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

• 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 soon after the Oscar nominees are announced, and well in advance of the broadcast date:

1. Although the Oscars are not held on a specific day each year, the nominations are traditionally announced in January.
2. The awards show itself happens one month after the nominations go out.
3. Make sure to keep an eye on the Oscars' official website for the exact details (including when and what channel will be broadcasting) for this year's show!

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:
   • Evite
   • Renkoo
   • Event Wax
   • Windows Live Events
   • Phonevite (Sends out recorded voice messages to friends.)

• 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.

• 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.

• Time for everyone to cast their ballots! Here are a few tips on predicting the winners and taking home the Oscar night booty:

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.
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.

• 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.

• 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.

• You've added up the totals and broken any outstanding ties. It's time to award the winner with the sweet, sweet cash. If you're having an Oscar party, you might throw together a fun prize pack for the winner or runners-up with Oscar-themed gifts like movie gift certificates, a screenplay from one of the nominated films, a book of Oscar trivia or-- of course-- a fake Oscar. You can also give the loser something like a subscription to Entertainment Weekly so he or she can brush up for next year.

• • Mahalo's Oscars Category
• Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences: 80th Annual Academy Awards Nominees
• Oscars.com: 80th Annual Academy Awards Nominee List
• Yahoo! Movies: Coverage of the 80th Annual Academy Awards
• AskMen.com: How To: Organize & Win Your Office Pool
• SoYouWanna.com: SoYouWanna win your Oscar pool?