Shmuel's Soapbox: American Idol Annex

The Seventh Annual Idol Annex Pool!

I was going to wait to post this, but I've just gotten my first query on the subject, and I suppose there's no good reason to delay. Just note that this won't actually start until the finals, a bit less than two weeks from now.

Welcome, one and all, to the...

(I just blew the entire year's special effects budget on that logo. Hope you liked it!)

The rules are essentially the same as they've been for the past six years, and they are as follows:

1. Every week of the finals, players predict the ultimate placement of all the remaining contestants. (That is, every week, you predict who will go home this week, and who will go home next week, and who will go home the week after that, until you have run out of people and remaining slots.)
2. Players are encouraged to post their predictions in comments to this journal, but may also send them to me via e-mail.
3. One point will be awarded for every placement that turns out to be correct. No credit will be awarded for near-misses.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. Whoever has the most points at the end of the season is the winner.
8. The winner gets a prize (traditionally a mix CD, sent anywhere from several months to several years later) and bragging rights. In the event that I win, I get the bragging rights, and the first runner-up gets the prize.
9. In the event of a tie, both first-place finishers will get a prize. In the event that I take first place and there's a tie for second place, anybody who comes in second will get a prize. There will be no tiebreaker.
10. Mid-season disqualifications of contestants, Judges' Saves, and any other weirdnesses will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, at my sole discretion.

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

1. Algernon
2. Bertha
3. Chauncey
4. Delilah
5. Ethelbert
6. Florence
7. Grimace
8. Hattie
9. Ichabod
10. Jocelyn
11. Kingsley
12. Ladonna

Putting aside the fact that this would clearly be taking place in an alternate universe with a different slate of contestants, this would mean that if Ladonna were to leave the show first, thus coming in at #12 overall, you would get a point for having predicted that. Similarly, if Kingsley were to leave the show the following 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 Algernon 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.

People have won this pool in the past in a number of different ways. In some years, people have one by picking the ultimate winner at the start, sticking to their guns, and going for a large payoff at the end; others have won by hedging their bets and spreading their points around, not relying on any one given outcome to win. I deliberately designed this system to allow people to pick their own strategies and degrees of risk, and I think it's worked out pretty well.

Last year was a bit weird, thanks to the misbegotten Judges' Save. What I ended up doing was awarding half a point for any prediction that put Matt in 7th place (which would have been correct if not for the save), and then three-quarters of a point for predicting that either Lil or Anoop would go home 6th or 7th (which ended up being the case, as both were cut the following week). This seemed to make more sense than anything else I could think of (and nobody had any other suggestions), but I'm not thrilled with it, and I hope they just drop that rule this year.

At any rate, Pam ended up winning last year by a quarter point, on the basis that -- alone of all of us -- she refused to believe Adam would win the thing, and correctly had him in second place most of the time. Had he won, she would have come in dead last. On the other hand, she'd have won by a much wider margin had Danny won the title, but none of us saw Kris coming until late in the game.

Mo technically could have won if she'd been a bit more cutthroat, having racked up a bunch of points placing Danny in third, and a bunch more on a steady stream of short-term predictions. TeKay swung for the fences and would have creamed the rest of us had Adam and Danny come in first and second, respectively; as it stood, he was a respectable third, just ahead of Jesse and Yours Truly.

Taking a look at last year's spreadsheet may or may not help clarify things further.

One last note: at the start of this season, I finally mailed off mix CDs to Pam (2009), Mo (2008) and TeKay (2006), and I have one here to send Frito (2007) if he ever sends me his address. So I'm caught up with the prizes at last. :-)

Posted by Shmuel at March 3, 2010 7:22 AM