OVERVIEW

Nathan Sanders's Survivor Certainty Contest has inspired similar contests on the Amazing Race and American Idol newsgroups, and now the Certainty Contest has come to alt.tv.the-apprentice. You pick the candidates who you think will go the farthest. The farther these people go, the more points you score. At the end of the season, the player with the highest score wins.

ELIGIBILITY

1. This contest is open to all subscribers of the alt.tv.the-apprentice newsgroup (ATTA, for short), regardless whether they are regulars, semi-regulars, or lurkers. There is no limit on the size of the field. The more, the merrier. Non-ATTA members who visit my website, the Game Show Warehouse, are also allowed to enter if they so desire.
2. On Friday, September 30, 2005, after two episodes have aired and two candidates have been fired, I will post a call for entries on ATTA. Players wishing to participate may either reply to the newsgroup or e-mail me at tjwuthrich[at]verizon[dot]net. (Remember to replace the words in brackets with the punctuation they describe.)

HOW TO PLAY

1. Each player wishing to participate will be given 100 Certainty Points, or CPs, to distribute among the eighteen job applicants based on how certain he/she is that each will be hired by Donald Trump at the end of the season.

2. The following restricitions apply on dividing your CPs:

• You must assign a minimum of one CP to at least five different applicants.
• There is a limit of 50 CPs per applicant.
• CPs may not be divided into fractions. You must give whole, positive CPs to each applicant.
• Your CPs must total 100, no more, no less. You've got them, so why leave them on the table?

Other than that, you have complete flexibilty. You can give CPs to all sixteen of the remaining candidates, or to just five of them, or anything in between, as long as you comply with the restrictions above.

3. If an entry is determined to be invalid, the player will be notified of what he/she did wrong and will be asked to try again.

4. If I receive multiple entries from a single participant, I will accept his/her latest valid entry. In other words, I will assume that subsequent entries are updates to old entries.

Let's use season 3's candidates as an example. If you are 40% certain that Craig will be hired, 30% certain that Kristen will win, 15% certain of Kendra, 10% sure of John, 3% sure of Tana, and 2% sure of Verna, your entry would look like this:

  Craig   - 40
  Kristen - 30
  Kendra  - 15
  John    - 10
  Tana    -  3
  Verna   -  2

If two candidates have the same first name, make sure you distinguish between them. Usually, such candidates go by their first names and last initials. The names do not have to be in any order, but I would advise arranging the names alphabetically to make the record-keeping a little easier. Just don't try to give points to someone like Bill Rancic (wrong season) or Carrie Underwood (wrong show). Theoretically, you are allowed to give CPs to the first two people that Trump fired, but I wouldn't recommend it. J

5. Entries must be timestamped before Thursday, October 6, 2005, 4:00 pm Central Time (5pm ET/2pm PT)--three hours before the third episode airs in the Eastern and Central time zones. Make sure to include the name you wish to go by in the standings. If you do not sign a name, I will take the name in the "From" header of the entry.

SCORING

Each candidate is assigned a placement based on how long he/she lasts in the job interview. The first person that Trump fires is given a placement of 1, the second 2, the third 3, and so on up to 17 for the runner-up and 18 for the candidate that gets hired. In the event a candidate quits voluntarily or is released for any other reason, such as injury or disqualification, it counts a firing. This placement is multiplied by the number of CPs you have placed on that candidate, and your total score is determined by adding up the multiplied points.

Going back to the example above, you may recall that Kendra was hired, Tana was the runner-up, Craig was fired after the final-three interviews, John was the ninth candidate fired, Kristen was out fifth, and Verna quit before the third task was delivered. Here's how your final score is calculated:

In the event Trump fires two candidates in the same boardroom (like Nick and Amy in S1, or Wes and Maria in S2), these candidates shall be given the same placement if there is no opportunity for Trump to alter his decision between the first and the second firing.

So far, there has not yet been an episode with two separate boardrooms resulting in two firings. This scenario would be the Apprentice equivalent of the double Tribal Council from episode 3 of Survivor: Vanuatu. Should this happen and the candidates are not allowed to interact between boardrooms (and those in the second boardroom do not know who was fired in the first), then the fired candidates would get as the same placement since changing the order could not conceivably have changed the outcomes. However, if the boardrooms are ordered, and/or any information is exchanged from the one boardroom to the next, the second firing shall take the higher placement. Of course, the commissioner (which am I) does reserve the right to make an executive decision in the event of a judgement call.

STRATEGY

The Certainty Contest is a game of strategy. To win, you want to place the most points on the applicants you think will last the longest. Had the Certainty Contest been in place during season 3, using the rules above, the best possible entry would have been Kendra 50, Tana 47, Craig 1, Alex 1, Bren 1, which would score (50 x 18) + (47 x 17) + (1 x 16) + (1 x 15) + (1 x 14) = 900 + 799 + 15 + 14 + 13 = 1,744 points. However, if your entry read the exact polar opposite--Todd 50, Brian 47, Verna 1, Danny 1, Kristen 1--you'd have the lowest possible score of (50 x 1) + (47 x 2) + (1 x 3) + (1 x 4) + (1 x 5) = 156 points. Since you'll be spotted the first two firings, your final score will fall somewhere between 356 and 1,744, with the average score being 1,050.

The safest strategy is to assign CPs evenly to all sixteen of the available candidates. This comes to 6 CPs per candidate, with four of them getting a seventh CP. This raises your minimum score to (7 x 18) + (6 x 150) = 1,026, but the best you can do is (6 x 102) + (7 x 66) = 1,074. Since this method offers little deviation from the 1,050 average, the better strategy is to take risks, but watch out. If you had 50 CPs on the Week 3 Project Manager and he/she blows it, you're in big trouble.

MISCELLANEOUS

1. After the East Coast airing of The Apprentice--usually within 24 hours--I will post the weekly leaderboard showing the current scores and remaining CPs for all participants. Once your final entry is submitted, all you have to do is root for your favorite candidates. If you live in the Mountain or Pacific time zone, however, please be advised that the standings may be posted before the show airs on your NBC station (if I do it Thursday, it's one less thing I have to do on Friday). You might also be an irrepressible fan of CSI and hold out for the Friday repeats on CNBC. Either way, this post could be classified as a spoiler.

2. Like on the Survivor contest, I will calculate the average number CPs for all candidates and use this to create a false entry. You can use this entry to gauge how you are doing against the field as a whole.

3. Because I, commissioner of the ATTA Certainty Contest, have no advance knowledge of the outcome, I have the option to participate as well.

4. On the weekly leaderboard, players will be ranked based on their "expected scores." This is defined as the midpoint between the highest and lowest possibles scores they can achieve. All of these will match the current scores after the final week. Ranking by expected scores gives players an idea who has a better chance of winning after any given week.

5. If two or more players are tied for first place at the end of the season, the player who has given the most CPs to the eventual apprentice will win. If the players are still tied, the player who has given the most CPs to the runner-up will win, and so on. If the tying entries turn out to be identical, all players involved will be crowned co-champions.

6. The winner won't receive a trophy, a job, or any other kind of tangible reward, but you can't put a value on the bragging rights over the rest of the group.

If you have any questions, e-mail me at tjwuthrich[at]verizon[dot]net. (Again, substitute the proper punctuation for the words in brackets.) Special thanks to Nathan Sanders.
For more Certainty Contest action, visit Nathan Sanders's Survivor Contest or Peca Fan's Amazing Race Contest.