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Rules

Divine Sovereignty: Deal with it.

Rules and description of game play are a living document. Please continue to check this page...

In the spirit of the supreme, completely unchecked power of the Executive branch, the player understands and agrees that Truedorktimes.com (TDT.com) reserves the right, in its sole discretion to change, add to, delete from, modify or amend the terms, conditions, scoring, and rules of the game, decide not to enforce them at all, or to call the whole thing off completely. We don't even need a frigging signing statement to do so.

Referees are allowed to make mistakes, and so are we. The player agrees to accept all decisions of the game by TDT.com and go outside for fresh air when he/she disagrees. We'd prefer not to have to perform any "rendering" this time around.

The purpose of this game is to predict the course of action of the 2008 U.S. Presidential primaries (and general election, should we give a crap by that point). We will ask a number of questions about the coming week's votes: Your mission is to answer them as correctly as possible, and to accumulate points based on your answers.

Voting

When voting is opened, your My Ballot Box homepage will have a blinking icon indicating that you need to vote as follows:

You need to vote or finish voting!

Click on the link to open the voting page. Voting should be self explanatory. There will be a series of questions to answer. Each question has a point value assigned to it.

Simply choose your answer by selecting from the pull down menus. When you've made all your selections, click "Submit Picks" once to enter your votes.

Voting Deadline

The voting deadline is displayed on the voting page when voting is open. Polls will usually open about a week before the primary, and close around 8 p.m. Eastern the day before the vote. The primaries will be separated into seven "weeks", as follows:

In the unlikely event that one or more nominations remains unclaimed after Super Tuesday, and/or anyone still cares by the actual election, we might be tempted to tack on an extra week. But don't count on it.

Base Points

If you pick the correct answer for a question, you will be awarded all the points assigned to that question. If you get it wrong, you will earn zero points for that question. These points added up for each question in the episode are your "Base Points."

Lone Wolf Bonus

The "Lone Wolf Bonus" (LWB) awards additional points to those who make a correct pick on any given question. The amount of the bonus depends on the percentage of others who also picked the answer correctly. The fewer who get it right, the higher the bonus, as shown on the chart below.

The LWB is described in more detail on this page.

Earned Points

The Base Points plus the Lone Wolf Bonus are your "Earned Points." Note that the LWB is awarded on a per question basis. The LWB for each question in the episode added up, plus your Base Points are considered your Earned Points.

Early Bird Bonus

You're probably not going to win this game by waiting around until the voting deadline. To prevent a last minute crush on the server, and to avoid the "lemming effect," an Early Bird bonus scheme was devised.

In addition to the Earned Points that you earn for picking the correct answers, an Early Bird bonus will be given based on the number of hours before the deadline that you enter your picks. If you enter your picks 4 days in advance (96 hours) or more, you will be assigned a 20% bonus on top of your earned points. Between 0 and 96 hours the Early Bird bonus will calculated with the following formula, and shown on the chart following it:

Early Bird Bonus = 20% [1 - exp(-4*nhours/96)]
where nhours = number of hours before deadline picks are submitted

Team Scoring

Weekly team scores are calculated as the average of the weekly scores of those who joined the team before the weekly voting deadline. At least 5 members must have joined by the deadline or the team weekly score will be zero for that week.

The total score is the sum of the weekly team scores.

Eligibility

Hardware/software limitations of the server may require us to limit membership.

Conduct

Tampering with the game or website, violating legal restrictions, or acting in a disruptive, annoying, abusive, threatening, or harassing manner, impersonating an admin or webmaster of TDT.com or another player, or creating an obscene, offensive, racist, homophobic, or otherwise lame ass Username is prohibited.

TDT.com reserves the right to disqualify any player in its sole discretion, including if we think you're being a general pain in the ass, or we're simply having a bad hair day.

Prizes

Disclaimer

This contest was developed by Survivornews.net, and adapted by Truedorktimes.com. It is not affiliated with the U.S. government, any political campaign, or the multinational corporations, special interest groups, and shadowy fraternal organizations that control their every move. But they probably wish they'd thought of it.

See also:


Indecision2008 | TPM Election Central | Electoral-Vote.com | Pollster.com | TrueDorkTimes.com