March 10, 2009

The Sixth Annual American Idol Pool!

Welcome to the sixth annual Shmuel's Soapbox American Idol Annex pool! Come one, come all! Tell your friends!

The rules are essentially the same as last year's, and the year before that, and the year before that—in fact, I'm cutting and pasting wholesale—and they go as follows:

  1. Every week, players predict the ultimate placement of all the remaining contestants. Players are encouraged to post their predictions in comments to this journal, but may also send them to me via e-mail.
  2. One point will be awarded for every placement that turns out to be correct. No credit will be awarded for near-misses.
  3. Entries should be submitted no later than the start of the results show on its earliest (East Coast) airing. If you're somebody I know and trust, later entries will be accepted; just make sure you make your choices before you hear anything about the results.
  4. Entries for a given week can be submitted any time after the preceding week's results are announced. But you'll probably be best off waiting until after that week's performances.
  5. In the event that you make a prediction one week, but don't get around to doing so in the next, the previous week's guesses will carry over, minus whoever got voted out. They will not carry over for a week beyond that unless I hear from you.
  6. Whoever has the most points at the end of the season is the winner.
  7. The winner gets... oh, who am I kidding. The winner gets bragging rights, and the satisfaction of knowing that, throughout the year, I am thinking of them and feeling very, very guilty for never actually sending them something more tangible.
  8. In the event of a tie, both first-place finishers will get the bragging rights. There will be no tiebreaker.
  9. Disqualifications of contestants will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, at my sole discretion. (This is the "Corey Clark" clause.)
  10. There's no Idol Gives Back this year.
  11. Note, however, that two people will be eliminated the first week. I'm not making any distinction between who gets eliminated first; I doubt they'll let us know which got more votes than the other anyway.

The upshot is that, every week, you're making x predictions, where x=the number of contestants remaining. For example, suppose that this week you were to rank the contestants as follows:

1. Adam
2. Alexis
3. Allison
4. Anoop
5. Danny
6. Jasmine
7. Jorge
8. Kris
9. Lil
10. Matt
11. Megan
12. Michael
12. Scott

Putting aside the fact that there are better ways of making your predictions than going by alphabetical order, this would mean that if either Scott or Michael were to leave the show this week, thus coming in at #12 overall, you would get a point for having predicted that. Similarly, if Megan were to leave the show next week, thus coming in at #11 overall, you would get a point for that. This would similarly apply to the remaining 10 predictions, up to getting a point if Adam turned out to be the American Idol at the end of the season.

Next week, you'd get to do the same thing again, that time ranking the eleven remaining contestants to make eleven bets. And so on until the final week, with the final two predictions. This allows for a mixture of short-term and long-term planning: you can pick up points either way, and you can have a lot of points riding on the results of the final few weeks. In fact, 22 points could be at stake between the Idol and the first runner-up, with 11 weeks of predictions riding on each.

Last year very much came down to a showdown between those banking on David Cook for weeks, and those who did the same for David Archuleta; in the past, people have won both by predicting the ultimate winner from the very beginning and sticking to it, and by hedging their bets and picking up points here and there over the weeks.

More on the implications of this can be found in last year's rules, and last year's spreadsheet may or may not help you get the hang of things.

Good luck!

Posted by Shmuel at March 10, 2009 8:31 PM