Personal Privacy — What information is collected & who may see it?

A few years ago this wouldn't have even been a consideration; now, with the proliferation of Spam E-mail and blue-nosed internet morality harpies, the ability to shield yourself from abusive/intrusive E-mail queries and complaints is worth considering.

Do the contest organizers permit (encourage) you to use freemail accounts for contact? Do they permit you to use aliases to shield your actual identity from your spouse, relatives, boss, «whomever» so that you don't wind up trying to explain why you are participating in such a "sick" activity?

You don't need to travel to Afghanistan to find a rigid morality police mentality - look no further than the U.S. Attorney General or Congress.

Contest Scope — Universal or Restricted?

A few of the contests are "By Invitation Only" while others require that you engage in an advance application process prior to submitting an entry. Fortunately most of the contests are true "open" events, with entries accepted from anyone and everyone right up to the contest's entry submission deadline.

Even the "open" contests may limit the maximum number of entries they are willing to accept and process, usually with preference going to returning entrants. Virtually none of the contests are staffed to a level that would support 100 entries, much less 1,000 or 10,000. This is something that you should check into well before you start preparing your entry for a given contest.

Entry Submission — How do you correspond?

If it is an internet-based contest you would assume that E-mail is the preferred method of correspondence. A few still accept entries via snail mail; fewer still accept entries via fax or by personal (hand) delivery.

Also, how close to the start of the contest period must your entry be in-hand by the contest organizers? One minute, one hour, one day? Depending upon the permitted submission methods you may need to have your entry prepared, completed and ready for submission as much as a week in advance.

The Payoff — Professional or Amateur?

Contests fall into two categories: Professional (you pay an entry fee and winners expect a payout) or Amateur (no entry fee but no financial payout to the winners).

The Amateur contests provide strictly ego awards, like playing poker for match sticks & cleaning all of the other players out. The Professional contests can have small to rather large payouts, depending upon several factors that include:

The contest Entry fee. How much is it? Anything above $10 U.S. should be viewed as suspicious unless the contest has a long history of meeting its payout obligations at the end of the contest year. A $25 entry fee should be the absolute upper limit of an entry fee for any contest, anywhere. Beyond that amount the local authorities might just decide that the contest is an illegal gambling operation. How would you feel about a local newspaper running a story that identified you by name and said that you had bet $50 on whether some people would live or die? (in 2010 we saw one - new - contest that required this amount as an entry fee amount)

Magnitude of payout. Is the payout for each finishing position a fixed percentage of the entry fees collected (parimutual) or is the payout a fixed dollar amount? You might be wary of a contest that has a single prize (say, $100 for first place), a $10 entry fee, and 100 entrants vying for the sole prize. Such a contest reward structure indicates that the contest is being run for the financial benefit of the contest organizer, not necessarily the contest entrants. A small contest of 10 to 25 entrants should still pay out at least 75% of the entry fees; the larger the contest, the larger the payout, preferably with numerous consolation prizes for 2nd, 3rd, 4th, ...etc.

Our advice on the Professional contests is to treat the entry fee as "gone", with no expectation of ever seeing a dime in the future. If you do get some kind of payout, fine, otherwise, play the game for the fun of it with no expectation of monetary reward, timely or otherwise (the participants in past Stiffs.com games found this out the hard way). A whole bunch of people just wouldn't let it go and wound up polluting the stiffs message board and other venues with their griping. Let it go, people — it wasn't as if your house payment was on the line.

Pool Size — How large is the pool that you may score from?

All contests limit the number of individuals that you may place on your list of potential "hits" (or "kills" or whatever the term is in your contest). Small pools don't give you much room for error; large pools are a pain for the organizers to administer, plus our experience is that the larger the pool gets, the lower the success percentage gets for the list. A short, quality list should perform better than a large, carelessly selected list.

On the low end, a few contests limit an entrant's pool to a single name; at the other end as many as 100 names might be listed on a few contest entries. For Caskets on Parade the pool size is 75. Over the years the general pool size for most contests has been in the 10 to 25 range, with 20 being a very popular pool size limit.

Filling Your Pool — How is your Scoring Pool selected?

If you are familiar with rotisserie baseball leagues you understand the concept of a "draft" — a potential "hit" can only be selected by a single entrant. Contests that employ this list selection procedure tend to be very cumbersome to enter ... just think of how long the NBA or NFL draft runs on ESPN. For a small (limited) number of entrants that all live in geographic proximity, this kind of selection procedure can work — they all get together at a bar and hash out their lists. Try the same thing for, say, 50 entrants in a chat room with a list than can be upwards of 20 names long; it might take 24 hours or more to complete the "draft."

Most of the pools on the net are non-exclusive pools; that is, all entrants may select Usamah bin Laden and score on him when he is finally taken out.

Re-Filling Your Pool — If someone dies does your list automatically "refill"?

A number of the contests that have smaller pool sizes permit a kind of "taxi squad", a secondary list of potential Grim Reaper Victims that can replace someone on your list that has died. These lists of subsititue names can range in size from one to ten names.

Scoreability Criterion — If someone on your list dies, will they "Count"?

If each and every human on planet Earth were a legitimate prediction most contests would fold from boredom. All of the existing contests specify some form of "notability" consideration before awarding points for a death.

The most frequently used criterion is publication by "the media" of the death. If the Associated Press moves the obit, it counts. Other contests may require two or more publications to be a valid "kill". In the case of Caskets on Parade we require publication of three obits, one each in three different media categories. from a pool of six potential categories.

The validating authorities are often geographical in scope - media in North America may not publish many of the modestly obscure obits that are big news in Europe or Asia. If the contest URL or Scoring Criteria FAQ doesn't give you a clue about the geographical base of the contest be sure to contact the contest administrator well before the entry submission deadline.

Scoreability Exclusions — Whom can't you score on?

Many contests have exclusions from scoring for one or more categories of Grim Reaper Victims — death row inmates, terminal cancer patients, spouses of famous people, etc. Be sure you have determined the exclusion categories before creating your list.

Scoring Categories — Single or Multiple?

Most of the contests that are run score & reward a single standard of achievement - a points system based upon age at death of Grim Reaper Victims. The Caskets on Parade Contest has four scoring categories (Total Points, Number of Kills, Solo Kills & Quality of Kills).

Many contests also have special achievement awards that are based upon "special" or whimsical considerations. If you are considering an entry into a professional contest you need to determine how much of a financial reward will be directed to the Special Category winners - there may be an inducement to skew your entry list to win that award at the expense of possibly winning in the main scoring category.

Valuation of "Hits" — What are they worth?

Virtually all of the contests employ an inverse value point scoring system — the older the Grim Reaper Victim was at their time of death, the lower their point value in the contest.

Some contests employ an award table, listing age ranges and the whole number of points that may be scored in that range; others (like Caskets on Parade) employ a scoring formula: plug in an age and it cranks out a number - the value of the kill.

In addition to points being awarded based upon the age of the Victim points may also be awarded for the uniqueness of selection of a Victim; obviously-sick geezers are going to be predicted by most entrants while younger, more healthy individuals (albeit in hazardous occupations) will be predicted by fewer entrants. Many of the contests will reward a solo pick; the Caskets on Parade scoring formula accounts for the number of selectors (another plug-in value) to produce a point value for the uniqueness of the selection.

And, various contests will add additional points for hits being the first or last of the year; as well as happening on the decedent's birthday; for being the oldest, or youngest, hit of the year; for being the second, or third, our fourth hit by a player on a given day, ... all manner of secondary and tertiary point-generating possibilities abound.

Contest Duration — How long is the Scoring Window?

The bulk of the contests that are out there run for the standard (Gregorian) calendar year. A few have shorter terms ranging from a month to six months duration. The longer the contest duration the more competative the contest tends to be. Over the last 30+ years our experience has been that deaths tend to cluster around certain times of the year — running a contest for a brief period of time results in feast or famine scoring for the entrants, with the "best" entry lists not necessarily winning out over otherwise mediocre (but fortuitously-timed) lists.

Contest Feedback — How may you find out how you are doing?

At an absolute minimum the contest organizers should post an Update of Contest Standings on a quarterly basis (25% of the contest duration). For a year-long contest monthly updates would be appropriate.

For internet-based contests a "Current Standings" page should be adequate — with the explosion of spam it might be preferrable to not send out regular E-mails, instead relying on the contestants to check in on their own at their convinience.

Another useful feature that a contest can provide is a database of past deaths that contestants may use as a research tool in the preparation of upcoming entry lists. The more online documentation that is available the easier it is to evaluate the progress of the contest.

The Rules — Stable, accessible, understandable?

Any contest worth entering should have a comprehensive set of rules. The rules should be available at least one month prior to the start of the contest list submission period. Once people start submitting entries for the contest there should be no changes to the rules; mid-contest rule changes make amateur contests look bad; mid-contest rule changes make professional contests stink. As an entrant you are expected to plan ahead (sweat the details) for your submission list; you should expect no less from the contest organizers.

It should not be necessary to submit the contest rules to your attorney so that they can interpret & explain them. Unfamiliar terms should be defined, either as part of the rules or through a reference to a page of definitions.

Rulemaking / Arbitration Procedures - Where do you lodge a complaint?

How much "wiggle room" exists in the existing rule set — are there obvious flaws in the rules that some entrants are exploiting to "game the system" and pull far ahead of the rest of the pack? In a contest where rule interpretation is dubious or bizarre the contest is doomed to end in bickering and rancor.

Check to see if multiple years worth of contest rules are available for inspection - if available, read them over and see how much change occurs from year to year. A well thought out contest tends to have more detailed rules, and the changes that do occur from year to year tend to be minor, or are made to address flaws that were discovered during the administration of the previous year's contest.

Also — who (or whom) is the arbitrating body — one person, two people, a whole raft of them ... again, long term stability of the contest's judicial body should be a gauge of the desireability of entering the contest.

Contest History — Will "they" be around at the end of the contest?

Obviously a first-year contest is at a strong disadvantage if it starts out on the internet; the existing contests that have been around on the internet since the mid-1990s had already been around in offices and through the mails for a number of years (a small group have been around for 20 years or more).

Entrants into non-commercial contests only have their time to lose if the contest folds in mid-duration; Professional contest entrants, on the other hand, stand to lose their entry fee if the contest folds. Professional contests should be avoided in their early years unless the entry fee is truly modest ($5 or less). As the contest organizers establish a track record of making their payoff commitments you may feel more confident that a larger fee would be warranted.

Lastly, remember that most of the contests that you will run across are being run as much for the "fun of it" as anything else — even in the most egregious circumstances you should not get out of control with the contest, contest operators, contest participants or governmental agencies. Chill out, get a grip, and walk away if necessary. Act like a mature adult, not a petulant teenager.

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page last updated 03/26/2011