Dead pool

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For other uses, see Dead pool (disambiguation).

A dead pool, also known as a death pool, death watch or ghoul pool, is a game of prediction which involves guessing when someone will die.

Sometimes it is a bet where money is involved. The combination of dead or death and betting-pool, refers to such a gambling arrangement. A typical modern dead pool might have players pick out celebrities who they think will die within the year. Most games start on January 1, and run for 12 months although there are some variations on game length and timing. There are also several scoring variants. For example, a player might be rewarded few, if any, points for predicting the death of someone who is over 80 years old or is suffering from a terminal disease. Another common method to calculate score is subtracting the celebrity's age from 100. Other pools require participants to form a list ranked on how sure they are that a person on the list will die, with points given based on how high a person on their list is ranked, and others award points based on how many other contestants selected the deceased celebrity. Another variant on the game has a single point awarded for each correct prediction, regardless of the celebrity's age or medical condition. The advantage of this scoring method is that there is more scoring, and it rewards research (learning which celebrities are experiencing failing health) rather than luck.

One example of the concept is a series of segments on the Howard Stern Radio Show, where show regulars would place bets into a celebrity death pool, each trying to predict the next celebrity to pass on. The practice has been expanded to include wagering on such abstract entities as businesses.

Definitions of celebrity vary from contest to contest. Smaller pools may rely on consensus of the players as to who is famous. Others require an obituary to appear in a recognized newswire such as the Associated Press (AP) or Reuters. The Lee Atwater Invitational employs a Fame Committee consisting of non-contestants who assess ahead of time the name-recognition of each celebrity. The Rotten.com Dead Pool, the largest in the world[1], uses NNDB as its source of qualified celebrities, and as arbiter of their life status. Ghoulpool.us uses a variety of sources to verify celebrity status, includes a checklist on the site to measure prospective names. Points for the Ghoulpool.us game are based on age at death, cause of death, the ranking of the celebrity on a player's list, and the uniqueness of the pick.

The concept and success strategies are also detailed in an annual guide called "The Dead Pool", written by KQRS radio personality Mike Gelfand and author Mike Wilkinson. KQRS also does an annual on air dead pool contest, similar to Stern's, where show hosts and listeners will attempt to pick which celebrity will die in that calendar year. In his AP news article "Some say death pools are in poor taste" [2], (which brought national attention to The Old Blue Eyes Celebrity Death Watch[3]) author Matt Sedensky writes, "Players scour newspapers and Web sites for news on celebrities' health; they rely on tips from insiders; and they consider a public figure's lifestyle, absence of recent appearances and rumors of illness."

In most pools, killing the celebrity in question is considered cheating and results in the killer's immediate disqualification from the pool, with the notable exception of assassination markets. Such a dead pool was depicted in the aptly-titled Clint Eastwood movie The Dead Pool.

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