# What new rules, if any, would you like to see for the Celebrity Death Pool?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-new-rules-if-any-would-you-like-to-see-for-the-celebrity-death-pool/739805>\
**Category:** The Game Room\
**Created:** [December 8, 2015, 7:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-new-rules-if-any-would-you-like-to-see-for-the-celebrity-death-pool/739805 "2015-12-08T07:15:36Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 39

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**Author:** ![Tangent](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tangent/32/3098_2.png) [@Tangent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tangent)\
**Post date:** [March 6, 2016, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-new-rules-if-any-would-you-like-to-see-for-the-celebrity-death-pool/739805/39 "2016-03-06T23:56:48Z")

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> [@Idle\_Thoughts](#):
>
> On further thought, I was actually thinking of doing away with a ranking in the score (like, putting them as 1… 2… 3… 4…) and just going like this, actually:
> 
> There’s one person with xxx points (lists poster)  
> There’s five people with xxx points (lists posters)  
> There’s seven people with xxx points (lists posters)  
> There’s fourteen people with xxx points (lists posters)  
> And having them in the order of most points to least points, starting from the top (of course). Does that work?
> 
> That would avoid
> 
> 1. poster
> 2. poster
> 3. poster
> 4. poster
> 5. poster
> 6. poster
> 7. poster
> 8. poster
> 9. poster
> 10. poster
> 11. poster
> 12. poster
> 13. poster
> 14. poster
> 15. poster
> 16. poster
> 
> etc.

Quoting myself from the current Death Pool thread where this debate started:

> [@Celebrity Death Pool 2016](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/celebrity-death-pool-2016/739098/928):
>
> That’s too bad. The way Baker is doing it is pretty standard for competitions. It’s more accurate in terms of knowing how someone placed relative to the field.
> 
> For example, if three people tied for first place, then calling the next person “2nd” is misleading since they actually came in fourth.

> [@Celebrity Death Pool 2016](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/celebrity-death-pool-2016/739098/939):
>
> In pro golf, for example, if two people tie for second place then they are both listed as “2nd” but they typically split the prize money for second and third places. The next golfer in line is listed as “4th” and gets the prize money for 4th place.

In the current death pool, there are 40 people with better scores than me right now, so it makes sense to say I’m in 41st place (tied with a whole bunch of others). It would be inaccurate to say I’m in ‘15th’ place. That implies there are only 14 people with better scores. Further, the person with the next lowest score has 67 people ranked ahead of them (there really are a lot of us in 41st place), so saying they are in ‘16th’ place is really misleading.

I also posted in the other thread that it’s not a big deal to me either way, since the stakes are so low. I’ll keep playing either way. Just pointing out that the way the rankings are currently done is the way I’ve always seen it done in ‘real’ competitions where the rankings actually matter.

ETA: Oops, I didn’t read your post carefully enough. It looks like you are offering a different method, instead of numerical ranks, just listing the scorers in order with ties listed together. That alleviates some of the problem, but it could be cumbersome when having to list a whole bunch of people who have the same score.

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