2010 was a bit of a deceptive year.

Conventional wisdom going into the ceremony was that it was one of the easiest to handicap in years. And while it's true that there weren't a whole any surprises in the majors -- Best Picture, despite being characterized by the press as an upset, was correctly predicted by more than half of the entrants, and all of the other majors were picked by no less than 70% of the entrants -- the rest of the ballot told a different story. Setting aside the majors, 2010's entrants correctly predicted 35% of the categories on average -- significantly less than the mark of 42% set in the previous year.

Interestingly, having twice the number of Best Picture nominees didn't do much to create diversity in selections. Five of the ten nominees were shut out of the balloting, and all but four entries chose The Hurt Locker or Avatar. For all of the hubbub surrounding the change, it didn't seem to have much of an impact on the pool... not this year, at least.

The real story, however, was a dominant win by Tom Kruc, outguessing the next closest ballots by seven points and four categories, obliterating the previous record margins of five points and two categories, set by Michael Fang in 2008, earning him a spot in the Academy Awards Pool Hall of Fame. Rounding out the top three were Andrew McNaughton and Michael Fang, both veterans of the pool who have moneyed before. Incidentally, Michael Fang continued his amazing streak, placing in the top three for a fifth consecutive year. We think that deserves a Hall of Fame entry as well. Emily Shrift, coming off a win in her first entry in 2009, failed to defend her title and just narrowly missed the money, landing in fourth place. Also deserving of praise is Jason Thorpe who, despite landing in fifth place, predicted the most categories of anybody not named Tom Kruc.

The least surprising win was Avatar for Visual FX, which was correctly predicted by 93% of the entries, while the least surprising major was Mo'Nique for Supporting Actress. The biggest surprise was Sound Mixing, where Tom Kruc was the only one to correctly predict The Hurt Locker. Close behind that were Logorama for Animated Short and The Hurt Locker for Sound FX Editing, both of which were only picked by two entrants.

The tiebreaker was a bit of a mess... poorly thought through on the part of your organizers and a big pain to count, but the only time it came into play was for positions down the list and well out of the money. Better planning next year. But one thing was clear -- the producers' edict didn't seem to do much to slow the torrent of thanks from the winners.

All in all, a fine year for the Acadeny Awards Pool, especially given another late start.