For another, they're dead.

     But, in this case, they were significant hits in this year's celebrity dead pools.

     If you're new to the terms, dead or death pools are fantasy-football-style games in which players wager on which celebrities will die in a given year.

     It's a pastime that can be deemed a bit macabre.

     Or, if you think like Lancaster's Gene Kaufman, who undertakes his own online dead pool, the game can have a positive spin.

     It's a chance to stay current on events, reflect on the lives of deceased celebrities, and examine your own life and death, said Kaufman, 36.

     "It's a way to lighten it up," he said, "put a different spin on things." Kaufman came across the dead pool concept while surfing the Internet a few years ago. He was intrigued.

     "I've always been since I was a kid interested in when somebody dies," he said. "In the military we played 'dead or alive'; I was pretty good at it." For Kaufman, a Web developer who works at CoreSource, the creation of an online dead pool seemed like the perfect progression.

     In 1998 he formed Kaufman's Dead Pool with five other players. That year they noted the passing of Roy Rogers and Frank Sinatra.

     Players in the pool now number 48, including Kaufman's 6-year-old daughter, Madison, and his wife, Terri, 36.

     "My mom played at one point," Kaufman said, noting that some players are in their 60s, though most are 30-somethings.

     People "either get it or they don't ...," he said of dead pool interest. Detractors claim he's waiting or wishing for someone to die.

     "No," he argued. "I'm just waiting for a news event. They are going to die whether we put them on the list or not.

     "Yes, part of me gets excited because there is dead pool activity. But, depending on who the person is, I am sad." (See related story below, "The draw, and human implications of dead pools.")

     Playing and running the game not only makes him pay closer attention to the celebrity's death, but it makes him examine how others will look at him after he dies.

     "It makes you aware of the fact that your death will be noticed ...," he said. "Hopefully you will be missed." Dead pools popular on the Internet and around the office water cooler are not new. According to the Web site for The Game (www.egamegazette.net), one of the oldest organized dead pools still in existence, death wagering started as early as the 1500s when people were forbidden by law to bet on the demise of Pope Gregory XIV.

     The pontiff, so concerned that victory seekers would try to off him for a win, put an official stop to all death wagering, according to the site.

     Kaufman's Dead Pool Web site at www.terrik.com/deadpool/index.html, is one in hundreds on the World Wide Web. In games, with names like Stiffs, Caskets on Parade, You Bet Their Life, and The Ghoul Pool, competitors register, pay a small fee, and pick a batch of newsworthy passings to watch for throughout the year.

     Newsworthy, however, is a subjective term.

     "That's the biggest issue of a dead pool," Kaufman said. "Who IS famous?" Some dead pools say the person must be a "household name," others say "nationally famous." Kaufman determines celebrity by "a gut feeling," and how quickly the person's name comes up on a Web search.

     "If I have to dig," he said, "that indicates they are not that famous." Shawn Martin, 35, a newbie to the game, devoured entertainment news and researched the Internet before he made his 2004 dead pool picks, he said.

     Even so, with only two and a half weeks left in the year, he's not doing well.

     "It's my first year, and it's kind of hard before you learn the strategy," said the Lititz man. "I have two hits — Fay Wray and Ronald Reagan — but not a lot of points." It's those points that can make or break a game.

     For Kaufman's pool, which is open by invitation only, "or with a good argument," participants pick a list of 10 celebrities. The celebs are then ranked from one (the person believed most likely to die in a given year) to 10, with each getting a point designation. The celebrities are also assigned points for their age.

     Points break ties if several players have the same amount of hits, the term used when a celebrity on a player's list dies.

     The player with the highest point total wins the pool, which this year is almost $500.

     According to the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office in Harrisburg, dead pools, though a form of wagering, are not illegal in Pennsylvania as long as the house (the person running the pool) does not get a cut of the winnings.

     Kaufman does all the work for free. But for him, it's a hobby. The research and news aspect are two of the biggest reasons he runs the pool.

     "I keep an eye on news, CNN," he said. "There are a couple of obit sites I check first thing in the morning." Kaufman said his dead pool rules are specific but, there's always a chance for some sort of argument such as time of death.

     "I didn't start this for confrontation," he said, but admitted that it can happen considering the passion level of the players.

     Cathryn Innacola is one of these fierce competitors. A former co-worker of Kaufman, she has entered the pool for five years. Three of those years she finished in second place.

     "I'm always the bridesmaid," she said. "I've never won. I always had the right number of hits, but lost on the points." It took a little persuasion to get Innacola, 51, involved in the game. "I thought it was a little gloomy and pretty morbid," she said. "But when you see other people play the game it's kind of fun. There is definitely a strategy." She said she reads the paper, does research and, "as terrible as it sounds, I look for sick, young (famous) people."

     "It's hard to justify," Innacola said of her interest in the game. "We all wrestle with that. I guess it's simply the pride in winning." When the Lancaster woman tells friends about the pool, they might be a little turned off, she said, but ironically "they're the first ones on the phone when someone dies, to see if they are on my list."

     "We're not rooting for people to die," Innacola said. This year, however, she bowed to political pressure. She admits to playing an "old Republicans" list that she entered under player name "Ever Hopeful Democrat." Players' dead pool names come mainly from entertainment, politics, sports, business, military, science and crime. Most are older celebrities, famous people with a known illness, or those who are involved in dangerous activities, such as drugs, crime or extreme sports.

     Living celebrities with the most picks on the list include Pope John Paul II, actor Kirk Douglas and Lady Bird Johnson.

     "Sometimes, someone of celebrity will die who wasn't on the list," Kaufman said solemnly.

     "John Ritter was not on the list. ... And, JFK Jr., well, he was pretty shocking!"

     A pastoral counselor and licensed clinical social worker with Life Management Associates, Hamilton wrestles with the idea of a death game while understanding the attraction.

     On one hand, making a game of death could be unhealthy, he said. "I don't deal in my work with right and wrong, but healthy and unhealthy."

     On the other hand, it's a way of making light of something that you usually don't, he said. Dealing with someone else's death is often easier than dealing with our own, he added.

     Nobody is ever really ready for death, Hamilton said. "You always feel like you have another day."

     Dead pools are a way of putting death in perspective. "How do you want your obit to read?" he questioned. "What will people know about you?"

     Hamilton, a former trauma chaplain, who dealt with an average 120 deaths a month at Miami Valley, a 700-bed trauma hospital in Dayton, Ohio, said there are times when lightening the situation is necessary to help release some of the stress in death and dying.

     "As a chaplain we would find the oddest humor as a way of managing emotions," he said. "How do we manage our emotions in a culture where death is the enemy? We have to rename it."

     But making a game out of another's death is unsettling, he said. "There might not be anything wrong with it, but could it become unhealthy?"

     Dead pool players "could dismiss the value of life," he said. "These celebrities could just become a number or a point value."

     "It would be nice to say, 'We've won.' But, 10 people have died. Would you forget it's someone's brother or sister or husband?"

     Betting, said Hamilton, is a way of taking death seriously, but staying one step away.

     Even so, he said he can see how people intrigued by news, statistics and competition are drawn to a dead pool.

     "It's an interesting outcropping of an interest," he said. "That could make it fun."

     "The trivia, media, history, and the understanding of who we are losing. What minds are being lost. Musicians, historians, theologians."