Dancing With The Stars: Picks

Here's a post to officially kick off our Dancing With the Stars Pool. Picks, standings, rules and more are all below. In fact, there's far more information than you probably care to read, so feel free to ignore it all until someone has scored some points. There will be a flurry of activity over the first few days, and then it will settle down into a predictable routine.

Good luck everyone!




Beginning Standings (a 7 way tie for first! Imagine that...)

1st: Carl 1000 (+0)
1st: Dawn 1000 (+0)
1st: Kim 1000 (+0)
1st: Lisa 1000 (+0)
1st: Matt 1000 (+0)
1st: Mom 1000 (+0)
1st: Paul 1000 (+0)










Picks
(Sorry that the formatting isn't quite right, but I can't figure out how to import a database, or to get blogger to accept spaces or tabs, so that's the best I can do.)

..........MATT............KIM............LISA............CARL............DAWN............PAUL............MOM....
12th...Priscilla.........Monica..........Penn...........Adam............Penn..............Adam.............Penn
11th...Jason.............Shannon.......Cristian.......Jason............Adam.............Mario.............Priscilla
10th...Penn.............Adam............Mario..........Penn.............Mario.............Jason..............Jason
9th....Steve.............Priscilla.........Adam..........Monica..........Monica..........Penn...............Steve
8th....Adam.............Penn.............Priscilla.......Steve............Steve.............Marlee............Marlee
7th....Marlee...........Marlee..........Marissa.......Priscilla........Shannon........Monica...........Marissa
6th....Shannon........Jason............Steve...........Marlee..........Jason.............Priscilla..........Monica
5th....Monica..........Steve.............Marlee........Kristi............Priscilla..........Kristi..............Adam
4th....Cristian.........Marissa........Monica........Shannon.......Cristian..........Steve..............Shannon
3rd....Marissa.........Mario............Jason..........Marissa........Marissa..........Shannon........Mario
2nd...Mario.............Kristi............Shannon.....Cristian.........Marlee...........Cristian..........Kristi
1st.....Kristi.............Cristian.........Kristi...........Mario............Kristi............Marissa...........Cristian

Of note:
-- Among the men, Penn has inspired the least faith in us, sight unseen. The self described 6'6" Sasquatch is near the bottom of everyone's standings. Kim picked him to go the furthest, lasting until 8th place.
-- Among the women, Priscilla Presley has inspired the least faith in us, sight unseen. The oldest woman to ever enter the competition, she's in the bottom half for everyone except Dawn, who predicts that she will last until 5th place
--Among the men, latin soap star Cristian inspired the most faith in us, sight unseen. Everyone has him in their final four except for Lisa, who has him out in 11th place.
--Among the women, Olympic skater Kristi inspired the most faith in us, sight unseen. She's in everyone's final five.
-- The person we were most vehemently divided on is youthful rap star Mario, who I think most of us see as an unknown quantity. Four of us have him appearing in our top 3 picks, and three of us have him in our bottom 3 picks.




Week 1A Performance (Men Only)
Best Score Predictions*

Carl: Mario
Dawn: Cristian
Kim: Cristian
Lisa: Jason
Matt: Mario
Mom: Cristian
Paul: Cristian

* As explained in the rules below, 42 bonus points are at stake, and will be divided among the number of players who got it right. So, if Cristian scores the best out of the three stars listed, Mom, Paul, Kim and Dawn will get 10 points apiece. If Mario scores the best, Carl and I will get 21 points apiece. And if Jason scores the best, Lisa will get 42 points all to herself. If there is a tie involving two of them or all three, the points will be divided accordingly.







RULES

Everyone starts with 1000 points. The person with the most points at the end of the season wins. Points can be gained and lost in the following ways:

--Every time a star is eliminated, you lose 10 points for every placement between their actual elimination space and your predicted elimination space for that star. For example, if you predict Mario to come in 4th place, and he actually comes in 11th place, you lose 70 points (7 spaces off on your prediction, times ten). If a star quits the show due to injury or some other reason, that still counts as an elimination.

--If a star is eliminated exactly when you predicted, you receive a 50 point bonus. For example, if you predict that Penn will be eliminated in 10th place and he is actually eliminated in 10th place, you gain 50 points.

-- For every performance night, each player will try to predict the highest scoring star for that night. The player or players whose chosen star scores the highest will divide 42 bonus points. Each player will get 42, 21, 14, 10, 8, 7, or 6 points depending on how many players tie to win these points. In the first week, there are two performance nights, one for the men and one for the ladies. Your pick for these first two nights is automatically the male and female star you have finishing highest. In the future, you can chance your pick every week as the mood strikes you.

-- Bonuses will also be awarded during the season finale based on how many of your initial picks make the final 3. There will also be an opportunity to predict how well the final 3 will do against each other, although I don't have the exact numbers for those things just yet.

The overall trend will generally be to lose points, although if you rack up enough bonus points, it is possible to gain them.