Wanna win your Oscar pool? Read this!

Filling out your Oscar ballot means choosing who you think will win, not who you want to win. No matter how much you loved Brian Tyree Henry in Causeway, he is not going to win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. That award, by the way, is one of the only gimmes of the night: it’ll go to Ke Huy Quan for Everything Everywhere All At Once. So as much as you may think Marcel The Shell With Shoes On is totes adorbs and you really love Jenny Slate (who doesn’t?), resist the urge to choose it on that basis. There are too many awards experts and guild members who know more than the casual fan. Lean on them, and take your own opinions out of it.

No one nails an eventual Oscar winner more than the Directors Guild of America. Since 1950, a whopping 64 DGA winners have gone on to hoist a Best Director Oscar. The last time they got it wrong? 2020, when 1917 director Sam Mendes lost to Bong Joon Ho on a night Parasite dominated the Oscars. This year, the DGA bestowed their prize for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Theatrical Feature Film to Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (Everything Everywhere All at Once), who beat out Todd Field (Tár), Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick), Martin McDonagh (The Banshees Of Inisherin), and Steven Spielberg (The Fabelmans). Four of them are also up for the Oscar. The Academy nominated Ruben Ostlund (Triangle Of Sadness) over Kosinski. Oddsmakers consider the Kwan and Scheinert tandem the Oscar favorites (we’ll get to that later) but, this year and all years, look to the DGA for the most accurate advice regarding who’ll win the Oscar for Best Director.

The BAFTAs work better as a reference point than a true harbinger of things to come at the Oscars, and that’s simply because the BAFTAs celebrate British filmmaking. And even if there’s not a homegrown in the running, they’ve lately missed the mark, choosing La La Land over Moonlight, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri instead of The Shape Of Water, Roma and not Green Book, and 1917 as opposed to Parasite. This year, on the director front, BAFTA deviated quite a bit from the Academy, nominating Gina Prince-Bythewood for The Woman King, Edward Berger for All Quiet On The Western Front (he and the film both won in their respective categories), and Park Chan-Wook for Decision To Leave. Their Best Actress nominees are also no help in filling out your ballot because, while Cate Blanchett won, their nominees included Oscar no-shows Viola Davis, Danielle Deadwyler, and Emma Thompson. And among their non-Oscar-nominated Best Actor options were Eddie Redmayne, Albrecht Schuch, and Micheal Ward (Austin Butler won). So our suggestion: don’t go by the BAFTAs.

The Producers Guild of America boasts a solid track record for selecting Oscar winners. The PGA has about 7,500 members and while not all of them produce motion pictures, their awards are still a solid indicator of future Oscar success. Since they started naming a Best Picture 33 years ago–officially called the Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures—they’ve synced with the Academy an impressive 22 times. And even better, when the Oscars expanded their Best Picture category to 10 nominees, so did the PGA. The PGA Best Picture nominees for this past year were, alphabetically: Avatar: The Way Of Water, The Banshees Of Inisherin, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Elvis, Everything Everywhere All At Once, The Fabelmans, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, Tár, Top Gun: Maverick, and The Whale. The Academy swapped All Quiet On The Western Front, Triangle Of Sadness, and Women Talking for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, and Top Gun: Maverick.

You wouldn’t assume that film critics have any say in who’ll win an Oscar since very few are members of any of the guilds that actually vote for the Oscars. But don’t count out the critics. The Critics Choice Awards have been in lockstep with the Academy more than 70 percent of the time—across all the main categories—for quite a while now. Why? We’ve got no idea. The CCA has been around for 27 years and have called it right on the following: 15 Best Picture winners, 18 Best Actors, 15 Best Actresses, 19 Supporting Actresses, 17 Supporting Actors, and 22 Best Directors. Last year, they predicted all four acting Oscar winners: Jessica Chastain, Will Smith, Ariana DeBose, and Troy Kotsur, but went with The Power Of The Dog versus CODA for Best Picture. At last month’s Critics Choice Awards the winners included Everything Everywhere All At Once for Best Picture, Brendan Fraser for Best Actor, Cate Blanchett for Best Actress, Ke Huy Quan for Best Supporting Actor, Angela Bassett for Best Supporting Actress, and Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert for Best Director. All of them are serious contenders for Oscar gold. So don’t discount the critics when filling out your ballot. Or when sending Christmas cash: Critics don’t make a lot of money.

The SAG Awards and the Oscars typically line up nicely, but not always. And data only goes back to 1995, which was the first year the SAG Awards were given. Plus, SAG does not award a Best Picture. Their top award is Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture which makes sense because they’re, you know, an acting guild. The reason why the SAGs make sense as an Oscar predictor is because the Academy’s acting branch is its largest with over 1,300 members. So the overlap between voting members of SAG and the Motion Picture Academy makes this guild a good bellwether. Last year, all four SAG actor winners repeated their achievements on Academy Awards night, but this year the larger lists of nominees diverged a great deal. It’s kind of crazy considering that actors determine the acting nominees for both the SAG Awards and the Oscars. The year, SAG presented its awards to Brendan Fraser, Michelle Yeoh, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Ke Huy Quan. So you figure they’ve got a built-in boost from at least some members of their Academy branch.

Arguably the least useful Oscar indictor are the Writers Guild Awards, and that’s because the WGA applies extraordinarily strict rules for inclusion in its awards process. So, for example, while some consider Martin McDonagh a lock to win Best Original Screenplay for Banshees Of Inisherin, he was ineligible for a Writers Guild nomination because his script was not written under the guild’s Minimum Basic Agreement or another WGA-approved agreement that covers international productions. On the Best Adapted Screenplay front, the Oscar nominees include All Quiet On the Western Front, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, Living, Top Gun: Maverick, and Women Talking, while the WGA included Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and She Said over All Quiet On The Western Front and Living, which were both deemed ineligible. Intriguing, right? Or maybe just annoying and unfair.

As much work as you put into your Oscar ballot, oddsmakers like those in Vegas and the Hollywood Stock Exchange do more. Because, whatever your opinion on the business they have chosen, this is their life and while their sources are no deeper then ours, their methodology is quite sophisticated and thorough. Of course, we’re not suggesting you run to your favorite sports book and bet your kid’s college fund on The Sea Beast to win Best Animated Feature (in fact, please don’t do that because Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is Vegas’ overwhelming favorite to win that category). But the oddsmakers are not a bad resource to consult as you fill out your ballot. Their success rate is pretty solid.

Most of the time, the big winners are easy to narrow down and probably pick correctly. But what often separates the winners from the losers are the three shorts categories: Animated Short, Documentary Short and Live Action Short. And while it may be tempting to make your pick by throwing a dart at a board, take the time to do the proper research. See the shorts, which are released theatrically every awards season and some are even available to view online or on a streaming service like AppleTV+. Check what bloggers, awards experts, the trade publications, and entertainment journalists are predicting. And don’t forget the oddsmakers; they may be helpful here. It could make the difference between a free sushi dinner courtesy of those who did less research than you and a lonely car ride home.

When all else fails, if you still want a shot at proclaiming yourself “king of the world“ and having everyone call you arrogant (see above photo), throw out Tip #1 and go with your gut. The uncertainty will put some excitement into the evening. Sure, it’ll feel great knowing all those hours (okay, minutes) of research led to a stunning victory that has made you the envy of people you don’t like or have never met. But ultimately, the more fun you have the more you’ll enjoy winning and the less disappointed you’ll be when you lose.