Official Rules of the 2009 Summer Movie Pool

04/08/09

March Madness is about to end... and that means it's almost time for the 12th Annual Summer Movie Pool !!!

Last year we had a nice resurgance in the # of players with 41 entries. Amazingly, two people went 10-for-10, and it was the long-time player, first-time winner Justin who took home the top prize of $300. Laura won $60 for 2nd (also 10-for-10) , I won $30 for 3rd... and who could forget our newcomer Chiara as the $10 winner of the Bonehead Award with Hell Ride. So much fun!

Here are our previous winners:

2008 - Justin Klein
2007 - Tim Driscoll
2006 - Steve Berg
2005 - Larry Pennington
2004 - Chic Meyers
2003 - Todd Fiore / Dave Logan / Jaime McGauley (tie)
2002 - Steve Berg
2001 - Steve Berg
2000 - Mike Chapman
1999 - Steve Berg
1998 - Steve Berg

Once again, our rules haven't changed. Simply pick a Top Ten list of summer movies, and rank them in the order that you believe they will finish. The pool runs from May 1st to Aug 31st; therefore, send in your picks and money by May 1st. The final numbers will be tallied on Sept 1st, which is when a winner will be determined - winner take (almost) all. Be sure to pick movies whose release dates fall between May 1st and August 31st. It isn't our fault if release dates change, so do your homework. Because the start of the Pool is May 1st, any movie that comes out in April will not be allowed as a valid choice. Besides, there's a reason the studio made the decision to release a movie like this BEFORE the summer rush... because it's not good enough to be a Summer Movie! So we're doing YOU the favor :)

The scores will be calculated this way: Whoever has the highest number of picks in the Top Ten at the end of the summer wins outright. Pretty simple. However, if there is a tie in the number of correct picks, the scoring will be done in the following manner: Deviation Score. The Deviation Score is a tally of the differences between the predicted rank and the actual rank of all ten of your movies. A perfect score would be zero. The better the prediction, the lower the score. For example, if last year if you picked The Dark Knight to be #3, and it actually finished #1, you would have a deviation score of 2 for that movie. Good job. But if you picked You Don't Mess With the Zohan to be #6, and it actually finished #13, that's a score of 7. That's not good. If you are involved in the tiebreaker, I'll add up the scores of all ten of your movies, and whoever has to lowest score, wins (nearly) the entire pot.

And just like the last couple years, we will also award the Bonehead Pick. Whoever picks the WORST (least successful) movie gets leftover money from the pool (usually $10). The criteria for the Bonehead Pick is that it must be released this summer AND it must make at least $1. A movie that is expected to come out in June, but is pushed back to October (or even worse.. goes straight to video) doesn't count. So if you take a risk in your picks and fail miserably, you might still pick up the Bonehead Award... which in its own way is an accomplishment. If there is a tie for this award, it will be split.

We will also be using our very popular website for all updates and weekly rankings. Go to www.summermoviepool.com to enjoy all of Jaime's and my hard work. It will be updated soon to reflect last year's results. There is also a message board for your enjoyment (as long as Jaime is able to block out the spammers).

So that's it. If you want to know what movies are being released this summer, type "summer movies 2009" in a search engine. It should give you plenty of listings. The website has some useful links as well. Many magazines (like Entertainment Weekly) also provide summer movie info.

All of the money ($10.00 per entry) will be collected by myself, and is due no later than May 1, 2009. If mailing, send it to:

Stephen Berg
6699 Chester Park Circle
Jacksonville, FL 32222

You can also pay via PayPal. My account is sberg23@yahoo.com, and you will need to pay a total of $11.00 to cover the transaction fee (it's PayPal's fee, not mine).

Make sure to get me your payment ON TIME.

Feel free to invite whomever you like... as long as they also pay on time. Just have them e-mail their picks to me. Any questions? E-mail me at sberg23@yahoo.com. Thanks, and good luck!