Rules.

Mr Death Pool is about ready to kick off. Which one of you can predict who is going to die next?


Prizes Based on 5 paid entries ($50)


# 1st place = 75% of the pot $37
# 2nd place = 15% $08
# 3rd place = 10% $05



Fame Definition

UGH - The BIG question! Since nobody has been able to give me a concrete, objective method to determine fame - either BEFORE or AFTER a celeb's death, then this will forever be a gray area always open for controversy.

What I'm currently doing is asking people in good faith to only put people that they TRULY feel are famous on their lists. If the name is not familiar to me, I should be able to confirm it very easily on google. If I have to do a big internet search for the person, then that is a good sign that the celeb is lacking in fame. However, just because I CAN find somebody easily does not necessarily mean that they are famous enough. Basically you should be able to say to somebody "Hey - did you hear that XXX died?"; if they say "Who's that????", then the person might not be famous enough. Now granted, this still falls under the auspices of how well your acquaintances know all of the celebrities that YOU are familiar with. That's why, in the end, all that I (as the DP maintainer) can do is go by my own gut feeling. Believe me when I say that NOBODY wishes that there was a formalized list of rules to follow more than I do!

I've tried a number of different methods to give the players some guidelines. One of the earliest ones was one that I borrowed from other deadpools - using the AP. However, my experience has shown that

1. it takes pretty much NO level of fame to get an AP obit
2. finding a consistent source of easy-to-retrieve AP obits is very difficult
3. using an obit as a measure of fame would require the game to have a way of disqualifying picks for insufficient fame after the game started, and we don't have that at this time.

CLARIFIED for 2008! Note that in past years if a person was deemed "famous enough" at the beginning of the game, then they maintained that status until the end of the game. Also, let's not choose any person under the age of 18 please.