Dead Pool

Each participant supplies me with a list of ten living famous people and ten pounds sterling. The ten pounds is paid into a bank account. At midnight on the 31st of December 2010, the participant whose list has the most dead people on it is the winner, and will collect the contents of the bank account.

1. Participants: participants may join at any time. Participants must be over 18 years of age. Participants may only submit one list.


2. Lists can be in any format of the participant's choosing, but will be posted publicly to this community as a comment to the official lists post for this year. Members can post their own lists; meatspace participants will have their lists posted by me. As the year goes on, and people die, members should feel free to post that someone on their list has passed away, but they should also make sure that that person gets struck out from the list on the lists post.


3. Living: the people chosen for the list must be known to be alive, and must not be known to be suffering from a terminal illness, known to be suicidal, or on death row. Participants who join late in the year need to pay particular attention to this part - the later you join, the shorter the window of time you have for people to die in.


4. Famous people: the definition I am choosing to use of "famous" is that the person must have a wikipedia article which has not been marked as being about someone who isn't notable enough to be in wikipedia. Please note that people who are only famous for being very old (world's oldest man, world's oldest woman, etc.) will not be acceptable.


5. Ten Pounds sterling: I prefer a direct bank transfer, but will accept cash or paypal. Participants must pay before posting their lists. Any lists posted before payment is recieved will be screened until payment clears.


6. The Bank Account is a smile savings account, which currently has one penny in it. It will be used solely for the purposes of Dead Pool and thus any interest earned will be part of the prize fund. I won't be taking any commission for running the bank account or for modding the pool. If anyone wants to know what the balance of the account is at any given time, they can ask me; I will intend to post monthly when the statement comes through what the current balance is, but I'll probably forget.


7. The most dead people. At the end of the year I will check the lists and make sure that nobody who has passed on has been missed. Celebrities must be confirmed to be dead. Disappearance or persistent vegetative state will only count in the event of a tie. If there is a tie, and it cannot be broken in this way, the prize fund will be shared.


8. Payment of prize will happen by direct bank transfer as soon as is practicable after the deadline of midnight on the 31st December 2010.