By Alex Zhu for University of Waterloo Debate Society in November 2023
In debate, once a speaker learns the basic tools of argument construction, refutation, framing, and weighing, strategy is the next big step for one to achieve better results using the tools that they have gained. In a nutshell, strategy is knowing exactly what to say to most efficiently win key clashes.
Strategy can be divided into two steps: strategic vision and executing strategy. Strategic vision is about recognizing which tools to use, when, and where. Executing strategy is implementing the developed strategy effectively in a round. If a debater or team can master these steps, they will improve massively. For example, most decent teams don’t lose because they fail to construct a correct argument, but because they fail to create a strategic one.
Also, coming up with a good strategy and watching it come together makes debate incredibly rewarding!
In this guide, I have attempted to break down strategic vision and executing strategy into formalized rules that debaters less familiar with strategy can pick up.
The first thing to understand is what you aim to achieve in a debate. Going for first place every round is not necessarily the right strategy; for example, if you hit very strong teams that you have a very little chance of beating, it may be smarter to spend time beating the other teams in the round. This is especially true in out-rounds where two teams advance because you gain nothing from beating the strong team. In general, your goal should be to maximize points accumulated during the in-rounds to try to break. This implies that working your way up is the best strategy — start by making sure you beat the weakest teams in the round, and work your way up towards a 2nd or even a 1st.
In general, each position comes with implied strategic context. From OG, build a solid case around the most important issues in the debate that is likely to stay relevant even after back half. From OO, make sure to beat OG in DLO refutation to ensure at least a 3rd in the round. From CG, outframe or refute OO and make sure your extension isn’t derivative. From CO, run a non-derivative extension and pick your battles with the other three teams in the round to maximize points earned.
In constructing cases, find the easiest path to victory. Imagine a fork in a road where one path has many obstacles to the destination (victory), and another has very few obstacles. Identifying which path to victory has the least resistance will help you make the most of your time in speeches to efficiently run a winning case. For example, reaching for a massive principled impact will probably require more time than a practical impact intrinsic to the nature of what’s being debated.
When refuting cases, remember that cases in debates are fragile card towers. Impacts are only credited if they are mutually exclusive, weighed, and within a convincing frame about what matters most in the round. Impacts are only true if the mechanisms are true, and the mechanisms are only true if the incentives and power of actors are proven to a strong enough degree. A failure in any of these areas makes the entire case crumble — every case has an Achilles’ heel where it is best attacked.
Spotting the Achilles’ heel of other teams’ cases makes them much easier to take down. For example, a case may have iron-clad mechanization, but if the impact is weakly framed, a good reframing can be way more effective in defeating that team than refuting line-by-line. Essentially, cases should be built as solutions, not following a cookie-cutter structure like PAEL. Cases should be solutions that take the path of least resistance, i.e. the most efficient way to take down an argument.
Identifying these key strategic opportunities is the core of debating strategy and will help immensely. When judges judge mediocre rounds, more than half of what debaters say isn’t written down or isn’t considered in deliberation — knowing what the judge cares about and thus what to say is incredibly important for using your time well to set your team up for success.
This paradigm shift that cases are built around strategic goals rather than just built for the sake of having arguments is crucial for improving strategic vision.