I participated in my rookie season of LL a few years ago and then backed out instead of paying to continue. I can vouch that it's really fun, but I kind of didn't want another "responsibility game" on my plate. It's interesting to see how large it has gotten since then!

[Liu Yuante]

I participated in my rookie season of LL a few years ago and then backed out instead of paying to continue. I can vouch that it's really fun, but I kind of didn't want another "responsibility game" on my plate. It's interesting to see how large it has gotten since then!

Yes, it is definitely a game that puts a lot of emphasis on making sure you participate on each match day. I have taken various breaks from it over the years in order to get a rest from the responsibility.