Celebrity Death Pool 2016

[RTFirefly]

@Little_Nemo

I’m not in charge of the rules. But my opinion is you have a valid point about people posting in the final hours of the year. They’ve effectively prevented the possibility of anyone challenging their picks before the new year starts. So I think it would be reasonable to extend the challenge period briefly into the new year.

But six weeks into the year is, in my opinion, excessive. Everyone had a chance to look over other people’s lists long before now. I’d probably limit it to around a week.

The problem is, who knew we could even make challenges on New Year’s Day? In the absence of a known window, the opportunity was certainly there to look over other people’s lists before now, but there was no particular reason to.

At any rate, I’m not trying to make an argument here that CAMJAY should be denied these points. Even though I think this particular pick stinks, I also think the the argument is pretty strong for accepting that, for 2016, what’s done is done.

But the deadline for expressing my opinion about this pick has not passed: there is no deadline on that. So I’m expressing mine. If there had been a known opportunity to challenge, I would have wanted to challenge this pick, because I think this guy is not a celebrity, even by our relaxed standards.

FWIW, I posted the following nearly a month ago to Idle Thoughts’ thread about proposed rules changes for next year:

@RTFirefly

There needs to be a way to challenge (and resolve challenges to) picks revealed only in the closing minutes of the old year.

Quite reasonably, AFAIAC, some players want to keep their lists secret until the last minute, so that other players don’t get to piggyback on the research they did, and vulture their best picks. But it also means there’s no time to question whether their picks are legitimate celebrities before the game begins.

There needs to be an adequate opportunity for players to review each other’s picks, and challenge picks that they don’t think qualify as celebrities, or are only famous for being sick. There also has to be a point after which people’s lists can’t be challenged. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be the beginning of the new year. It’s not like that many picks are going to die right off the bat.

My suggestion would be to allow challenges through, say, the end of January 3.

I’d say this kerfluffle has emphasized the need for a rule along these lines.