SEASON 10

Standings

Entries

Rules

Progress Chart

Click here for the special Player Save rule and here for a brand-new twist!

OVERVIEW

Nathan Sanders's Survivor Certainty Contest has inspired similar contests on the newsgroups of other popular elimination shows, such as American Idol. You pick the singers who you think will go the farthest. The longest they last, 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.american-idol newsgroup (ATAI, for short), regardless whether they are regulars, semi-regulars, or lurkers. Registration is absolutely free, and there is no limit on the size of the field. The more, the merrier. Visitors of my website, the Game Show Warehouse, or members of any other newsgroup, message board, or discussion forum of which the commissioner is a member may also enter if they so choose.

2. On the night of Thursday, March 10, 2011, the week after the thirteen American Idol finalists are announced--and shortly after the first elimination has aired in the Eastern and Central time zones--I will post a call for entries on ATAI and any other message boards where the contest may be of interest. Players wishing to participate may either reply directly to this post or e-mail me at tjwuthrich[at]frontier[dot]com. (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 (CPs) to distribute among the twelve remaining finalists however he/she wishes, based on how certain he/she is that each will be named the American Idol.

2. The following restricitions apply on dividing your CPs:

• You must assign a minimum of one CP to at least four different performers.
• There is a limit of 50 CPs per singer.
• Each performer you name must be given whole, positive CPs. No partial, negative, irrational, or imaginary numbers (i.e. -10, p, or 2 + 3i), please.
• 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 twelve performers, or to just four 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 the finalists from Season 8, the only previous season with a Top 13, as an example. If you are 40% certain that Adam Lambert will win the competition, 30% certain that Allison Iraheta will win, 25% certain that Matt Giraud will win, 3% sure of Jasmine Murray, and 2% certain of Kris Allen, your entry would look like this:

  Adam Lambert - 40
  Allison Iraheta - 30
  Matt Giraud - 25
  Jasmine Murray - 3
  Kris Allen - 2

Last names or nicknames are optional, but just make sure I know where the CPs are going. They do not have to be in any order, although I would advise arranging the names alphabetically to make the "record-keeping" a little easier. Just don't try to give points to people like Brett Loewenstern or Julie Zorrilla (eliminated in the semifinals), Jacee Badeaux (eliminated in the Hollywood rounds), Kelly Clarkson (wrong season), or Kendra Wilkinson (wrong show). Theoretically, you are allowed to give CPs to the first finalist eliminated, but I wouldn't recommend it. J

5. Entries must be timestamped before Wednesday, March 16, 2011, 5:00 pm Eastern Time (4pm CT/2pm PT)--three hours before the second finals performance show airs in the Eastern and Central time zones. Be 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

1. Each Thursday, the singer with the fewest votes from viewers is eliminated from the competition, and that singer is assigned a placement based on how long he/she lasted. For example, the first finalist cut is given a placement of 1, the second 2, the third 3, and so on up to 13 for the winner. This placement is multiplied by the number of CPs you have placed on that singer, and your total score is determined by adding up the multiplied points. The player with the highest score at the end of the season is the winner.

Going back to the Season 8 example above, you may recall that Kris won, Adam was the runner-up, Allison was the tenth finalist eliminated, Matt was the ninth finalist out after being saved by the judges just two weeks prior, and Jasmine was one of the two who were cut in the first week. Here's how your final score is calculated:

2. (The Corey Clark Exception) In the event that a performer is released from the competition during the finals for reasons not involving the viewer vote and is not replaced by another performer, that performer will be given a placement of zero, meaning all CPs placed on him/her are lost.

3. (The Mario Vasquez Exception) If a performer drops out of the competition voluntarily and is replaced in the Top 13 by a new performer, the alternate will automatically assume all CPs originally placed on the departing finalist. If the departure occurs during the entry period, like it did in Season 4, players may still change their entries. If the alternate is a previously eliminated Top 13 finalist, some singers' placements may be changed.

4. (The Stacey/Richardson Rule) In the event two or more performers are eliminated solely by viewer vote in the same week, the one with the lowest vote total shall take the lower placement. For example, had this contest been in conducted in Season 1, Ejay Day would have a placement of 1 and Jim Verraros 2. If the identities of the lowest- and next-lowest totals are not revealed (i.e. Phil Stacey and Chris Richardson in the final 6 of Season 6), both singers will be awarded the higher placement. By defintion, the winner's placement is the total number of finalists while each other singer's placement is the number of finalists eliminated during the finals up to that point, including him/herself.

5. In case any event not outlined above takes place, the commissioner (which am I) reserves the right to make an executive decision.

STRATEGY

The Certainty Contest is a game of strategy. To win, you want to place the most CPs on the singers you think will last the longest. Using the rules above, the best possible entry is 50 CPs on the winner, 48 on the runner-up, and 1 on each of the third- and fourth-place finishers, which would result in a score (50 x 13) + (48 x 12) + (1 x 11) + (1 x 10) = 650 + 576 + 11 + 10 = 1,247 points. However, if your 50-CP singer goes out first, followed by your 48-CP singer in Week 2, and your other two picks go the next two weeks in either order, you'd have the lowest possible score of (50 x 1) + (48 x 2) + (1 x 3) + (1 x 4) = 153 points. However, since this year the CC starts after the first week, you are automatically spotted the first elimination, so your final score will fall somewhere in between 253 and 1,247, with the average score being 750.

The safest strategy is to assign CPs evenly to all twelve available finalists. This works out to 8 CPs per singer with four of them getting a ninth CP, since 100 is not evenly divisible by 12. This raises your minimum score to (9 x (2 + 3 + 4 + 5)) + (8 x (6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + 10 + 11 + 12 + 13)) = (9 x 14) + (8 x 76) = 734 points, but the best you can do is (9 x (13 + 12 + 11 + 10)) + (8 x (9 + 8 + 7 + 6 + 5 + 4 + 3 + 2)) = (9 x 46) + (8 x 44) = 766 points. Since this method offers very little deviation from the 750 average, the better strategy is to take risks, but watch out. If Jennifer Lopez doesn't like your 50-CP performer's Week 1 performance (and that's really bad), your risk could backfire.

1. Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler joined American Idol as a judge for Season 10 and immediately made an impression on viewers (and Fox censors) with his...colorful language. Who can forget "Well fire, save matches, censored a duck and see what hatches"? Since the companion CC for So You Think You Can Dance gives its players additional CPs for when judge Mary Murphy does her distinctive "Hot Tamale Train" scream, Steven's critiques can give AICC players extra CPs! Each time Steven gets bleeped during a live (i.e. seven-second delay) performance or result show up to the final five, every player earns a bonus CP (BP) plus an additional BP for every 10 CPs he/she still has in play, up to a maximum of 10 BPs per bleep.

2. BPs may be added to previously placed CPs to give a singer more than 50 CPs total, and there is no minimum on how many singers may receive BPs. Also, you do not have to already have CPs on a certain singer in order to give him/her BPs.

3. CPs previously placed on one performer cannot be redistributed to another. For example, let's assume for the sake of demonstration that Steven was already on the panel in Season 9. If he gets bleeped once the week Andrew and Katie were eliminated, and you had 96 CPs remaining, 48 CPs each on Lee and Crystal, after that week, you would earn 10 BPs (nine for 96 CPs added to the basic one BP) to use that week.

Crystal  58     Crystal  53     Crystal  50     Crystal  48     Crystal  28     Crystal  48
Le       48     Lee      53     Lee      50     Lee      48     Lee      28     Lee      48
                                Aaron     6     Casey    10     Michael  50     Didi     10
    OK              OK              OK              OK            NOT OK        Legal, but not recommended

4. Just as before, if a bonus entry is ruled invalid, the player will be notified of his/her mistake and asked to try again, and entries may be changed as needed until the deadline.

5. All BPs must be placed before the next performance show after they are earned begins on the East Coast. Unused BPs cannot be rolled over from week to week, sorry. Vetos and bonus entries may be submitted either by replying directly to the weekly standings post on ATAI or by e-mail.

MISCELLANEOUS

1. Once your final entry is submitted, all you have to do from then on is root (and vote) for your favorite singers. After the East Coast airing of the results show--usually within 24 hours--I will post the weekly leaderboard showing the current scores and remaining CPs for all participants. 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 Fox 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 The Vampire Diaries and watch AI on tape or DVR later. Either way, this post may be considered a spoiler.

2. If the CPs on an otherwise valid entry do not total exactly 100, the individual CPs will be proportionally calculated. For example, a split of 50-20-11-9, which adds up to 90, would become 50-25-14-11.

3. Like on the Survivor contest, I will calculate the average number CPs for all performers 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.

4. Because I, commissioner of the ATAI Certainty Contest, have no advance knowledge of how the votes will go (how can I, since AI is live on the East Coast from here on out?), I have the option to participate as well.

5. On the weekly leaderboard, players will be ranked based on their "expected score", which is defined as the average of the highest and lowest possible scores they can achieve. According to Nathan, this gives a more accurate picture of who has the best chance of winning the contest than ranking by best-case or worst-case score. All three of these scores will match the current score after the final week.

6. 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 Idol 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, the player who submitted his/her entry first will be ruled the winner.

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

Remember, contest entries are due Wednesday, March 16, 2011, at 5:00 pm Eastern Time.

If you have any questions, e-mail me at tjwuthrich[at]frontier[dot]com. (Again, substitute the proper punctuation for the words in brackets.) Enjoy!
-- Jason Wuthrich

This contest does not now nor will it ever challenge 19 Entertainment or FremantleMedia North America for ownership for American Idol.
For more Certainty Contest action, visit Nathan Sanders's Survivor Contest or Peca Fan's Amazing Race Contest.

Return to the results page or visit the Game Show Warehouse.