It's time for that annual ritual, the time honored tradition of winning your office Oscar pool. Who doesn't need a little extra cash at the end of every February?
First, you need to tilt the scales in your favor. It's more difficult to win an Oscar pool on the major categories. Just voting on the major categories increases the possibility that you will have to split the winning with someone else. The major categories are where you can make your mistakes. If you have any pull in your office, use the full Oscar ballot with every category. The average person has no idea who's going to win Best Costume, but you will. I have always won in all the minor categories, and therein lies the secret.
As a reference, here are 2 interesting articles on Oscar voting, which makes sense of how all these relatively unknown people end up in the major nominations: http://www.variety.com/VR1117998897.html
Suffice to say that each branch of the Academy gets to vote only in their branch, Actors vote for Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actress. Actors do not vote on Best Cinematographer, the cinematographers do. And so it goes for each branch. Everyone in the Academy gets to vote on Best Picture, which explains why there are so many "surprise" Best Picture winners. What almost no one outside of Hollywood knows is that each of the Academy branches are part of a larger union inside of Hollywood. In the busy time between when the nominations are announced and the Oscar telecast, each of these branches hold their own private, non-televised award show for the recipient of, for example "Best Costume" according to the Costumers Guild. Also within these union award shows (they are really more like dinners held in hotel ballrooms with 1 celebrity presenter for the winner of the evening. Can you imagine the pressure of showing up at the Costumers Award show in a bad outfit? You might never work again in Hollywood, and that's a lot of pressure if you're a costumer just starting out in the business, I digress).
So 2 days before the Academy Awards, go to either: http://www.variety.com/ or http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/index.jsp and using their search tools, search for the DGA winner (Director's Guild), PGA (Producers Guild - usually picks the Best Picture winner), WGA (Writer's Guild) for the Best Adapted and Best Original Screenplay award, etc. Costume, Make Up, Set Designer, etc. You can also try Googling the winners. But use those winners to populate the minor categories so you can focus on the majors. It will take you some time and effort, but the pay off is worth it. How else are you going to correctly pick Best Special Effects other than sheer guesswork? The SAG Awards, which are televised, usually correctly pick all the Best Acting category winners.
A couple of notes. There is usually 1 surprise in the major categories. Ususally one of the Best Supporting Actor winners is a complete unknown. So make at least 1 wild guess that upends the conventional wisdom you're reading in the newspapers for major categories. And this system is be no means foolproof. The winner of Best Director for the Academy Awards may not have won Best Director from the Directors Guild. Why? Well, the Directors Guild is a much larger guild with many more voting members, as opposed to the Academy Directors branch with a much smaller voting membership.
Good luck and while I do not endorse gambling, I do endorse an opportunity to look smart in front of your co-workers while make a little scratch on the side. And do what I do when I win, use some of the money to buy donuts or bagels for your co-workers, so everybody feels like a winner.
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