#3: Don’t be too condescending or make the other team look dumb.
It's never a good look and can hurt your case more than helping it. Forget debates, in life you should never be condescending or make anybody look stupid. Nobody likes that because we all are humans, and nobody likes it when you disrespect others or make them look stupid. Prove them wrong (why else do we debate?) but there's no point in saying that they're unintelligible, sniggering at them behind your team table, giving haughty looks, or anything else the meanies try.
Also, if you start to treat them like idiots, it'll make you overconfident and you'll be less on your guard. Especially if the opposing team puts the strong guy as the last speaker (like the WSDC team of Pakistan in 2015), your entire case can be ripped through. Overall, not a good look. Don't try it.
#4: Always appeal to the senior-most judge. They swing debates.
Under-rated tip. When the committee is divided, usually senior judges step in and make the casting vote (ex: if the panel is 9, and the committee is split 4-4, the senior judge usually makes the final call). It's exactly like the Supreme Court.
Always appeal to them + their logic (if you happen to know their previous judgements, any comments they've made during the competition, or even their facial expressions if they're not poker-faced) because they might be the difference between you going to the knock-outs or you going home empty-handed.
As a general rule of thumb, usually the senior judge(s) sit in the middle. There's always exceptions, but that's just a rough observation I've made.
#5: Don’t be too forceful or highly sentimental.
We are all homo-sapiens. We love jokes, feel like crying when emotionally appealed to, fear dangers and everything in between. Debates naturally contain all these elements, but always keep this at the back of your head: debates are logical battles. You first have to win the logical battle, and then only does aggression + ethos work. You might be able to scare the inexperienced, but you wouldn't ruffle champions in the slightest bit.
If your arguments are purely based on sentimalism and appeal to emotion, you're trying to compete in a baking competition presenting a dish that's all cream and no cake.
To bring a real-life example, I'll be referencing the tournament I was talking about in the first tips blogpost. We lost the third round and were preparing to go home after losing the prelims when we caught hold of our adjucator in the final round. We asked her what went wrong with our debate, and she told us that we argued well but our argument were based on environmental appeals, ethos, and generally a lack of a logically-sound train of thought. That was the issue which made the judges swing the debate in our opponent's favour.
By all means, use all the tools in your grasp. Just know when to use a hammer and when to use a screwdriver. You always don't need to be hammering nails, sometimes it's just a simple screwdriver that does the trick.
By all means, use all the tools in your grasp. Just know when to use a hammer and when to use a screwdriver. You always don't need to be hammering nails, sometimes it's just a simple screwdriver that does the trick.
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