How can you use points of information to signal your team's strategy and position in a debate?

Signalling one's strategy might seem disadvantageous at first glance, but it is actually a high-level technique that raises the quality of the debate—which naturally includes you and your team's performance—used to get higher scores and impact as a whole. When you clearly state your stance and position, you are clarifying the overall "fogginess" of the debate which some judges might give you credit for. Additionally, signalling your stances through POIs can make the judges remember you and your team's arguments further down the line. It's about repetition, repetition, repetition; memorable debaters are also given higher scores in a round.

POIs are short, sweet, and scathing. A single one-liner should be enough to at least 1) rattle the speaker, 2) clarify your stance, and 3) point out flaws that your side already addresses. Best case? You do all three. How? As a first speaker, you are expected to be your team's rock. You establish the entire set-up, designation, and caricature of your side (usually positive if you are for the motion, and vice versa in the opposite bench). Thus, you are not technically giving POIs as responses. Rather, you can do what's called preemption. You can directly point out possible arguments that you anticipate from your opponents and use either your set-up (policies and sanctions) or arguments as responses before they even launch theirs.

Now when you are in the closing teams, your POIs may be final push needed for your side to win. Use sweeping POIs that target the entire team's stance or strategies. For example, instead of attacking one single argument, attack the entire team's performance and responses to your cases. Remind the judge that they had their chance, but they missed key points. Make your responses a meta-critique; discuss how their weaknesses made the entire debate suffer in quality, and always remember to compare with your side. For example, you may point out how they never addressed specific issues your team raised, and how it consequently made their bench stagnant to the demands of the debate, unlike how your team was dynamic and responsive. These matter.

Adapting in a debate merits points because you are not fixated on what debate you envisioned, but are working in the debate happening right now. Adaptation in a debate means that 1) you can replace irrelevant cases you've prepared on the fly, 2) you can think of quick responses that can still challenge the sudden paradigm shift from the opponent, and 3) you can debate on two models; both the debate you envisioned and the debate they want to happen. This usually happens if there is a definitional challenge or if the set-up completely throws the other team out of their game. How can a team adapt? Simple: they can stick to the basic foundation of a rebuttal (negation, even ifs, and comparisons) and just coat it with the new matter presented.