How to Organize an Oscar Pool

Guide Note: Why not pull down a few bucks while deriding Hollywood's fashion victims on Oscar night? Organizing an Oscar pool for your friends or co-workers is as easy as printing out a pre-made form online and collecting the dough.

How to Organize an Oscar Pool will walk you through organizing a pool, creating a ballot and handicapping the winners.

Oscar Telecast: February 24, 2008 at 8PM ET

Table of Contents:

Introduction

  • Once a year, Hollywood's finest gather in the Kodak Theater to congratulate themselves on a job well done. They make long-winded speeches thanking their agents and politely smile through tedious monologues and solemn montages.
  • We, on the other hand, get to hurl bon mots at the screen from the comfort of our living rooms and, if we're lucky, put away some cash thanks to the perennially popular Oscar pool.
  • Setting up a pool is easy to do thanks to the official Oscar website, which provides downloadable ballots. All you have to do is collect the cash and tally the votes.

Step 1: Invite People to Participate

Oscar.com
Screenshot from Oscar.com
  • Whether you're throwing a full-blown Oscar party or organizing a pool for your co-workers, you'll want to let people contemplate their picks well in advance of the Oscar broadcast date (February 24, 2008 at 8PM ET).

Office Oscar Pool

  1. If you're organizing an office Oscar pool, be sure that recreational gambling is copacetic with the higher-ups.
  2. Set dates for the distribution and collection of the ballots, and settle on a nominal participation fee.
  3. Once you have the official go-ahead and all the details nailed down, invite your co-workers to participate in the pool via email, signage in a common area or whatever means of communication is appropriate in your office.
  4. Don't leave anyone out. You don't want any hurt feelings, and besides, the more people who participate, the larger the pool is!

Oscar Party

  1. If you're throwing an Oscar party, be sure to give your invitees plenty of time to plan for the occasion. Alert people at least two weeks prior to the event.
  2. If guests will be filling out their ballots at the party, be sure that the party starts a couple of hours before the Oscar broadcast.
  3. Keep the fee to participate low so everyone can be included.
  4. You can send out paper invitations, contact people via email or use one of the the following online invite services:

Step 2: Create a Ballot

  • While you can get fancy creating an online ballot or website dedicated solely to your party, your best bet is the old school paper ballot.

Print a Pre-Made Ballot

  • If you want to forgo designing your own ballot or deciding on which categories to include, you can download a pre-made Oscar ballot from the official Oscars website or Yahoo! Movies. Magazines like Entertainment Weekly will also print ballots as the broadcast date draws closer.
  • The following ballots will open as PDF files:
Oscar.com Printable Ballot

Design a Ballot

  • If you're the creative type and want to design your own ballot, take the following into consideration:
  1. Decide which categories you'd like to include. You can go with the basics—Best Picture, Best Actor, etc. Or, you can throw in some categories that are more difficult to guess like Best Animated Short Film. The more categories you use the less likely you are to run into ties. You can find a complete list of nominees at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences website.
  2. Add a tie-breaker to your ballot. Include a tough Oscar trivia question at the end of your ballot to help break any ties or decide ahead of time that you'll split the winnings between all the first place finishers.
  3. Decide whether to weight certain categories. Every correct answer can be of equal weight, or you can give extra points for guessing the winners in major categories since guessing the winner in a minor category has more to do with luck than anything else. Just remember you'll have to do some quick addition to come up with the winners on Oscar night.

Step 3: Predict the Winners

  • Time for everyone to cast their ballots! Here are a few tips on predicting the winners and taking home the Oscar night booty:
Variety.com
  1. If you want to win this thing, don't vote with your heart. Nobody cares what you liked. Predicting the Oscars is about getting in the head of Academy voters and Hollywood insiders. (Seriously, if you vote for anyone but Daniel Day-Lewis in the Best Actor category, we can't help you.)
  2. Read entertainment industry publications like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. You'll see not only the entertainment press' predictions, but also the massive ad campaigns designed by studios to push their nominees into the consciousness of Oscar voters.
  3. Remember that Academy voters, as a group, skew towards the older side of the generational divide. Some of their votes are fairly predictable. Comedies never win Best Picture. Newcomers are usually thrown a bone in the screenplay, but not directorial, categories. Sentiment can also enter the picture if a deserving actor has been nominated several times, but never won.
  4. Read general entertainment publications like Entertainment Weekly or blogs like New York Magazine's Vulture. Most publications will handicap the Oscar race in the weeks leading up to the main event.
  5. Read the press on films in the more obscure categories like Short Film and Documentary. This could be how you cinch the win. Better yet, if you have a chance to watch these films before Oscar night, there may be an obvious winner based on content and execution.
  6. Consult the Hollywood Stock Exchange. They have an options market for the Oscars and have a solid track record in every category.

Step 4: Keep Score

  • If you've got an Oscar pool going at the office, you won't need to run up your totals during the broadcast. You can save that task for Monday morning. Just be sure to have an objective third party doing the tie-breaking and vote-counting. You don't want to be accused of pilfering from the office pool if you win.
Oscar.com Printable Ballot

  • If you're throwing an Oscar party, everyone can switch ballots and score them as the broadcast unfolds, or you can appoint an official scorekeeper to keep things in order. It's fun to periodically announce who's in the point lead, but if you're partial to building suspense, you can keep it a secret until the end of the broadcast. If you wait until the end of the party to score the ballots, be sure to keep a Master ballot during the broadcast with all the winners notated on it.

Step 5: Award the Prize

(Photo by Jonathan Werner)
(Photo by Jonathan Werner)

Resources for How to Organize an Oscar Pool

2008 Oscar Ballots

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