The Oscar Party 2012 edition

This weekend 02/06/12 was the Oscars. To my family its bigger then the Super Bowl. We had 20 people over at my In-laws house for a pot-luck tradition going almost 10 years back. We all make food based on the nominees. Ill try and list some of the dishes and from which movie they belonged. My wife and I made Buffalo wings for "Rio", our closest friends brought their interpretation of the Deathly Hollows, consisting of Doritos, Oreos, and, Pirouette® Chocolate Hazelnut Rolled Wafers. We had fried chicken, Cupcakes featuring Kermit, a pineapple rum cake in honor of "The Descendants". Lots of good food and drinks. 

Now for the real action the main event. We each pay $5.00 to receive our ballots and fill them out with our picks for each of the 24 categories. Then we rank them 1 - 24 points based on our confidence that they will win for a possible total of 300 points. 

There were 18 of us playing and 1 person who shall remain nameless is the usual winner and  the "ringer". We only see him twice a year and he has one the Oscar party pool for 5 or 6 straight years. Like I said "Ringer".
My only goal was to beat him and only him especially since I have never really been in the running. 

Since this being at my in-laws and the first year with this points based system I decided to use the internet to my advantage. I looked up the odds from three different gambling sites (oddschecker.com , bookmaker.net , and lasvegassportsbetting.com ) to compare and make informed decisions for my ballot and assigned category values based on the points spread. 


Well, my strategy paid off and I won, I WON I can't believe it. I'm now $90.00 richer and it feels great. It was a real nail biter towards the end and if I had one all of the last 4 categories I would have lost by six but since I lost "Best Actor" I one. I know confusing. Let me explain, as of the last 4 awards I was in the lead but another person was close. We had the same selections for Best Actor (5points), Best Actress (4 points), Best Picture (23 points) and, Best Director (22 point). My opponant had the same selections but with Best Actor (21 points), Best Actress (20 points), Best Picture (23 points) and, Best Director (22 point). So a big defference in points for the same categories. We both lost best actress we chose Viola Davis and when Meryl Streep won, I have never been so happy to lose a category before. That clinched my victory.