BMT 2026 November 14 Tournament Day Logistics

Shown below is adapted from an email sent out to all coaches and students registered for BMT 2026.

To all coaches and students,

BMT is rapidly approaching! Please read this email in its entirety as it contains the tournament day logistics.

Also attached is the Tournament Guide containing the schedule of events and activities. Coaches will receive physical copies of the Tournament Guide at check-in.

Event Details Tournament Guide PDF

Important Information

During BMT, we will be posting live updates, including Tiebreaker qualifiers, on https://live.berkeley.mt. It also has the tournament schedule, your room assignments (enter the ID you will receive at check-in / materials pick-up), walking directions between rooms, and the tournament guide. Add it to your phone's home screen and turn on notifications to receive alerts about any schedule changes. For any day-of directions, questions, or concerns, ask a BMT staff member or volunteer wearing a dark pink shirt.

Information Desk

For maps and directions, late check-in, lost and found, and other questions, there will be an information desk in the Dwinelle Hall lobby starting at 8 AM. It is marked on the map at https://live.berkeley.mt/map.

Arrival and Check-in

Check-in / materials pick-up will happen in Dwinelle Hall at 7:30 AM:

• Dwinelle 145 — Coaches who haven't checked in online should go here.
• Dwinelle 155 — Coaches who have checked in online should go here for materials pick-up.

Once you complete check-in, coaches won't be able to move students between teams and students won't be able to change their test selection! Please finalize everything on ContestDojo before you arrive.

At check-in, coaches will receive:

• A sticker sheet containing name tags for each student with their ID, as well as their room assignments. Students are responsible for remembering their student ID throughout the day. If a student writes an incorrect ID on their test, they may not receive a score. Scanning the QR code on any sticker opens live.berkeley.mt with that student's or team's rooms and schedule.

• An information packet about the tournament, containing a schedule, maps, and other relevant information.

• A voucher for pre-ordered t-shirts. This voucher can be redeemed at a table near the check-in area.

• A voucher for pre-ordered lunches, which the coach can redeem during Pre-ordered Lunch Pick-up in front of Dwinelle Hall.

Check-in closes promptly at 8:30 AM, with a late check-in from 8:30 to 8:45, so please be on time. If you arrive after this time, your team will be late to the Power Round, which puts them at a great disadvantage. If teams are checking in after the late check-in window, please go to the information desk.

Team Link

This section is applicable for teams that signed up for Team Link. You can still sign up for Team Link until your organization completes Online Check-in or Wed 11/11, whichever comes first. To sign up for Team Link, read the instructions here.

For teams that sign up for Team Link, please arrive between 7:30 AM and 8:15 AM at Dwinelle 187. You can use the north door to enter the building.

We do not discourage teams from checking in online, but we will complete the Team Link teams check-in process again in Dwinelle 187.

Once at Dwinelle 187, our staff will:

1. Seat the students into rows.
2. Group students into larger teams.
3. Collect Coach Information for each combined team & make new teams.
4. Produce and give materials, such as lunch vouchers, sticker sheets, tournament guides, and coach wristbands (see above for details).

Please make sure you bring and know:

• All the students in your team.
• Your organization and team names.

Prepare for BMT

Required Before Check-in: Teams, Tests, Waivers

To ensure that your students are all set for Tournament Day, please make sure that you complete the following before check-in:

• Coaches: Assign each participating student to a team. See ContestDojo Guide.
  • If a team wants to join Team Link, select the Team Link option for that team.
  • Update the Coaches and chaperones attending field (names and contact info) and the Number of parents/spectators attending field on ContestDojo so we know how many of you to expect.
• Students: Choose and update your Individual Round Test Preferences.
• Students and their parents/guardians: Request and sign the waivers on ContestDojo. Students without signed waivers can't compete! See ContestDojo Guide.

What to pack

We suggest students bring the following items to BMT:

• A backpack or small bag for carrying materials and swag
• Multiple pencils and erasers
• Lunch or money for lunch, if you didn't order it
• A water bottle to stay hydrated throughout the day
• Comfortable walking shoes (you'll be moving between buildings)
• Layers of clothing (temperatures can vary)
• An umbrella (in case of rain)

Scratch paper will be provided for all participants, so please do not bring your own.

Travel and Transportation

The Downtown Berkeley BART station is only a short walk away from campus. If you are taking public transit to BMT, you can use the BMT Trip Planner to compare fares and see walking directions to Dwinelle Hall.

If you are driving, parking can be found near campus at many locations. To compare garages by price, opening time, and walk to Dwinelle, check out the Carpool tab in the BMT Trip Planner.

• Bancroft Parking Structure (Recommended)
• Telegraph Channing Garage
• RSF Garage
• Ellsworth Structure
• Underhill Parking
• Lower Hearst Structure
• Upper Hearst Structure
• Ridge Lot
• Bowles Lot
• UNEX Lot
• Stadium Parking Garage
• Center Street Garage
• Oxford Garage
• Kittredge Street Garage

Have a backup parking garage planned, as we have had parking garages fill up in previous years.

Schedule of Events

* Tiebreaker qualifiers will be posted on https://live.berkeley.mt under Updates, sent to coaches via email, and announced after the Guts Round.

Room Assignments

Each team will be assigned a Testing Room for Power and Guts Rounds, and an Awards Room during check-in. Students will also be individually assigned rooms for their Individual Round configuration. Room assignments will be provided on the sticker sheet as well as emailed to all coaches, along with Team and Student IDs.

Students are responsible for finding the rooms that their tests are taking place in. Rooms are printed on the stickers, and students can look them up any time at https://live.berkeley.mt/rooms with their student ID or team number, with walking directions on https://live.berkeley.mt/map.

Lunch

There will be a one-hour lunch period in the middle of the day for students to get food. Coaches can pick up pre-ordered lunches in front of Dwinelle Hall during Pre-ordered Lunch Pick-up. Many other options are available on the southern side of the Berkeley campus or downtown.

Activities

Student Activities

After the Guts Round, we will be hosting student activities. These are optional activities that promote recreational math, and include the following:

⭐ HRT Hamster Rescue Team by Hudson River Trading [Pauley Ballroom]

Ready to unleash your puzzle-solving skills and embark on a whisker-twitching adventure? Join HRT's Hamster Rescue Team 2 – a puzzle hunt where you and your fellow Hamster Rescuers will work together to save adorable hamsters in need, and earn cool prizes along the way! Can your team puzzle its way to hamster-saving glory, or will you get stuck spinning your (hamster) wheels? Come find out at HRT – your furry friends are counting on you!

Lasers and the Index of Refraction by Berkeley Society of Physics Students [Dwinelle 106, 109]

In 1666, Isaac Newton passed sunlight through a glass prism and split it into a rainbow, proving that white light is secretly made of every color! Can you bend a laser beam to your will? Come join the Society of Physics Students as we explore refraction and dispersion, then design your own experiments to uncover how light really travels.

Origami by Cal Origami [Dwinelle 145]

Do you want to bring home a cute souvenir from BMT? Come make your own origami dragon! We will be offering multiple paper patterns and instructions, and teaching from the basics of crease patterns. No prior craft experience is needed!

Integration Bee [Dwinelle 155]

Compete head-to-head against the best integrators around! Students will face off in a tournament-style bracket, solving difficult integrals involving some clever tricks, to determine who will be the champion of all integrators.

Fraudulent Math [Dwinelle 88]

Attention all students: mathematics is under attack by people who claim that we need “rigor” and “logic” to justify our answers. Join us for an event of Fraudulent Math, where we will compete to see who can come up with the most outlandish, mind-bending proofs of false statements and who can create impossible constructions.

Estimathon [Wheeler 150]

Got wit and strategy? Come to our Estimathon®, a contest combining trivia, strategic planning, and sharp mathematical thinking. Teams of up to 3 will race against the clock to tackle a challenging set of 13 Fermi-style problems, testing their ability to think fast and outsmart the competition.

Plank Countdown [Wheeler 202, 204]

Miss the excitement of the MATHCOUNTS® Countdown Round? Want to show off mental math in a countdown match... while planking? If you'd enjoy that exciting and silly experience, come join us for our Plank Countdown tournament!

Games Lounge [Alumni House]

Looking for a place to chill out? Come to the Games Lounge! We’ll have a variety of games (and seats) for students, parents, and coaches to unwind after a day of testing.

Parent / Coach Activities

Between 9:00 AM and 1:00 PM, we will have a parent lounge in Dwinelle 145. Additionally, we will have the following activities for parents.

⭐ AI in Math: A new beginning or will we crash and burn?

• Professor Ken Ribet (9:30 AM – 11 AM) [Dwinelle 155]

Professor Ken Ribet will describe his history as a math contestant and a Berkeley professor. He will introduce a concrete math problem that was solved recently by OpenAI while narrating some of the recent history of mathematical discoveries made with the aid of artificial intelligence. If time permits, he will attempt to respond to the question posed as the title of his talk.

Campus Tour (11 AM) [Dwinelle 145]

Join us on a tour of the beautiful UC Berkeley campus! Announcements and sign-ups will be in the parent lounge, after Professor Ribet's talk.

Guts Viewing [Stephens Lounge]

After lunch, come to Stephens Lounge and watch our exciting Guts Round progress!

Awards Ceremony

The Awards Ceremony will take place simultaneously in multiple auditoriums. Organizations will be assigned a room at check-in. Teams attending the Awards Ceremony must attend in the auditorium they are assigned, or else they may not receive their award on time.

Disqualification Information

Contestants will be immediately disqualified for any of the following reasons:

• Cheating or gaining an unfair advantage over other students
  • Includes: looking at another student’s paper for individual rounds, phone usage
• Using slurs, profanity, vulgarity, offensive slang, or derogatory gestures
• Causing physical harm to others

Contestants will be disqualified after being given a warning for any of the following reasons:

• Rowdy or disruptive behavior across teams or that interrupts testing for the entire room
  • Includes: students talking to each other loudly and disturbing others around them, even unintentionally
• Eating or throwing paper
• Entering other teams’ space
  • Includes: crawling on the floor

Our team is hard at work finalizing the remaining details of the event. If you have any other questions or concerns before the tournament, you can reach us at team@berkeley.mt.

We couldn't be more excited to see you at BMT this year. We hope you are too!

~ BMT Coordinators