|
|
| Standings | Rules | Entries | Progress Chart |
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 longer they last, the more points you score. At the end of the season, the player with the highest score wins.
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 Monday, January 22, 2007, the day after the third episode has aired and three candidates (maybe more) 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.)
1. Each player wishing to participate will be given 100 Certainty Points, or CPs, to distribute among the eighteen job applicants however he/she wishes, 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:
Other than that, you have complete flexibilty. You can give CPs to all 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. Unlike past Certainty Contests, the entry period is more than one week, so if one of your choices gets fired before the entry period closes, you've got time to make changes.
Let's use season 4's candidates as an example. If you are 30% certain that Felisha would be hired, 25% certain that Randal will win, 20% certain of Rebecca, 10% sure of each of James and Marshawn, 3% sure of Jennifer M., and 2% sure of Chris, your entry would look like this:
Felisha - 30 Randal - 25 Rebecca - 20 James - 10 Marshawn - 10 Jennifer M. - 3 Chris - 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), Rob Mariano (wrong show), or Donald Trump himself. Theoretically, you are allowed to give CPs to the first four people that Trump fired, but I wouldn't recommend it. J
5. Entries must be timestamped before 11:59 pm Eastern Time (10:59pm CT/9:59pm PT) on the day before the fifth episode is expected to air. Since the fourth Sunday after the season premiere is the day of the Super Bowl, this makes the deadline Saturday, February 10, 2007. 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.
1. Each candidate is assigned a placement based on how long he/she lasts in the job interview. However, because of potential confusion caused by occasions where Trump fires two or more people at once, placements will now based on the number of tasks candidates last instead of the number of candidates fired before them. For example, all candidates Trump fires after the first task are given a placement of 1, those fired after the second task 2, the third task 3, and so on. The candidate that gives hired is given a placement matching the number of weeks in the job interview, or 14, and the runner-up one less, or 13. Since we're starting the contest with the fifth task, you get all of the previous firings as free passes! This means that all candidates fired in the first episode after the deadline will have a placement of 5. 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. The player with the highest score at the end of the season is the winner.
Going back to the Season 4 example above, you may recall that Chris was fired in week 2, Jennifer M. and James in week 6, Marshawn in week 8, Felisha in week 11, Rebecca was the runner-up in the 13-week interview, and Randal was hired. Under the scoring system above, here's how your final score would have been calculated:
| NAME | CPs | PLACEMENT | SCORE |
|---|---|---|---|
| Felisha | 30 | 11 (lasted 11 weeks) | 30 x 11 = 330 |
| Randal | 25 | 13 (hired) | 25 x 13 = 325 |
| Rebecca | 20 | 12 (runner-up) | 20 x 12 = 240 |
| James | 10 | 6 | 10 x 6 = 60 |
| Marshawn | 10 | 8 | 10 x 8 = 80 |
| Jennifer M. | 3 | 6 (fired w/James and two others) | 3 x 6 = 18 |
| Chris | 2 | 2 | 2 x 2 = 4 |
| GRAND TOTAL | 1,057 | ||
2. To date, no fired candidate has ever been reinstated into the job interview (similar to the Outcast twist in Survivor: Pearl Islands), other than as "employees" of candidates still in the running (such as the final task). If a firing is ever reversed, the candidate's placement will be based on when that candidate is fired for good, and some earlier placements may change. By defintion, a candidate's placement is the number of tasks Trump has delivered and resolved up to the Boardroom where he/she is no longer in the running for the job as of the end of the season.
3. In case of any event not outlined above takes place, the commissioner (which am I) reserves the right to make an executive decision.
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. The best possible entry is to have 50 CPs on the winner, 47 on the runner-up, and 1 each on the other members of the final five. Given that the job interview lasts 14 weeks, and the third- and fourth-place finishers were fired together the past two seasons, a perfect score would be as much as (50 x 14) + (47 x 13) + (2 x 12) + (1 x 11) = 700 + 611 + 24 + 11 = 1,346 points. However, if by some chance all five of your choices perform so poorly that Trump fires all of them in the first week, you'd have the lowest possible score of 100 points. But since you'll be spotted the first four episodes' worth of firings, your final score will fall somewhere between 500 and 1,346, with the average score being 923.
The safest strategy is to assign CPs evenly to all fourteen available candidates. Since 100 is not evenly divisible by 14, this comes to 7 CPs per candidate, with two of them getting an eighth CP. However, this method offers little deviation from the average, so the better strategy is to take risks. But be careful. If you had 50 CPs on the Week 5 Project Manager and he/she blows it, you're in big trouble.
1. Once your final entry is submitted, all you have to do from then on is root for your favorite candidates. After the East Coast airing of The Apprentice--usually within 24 hours--I will post the weekly leaderboard to ATTA and the Standings page, 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 NBC station (if I do it Sunday, it's one less thing I have to do on Monday). You might also be an irrepressible fan of Without a Trace and hold out for the same-week repeats on CNBC. Either way, this post may be considered a spoiler.
2. Like 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. You are permitted to discuss the reasoning behind your entry on ATTA, but if you use any spoilers to construct your entry, please follow general courtesy guideline. These include the use of proper spoiler space and/or ROT-13 encoding as well as the addition to the word "spoiler" to the subject.
5. On the weekly leaderboard, players will be ranked based on their minimum possible scores. Mathematically, all players start at 500 points, and after each firing, all the CPs remaining are added to this score.
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 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, the player who submitted his/her entry first will be ruled the winner.
7. 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.
Tenatively, contest entries are due Saturday, February 10, 2007, at 11:59 pm Eastern Time. As it stands right now, though, all dates are subject to change.
If you have any questions, e-mail me at tjwuthrich[at]verizon[dot]net. (Again, substitute the proper punctuation for the words in brackets.) Enjoy!
-- Jason Wuthrich
This contest does not now nor will it ever challenge Mark Burnett Productions or The Trump Organization for ownership for The Apprentice. Special thanks to Nathan Sanders.
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.
