Official Rules of the 2010 Summer Movie Pool

04/01/10

It's April 1st... and no, this isn't an April Fools Joke... it's time for the 13th Annual Summer Movie Pool!!! Ahhhhhh, lucky number 13.

Last year we dropped all the way back to 30 players... but that apparently worked out just fine for me. Only one year after 2 players went 10-for-10, 8 was the magic number, as the Deviation Method was needed to break a 14-WAY TIE! Unreal! What was very real is that I won again, taking home $230. Gretchen finished 2nd in the tiebreaker, winning $50. There was no 3rd Place prize, but as always we had the $10 Bonehead Award, which went to Tina for Battle For Terra. Betcha thought we'd have moved on this year, huh? Think again.

Last year was definitely a great year. We had major surprises... $270m for The Hangover (which no one picked) and $160m for The Proposal (only Gretchen was smart enough for this one - it even got it's own poster!), and we had underachievers... only $125m and no Top-10 for Terminator Salvation. We had the craptacular movie that made a buttload of cash... $399m for Transformers 2, and we had the better-than-expected big budget film that thankfully made what it deserved... $256m for Star Trek. It was pretty much all-or-nothing for the elite films, as only 13 movies hit $100m. And when the #9 movie pulls in $160m, you know it's a tough summer for everyone.

Here are our previous winners:

2009 - Steve Berg
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. 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 Transformers 2 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 G-Force 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.

And as always, 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 we are 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" into a search engine. It should give you plenty of listings. Our website has some useful links as well. Many magazines 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, 2010. If I don't have your payment in time, you won't be playing.


The recommended way to pay is through PayPal. I have FINALLY figured out how to transfer cash in PayPal without a service fee:

Here are the instructions:

1. Send the payment to sberg23@yahoo.com.

2. So that no fees are paid by either you or me, select a type of 'Personal' (instead of the default Purchase) and then select 'Other'.

3. On the second page, make sure that the payment method is either a bank account or any existing Paypal balance. These types of transactions do not incur any transaction fees.

- However, if you do not have a bank account and must draw funds from a credit or debit card, YOU are responsible for the transaction fee (2.9% + $0.30/txn). Make sure you select that the sender will pay the fees. I must receive the full $10.00.


If mailing, send it to:

Stephen Berg
6699 Chester Park Circle
Jacksonville, FL 32222

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!