Dylan nerdery unleashed online

Bob Dylan fans and Internet junkies, rejoice! Dylan kicked off his latest North American tour in Seattle on Monday, and with that another season of the Dylan Pool began.

Since 2001, fans have been competing in a contest based on set lists from Bob Dylan concerts. Think "fantasy sports for music fanatics." Here's how it works: Players make picks as to which songs Dylan will play most often on the upcoming tour. Each time a selected song is played, points are awarded to anyone who picked that tune. More points are awarded for songs that rarely make it into live set lists, fewer for old standbys such as "All Along the Watchtower." Players compete alone or in teams. Every time Dylan goes on tour, players make their picks, and the competition starts up again.

Created in February 2001 by Arthur Louie--then a Canadian university student--the site runs off of a database-driven system based on PHP, Perl and MySQL. An FAQ on the site says that Louie started the project because of his love for Dylan's music and for computer programming. He now runs a Web development company, but continues on with the pool in his spare time--something that is no doubt time-consuming.

The site has lots of features. Shortly after each show, the database is updated, and players can check updated standings. Each player and team has a page that tracks nightly statistics with graphs, picks and current set lists. Pages can be customized with images or favorite songs and albums.

To be sure, this is not the average fantasy league. Nor are the stakes anything like what one would expect from a standard "March Madness" pool. The Dylan Pool isn't played for money. All prizes are donated by players, and even their distribution is out of the norm. Prizes range from bootleg recordings of past Dylan shows to an original oil painting made by a pool participant and even a homemade Bob Dylan paper doll.

And who receives prizes is no standard affair, either. While many goodies do go to the top finisher, the poor soul who ends up in last place is never forgotten. And it's common to see a prize go to the person who picked a specific song and had, say, the 53rd-highest score on a specific night. One recent prize went to the player with the highest score for the night of Marky Ramone's birthday. Prizes have gotten so complicated that the pool now has a volunteer prize committee to sort out all of the unusual requests.

While the fans may be hard-core, the competition is not. Players seemingly revel in the good-natured spirit of the competition. A few of us at CNET News.com formed a team for this tour, but we won't disclose who we are, unless Dylan starts playing "Simple Twist of Fate," which would greatly improve our scores.