Oscar Pool 2016 Round 1 (the nominations - round closed)
Sorry to get this up relatively late in the game, so to speak, but welcome to the thread for Round 1 of this year's Classics Board Oscar Pool! For those of you who haven't participated before, this is your chance to win glory and, um...well, pretty much just glory...for outguessing your fellow posters in the upcoming Oscar nominations!
The rules are pretty simple - just submit your guesses for the nominations in each of the 24 competitive Oscar categories, up to the maximum number of nominees in any given category. For most categories that would be 5 nominees; the exceptions for makeup/hairstyling with 3 nominees and "best picture" with up to 10 nominees. (No player is required to submit guesses in every category, but you can't win if you don't play....)
In those categories with a variable number of nominees, players don't have to submit the maximum possible nominees. For example, if you're guessing in the "best picture" category (which may have 5 to 10 nominees), you can submit fewer than 10 nominees if you think the Academy won't nominate 10 films.
Points are awarded for correct guesses based on this formula:
(P - C) + 1
where "P" is the number of players submitting guesses in a category and "C" is the number of players who guess a given nominee correctly. The "+ 1" is there so that if all the players correctly guess a given nominee they still get a point for the guess instead of nothing.
If all but one of the players correctly guesses a nominee, then the correct players get 2 points apiece. If all but two players get a nominee right, those players get 3 points, and so on. And if only one player out of, say 12, gets a particular nominee right, that daring (and lucky) player gets 12 points!
As noted above, some categories (notably "best picture") have a variable number of possible nominees. If you submit fewer titles than the category maximum allows, then you may get points for the Academy not nominating the maximum. If a player were to guess 9 titles for "best picture", they will be counted as submitting a 10th "title" which is, effectively, "no 10th nomination". If the Academy then nominates 9 (or fewer) titles for "best picture", then "no 10th nomination" is treated as a correct guess and scored according to the formula above. The same happens for correctly "submitting" "no 9th nomination", "no 8th nomination", and so on - the operative word here being "correctly"!
It is possible to earn half-points for partially correct guesses, as with an actor being nominated for a different film than what a player guessed (e.g. Andrew Garfield for Silence instead of Hacksaw Ridge, or vice versa), or if a performance or achievement winds up in a different category than the one guessed (e.g. Viola Davis being nominated for lead actress in Fences but a player guessed supporting instead).
In the original song category, the "half-points" rule goes into effect only for players who guess two songs from a given movie (the maximum allowed by the Academy). For instance, I guess that "Song A" and "Song B" from Big Movie Musical will be nominated, and the Academy nominates "Song C" from BMM instead; I would then get half-points for that. On the other hand, if they nominate "Song C" and I only guess "Song A", then I get no points.
Categories will be scored from a player's total points for their correct guesses in the category, multiplied by the number of correct guesses in that category.
The "Latest Academy News" page at www.oscars.org/press/latest-academy-news contains links to eligible films in different categories, including "short lists" for several; you may wish to peruse these before submitting anything.
That's all for now, and I look forward to seeing your Oscar nomination guesses!
Everyone's gone to the movies, now we're alone at last....