tl;dr: Time to put together a list of 20 famous people you don't think will make it to 2020.

Aw, read anyway.

=====

It’s the homestretch for the second annual 2+2 Celebrity Death Pool. And a select few still wonder whether their celebrities will drop before the ball does in Times Square.

Many others, myself included, are stuck with looking to the future.

You, too, can join our reindeer games.
Any eligible member of 2p2 is invited to submit their list for 2019. Most points wins.

For the basics, read on.


THE BASICS

- Each participant submits an unnumbered list of 20 celebrities that are alive as of midnight EST January 1st, 2018.

- Please submit your list to me via PM (see an important note at the end on this). Don’t be a dope and post it here until we’re comfortably in the new year. You may make as many changes as you like up to the deadline. Your final list is the last one you enter prior to the deadline.

-If your final list includes somebody who died prior to the deadline and you have no alternate, then you get zero points and cannot replace the celebrity with another.

- You can change your entry up until the deadline: 11:59 PM EST, December 31. No entries after that may be submitted.

Entries must CLEARLY MARK a few things:

1. An alternate (optional). You may, at your option, up to two alternates, in case someone on your list passes away before the New Year begins and you don’t want to have to update things. It must be CLEARLY MARKED AS AN ALTERNATE; otherwise it will be the 21st and/or 22nd name on your list.

2. A joker (optional, but really you ought to do this). You can mark one name to score double points for you.

If you don’t CLEARLY mark your joker, you don’t get one. Just copying and pasting this next to the appropriate name

<-- Joker

will do the trick.

3. Clarity around people with shared names. Did you know that Vin Scully died in 2017? Not the baseball announcer. The famous architect. (The other Vin Scully, thankfully, is still with us.) If you want to pick the architect in this example, though, you need to MAKE IT CLEAR. It’s worth doing a quick google or jotting a note or two next to each name if there’s any ambiguity.

-The game begins on January 1st. (Scoring for the 2018 competition remains open until January 8.) When a celebrity dies, I will do my best to post the number of points acquired for the death and who chose the person. But ultimately, calling out deaths is up to participants. Please address any scoring errors to me via PM and I'll sort it out.

-The member with the most points wins.

-In the case of a tie at the end of the year, the following two tiebreakers will be used:
1. Number of total hits (most wins)
2. Youngest average age of hits

-I will send my list to a 2p2 member so I can participate in this competition honestly. (NOTE: I haven’t done this. Will post ITT when I do.)

ELIGIBILITY
-Participation is limited to 2p2 members with at least 50 posts and an account that was created before October 1, 2018. One entry per person.


CELEBRITY REQUIREMENTS
- Must be a real-life human aged 18 or over as of January 1st, 2018. No animals permitted.

Exclusions:
- Scheduled executions.
- Deaths arising from the actions of forum members. (To repeat, it was a Clint Eastwood movie.)
-If you are unsure if a person is eligible, PM me about him or her and I will try to answer.
- The Commissioner may, at his sole discretion, declare a name ineligible for lack of fame. (Hopefully this will be used *very* sparingly; this has yet to be used over two years.) If you list an alternate, it will replace the not-famous name in question.

SCORING

-To score points, the death must be announced on an U.S.-based, English-language national online news source listed below. If it is not, you do not receive points.

- CNN.com
- FOXNews.com
- NBCNews.com
- ABCNews.com
- USAToday.com
- CBSNews.com
- hosted.ap.org or apnews.com (Associated Press website)
- reuters.com

Their subsidiaries (for example FOXBusiness or CNBC) and partner sites (ESPN, Breakingnews.com) do not count. In all cases, it must be the U.S. editions of the above sites.

- The date of death is what counts, not the announcement. If the person is not confirmed to have died during 2018, then it does not count. The date of death is defined as the day it was in that person's time zone (a.k.a. local time) when they died. Scoring closes on January 8, 2020 for the purposes of this pool. Deaths unconfirmed (or unnoticed by us) until after January 8 do not score points.

- Dates of death must be confirmed, or at the least confirmed to be in 2017. If a shadowy figure is confirmed dead but it’s not known when that happened, points will not be awarded.

- Points for each entrant will equal (110 - Person's age at death). If an age is not generally agreed upon by media, the highest age available (e.g., lowest score) will be used.

- If you are the ONLY person in the pool to pick a name, you’ll get a 15-point bonus.

- You can classify one person on your list as a joker, meaning that their total points (including the bonus) would be doubled.

- Finally, it’s ultimately the responsibility of each player to track their own scores. I’ll try to stay up with various deaths but I have some semblance of a life. So ultimately it’s up to you. ALL DEATHS MUST BE CALLED OUT BY JANUARY 8, 2020, to count.

(Reminder: If you’re in the 2018 pool, this is a REALLY good time to give your list a quick run-through. You know where the spreadsheet is, right?)


ENTRANCE FEE
It’s free to enter. There are no official stakes. Side bets and cash entries can be set up by others, but it is not a requirement to take part in this pool. I will play no role in handling cash or adjudicating side bets (beyond official scoring).

You may enter at your leisure. PM me with your lists.


A note on sending me lists: As of December 17. I still haven’t put mine together. I will not look at anyone’s list until mine’s complete, but if you want to send your list now you’ll be taking my word for it. I’ll post ITT once mine's finalized, send my list to all who entered previously (and on request) and will be proactive about feedback via PM before the deadline.

Dammit could've sworn I picked Penny Marshall!

Bumping this: just three shopping days left!

Mods, might you be able to retitle the thread NOW ACCEPTING ENTRIES: 2019 2p2 Celebrity Death Pool ?

Oh ****, thanks for bumping this. Will try putting a list together in the next 48 hours.

How many people should be on my death list?

Read post #101 it has all the rules.

Ty sugar. I had read the whole dang thing and didn’t see it there. I see it now in the first darn line. 20 it is!

Sent mine in

Another bump, folks: get those entries in!

Shipped picks, thanks for running this!

In!

****, thanks for the bump. I’ll get my entry in this afternoon!

Finished near the bottom and had a bad year personally, so maybe karma was punishing me for even entering this. GL to all who enter for 2019.

Hey. You in the 2018 pool. The one that's about to end.

I have two asks of you.

(1)
Take one last look at the world-famous spreadsheet and see whether there are any folks I missed. It could move you up in the standings.

(There is at LEAST one death that has gone unmarked -- someone whom I believe has in fact passed but I can't find a qualifying obit on because they're in that grey area fame-wise.)

(2) If anyone has an idea for the undertitle for the 2019 pool. (e.g., "The 2019 Celebrity Death Pool: Third Time's a Charm") throw it in below here, or via PM if you'd rather.

As it happened, my list happened to have more of a certain first name than usual, so I was thinking of subtitling it "Beat My Peters." But I only wound up with three on the list, so.

Which one of you sickos is off to a hot start with either 34 pointer?

Nobody has scored thus far. But I am running into issues getting the spreadsheet up and running so may need another day or two. Here's my list-just in case.

Tekashi 6ix9ine, I thought I was being original and boy was I wrong.
John Andretti, joker
Peter Angelos
Kathleen Blanco
Leah Bracknell
O.J. Brigance
Beth Chapman
Peter Frates
Steve Gleason
Quincy Jones, the comedian
Jose Jose, the singer
Kamala, the wrestler
David Koch
Jo Dee Messina
Joni Mitchell
Nile Rodgers
Bart Starr
Mel Stottlemyre
Peter Tork
Jan-Michael Vincent

Well, at least 4 people submitted 6ix9ine...

The final total is seven. Four jokers.

Some additional statistics. Everything's set list-wise, but I broke a couple of things in Excel that I need to put back together. I'll have the full sheet up tomorrow.

In the meantime, some brief stats.

Sixteen entrants total. One more than last year. Growth!

The most-picked:

On seven lists: Tekashi 6ix9ine

On five lists: Bob Barker, Henry Kissinger, Olivia Newton-John, Donald Trump

On four lists: Bill Cosby, Bob Dole


Joker selections:

krunic, Louis Cyphre, Fatal Checkraise, Planetist: Tekashi 6ix9ine
PocketInfinities: Tess Holiday
SuperUberBob: Fernando Ricksen
Punctually: John Andretti
econophile: Lee Iacocca
LostOstrich: Shane Macgowan
sixfour: Bob Dole
Namath12: Henry Kissinger
OmgGlutten!: Donald Trump
Punker: Tom Cruise
foatie: Bill Cosby
miajag: Kanye West
Very Josie: Sharon Osbourne

I would have bet my entire roll that Jan-Michael Vincent was already dead.

Also **** me for forgetting Peter Tork.

I'm pretty sure 6ix9ine will live to at least 90 now.

Without further adornment:

The 2019 picks for the 2+2 Celebrity Death Pool.

Note that a running tally is on the second sheet. All of us started and remain at zero.

Enjoy.

==

P.S. RIP Captain, Mean Gene, Super Dave and George Welsh.

I am rooting for OmgGlutten to win 2019.

Did I miss where the winner was announced for last year's contest?

There is still one (2?) more day to claim points for 2018.