As anyone who follows me on Twitter knows, I’m pretty into Top Chef. A few years ago I created a game for my family and friends to play modeled on the “pick’em” contests that ESPN and other websites roll out each year for football and other sports. With the premier of Top Chef Season 18 just around the corner this Thursday at 8pm Eastern, I thought it might be nice to share the rules here in case anyone else wants to do something similar. It took us a couple of tries to get this right, and we’re still making tweaks here and there (we’re increasing the number of points you get for correctly predicting the winner of the finale from 10 to 25 this year, for instance, to keep a few more people in the running right up until the end), but I think we’ve found a good balance between rewarding people who put in effort without punishing anyone who doesn’t have a lot of time. The following is adapted from an email I send out every year to remind everyone how the game works. Without further ado:
The rules for the game are simple: each week you compile a ranked list of all the chefs left in the competition. You receive positive points for chefs who win the Quickfire challenge and double positive points for chefs who win the elimination challenge; you will receive negative points for chefs who are eliminated. If you forget to submit a list for a given episode, your list for the previous episode will carry over. To illustrate how this works, here’s an example from episode one of Top Chef Season 15:
If you were a believer in the predictive value of alphabetical order, you might have submitted the following set of rankings for this episode:
- Adrienne
- Brother
- Bruce
- Carrie
- Christopher
- Claudette
- Fatima
- (Mustache) Joe
- (No-Mustache) Joe
- Laura
- Melissa
- Rogelio
- Tanya
- Tu
- Tyler
I would have interpreted this to mean that you thought Adrienne was the best chef and Tyler the worst. In episode one, Tyler was named the winner, Tu won the Quickfire, and Melissa was eliminated. You therefore would have received two points for Tu’s Quickfire win, since you had him ranked second-from-last; two points for Tyler winning the episode, since you had him ranked last, and since elimination challenge wins are worth double points; and negative eight points for Melissa’s elimination, since you had her ranked eighth. Your score for this episode would have thus been negative four points, so: not a good round for you! If you were a big believer in the predictive value of reverse alphabetical order, on the other hand, you would have received 14 points for Tu’s Quickfire win, since you would have had him ranked second-from-the-top; 30 points for Tyler winning the episode, since you would have had him ranked #1, and since elimination challenge wins are worth double points; and negative eight points for Melissa’s elimination. In this scenario, your score for the episode would have been 36 points.
Hopefully this all makes sense! Even if it doesn’t, as long as you understand that you should rank all of the chefs left in the competition each week, you’re probably good to go. Additional notes:
- Picking the winner of the finale will be worth 25 points.
- No negative points will be awarded after Padma stops telling people to “pack their knives and go home.
- You may include “LCK Winner” in your ranks for any episode which is expected to feature a Last Chance Kitchen winner returning to the competition. If you don’t, “LCK Winner” will be automatically inserted at the bottom of your ranks. There is no bonus or penalty for identifying the chef returning to the competition by name.
And that’s pretty much it! Again, the beauty of this format is that you can rank all of the chefs in a minute or two if you’re in a hurry, or you can spend the entire week pondering the fact that Restaurant Wars is coming up, and the preview seemed to indicate that Chef A is going to be front of house, which is a kiss of death, but on the other hand they’re good at desserts, and Chef B shouldn’t still be left in the competition, etc. I also generally try to send out an email containing everyone’s picks as soon after the start of the initial broadcast as I can, but wait until the following Monday to send out updated standings to give people who aren’t watching live a chance to catch up. Last but not least, in non-all stars seasons, we typically begin the competition with episode two, not one, to give everyone a chance to get to know the new cast. Enjoy Season 18, Top Chef fans!
3/15/24 Update: In Season 21 we experimented with weighing later episodes more heavily than earlier ones via the following formula: the first four episodes in the competition (2-5) were be scored exactly as described above, but each week’s point total was doubled in the four episodes after that (6-9) and tripled in the final four (10-13). This seemed to work out well, so as of Season 22 it is now a permanent feature of the game!
The Prodigal Cinephile 