# How the cash prize winner is chosen

**URL:** <https://forum.caption.me/t/how-the-cash-prize-winner-is-chosen/1372>\
**Category:** Cash Prizes\
**Created:** [1 June 2022 09:09 UTC](https://forum.caption.me/t/how-the-cash-prize-winner-is-chosen/1372 "2022-06-01T09:09:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Chris\_Beach](https://forum.caption.me/user_avatar/forum.caption.me/chris_beach/32/3452_2.png) [@Chris\_Beach](https://forum.caption.me/u/Chris_Beach)\
**Post date:** [1 June 2022 09:09 UTC](https://forum.caption.me/t/how-the-cash-prize-winner-is-chosen/1372/1 "2022-06-01T09:09:12Z")

</div>

[Caption.me](http://Caption.me) has paid out £5,475 in cash prizes over the years, and I enjoy picking the winner each month.

The winner isn’t decided purely by votes because there’s a danger of people gaming the system (and they’ve certainly tried). So we have to have some human oversight of cash prizes.

When it’s very close between two or more captions, I privately enlist the help of some trusted long-standing members of the site (the admins, who also help me spot any suspicious voting activity).

Now, in addition to the admins, I also privately\* lean on [the 2022 Contributors](https://forum.caption.me/g/2022_Contributors) (those captioneers who generously [donated money to help fund this year’s prize pool](https://forum.caption.me/t/caption-me-prize-fund-contributions-2022/1347)).

\*via a restricted area of the forum

This way, the decision making is more democratic, and it’s also a mark of respect to those who are helping to fund the prizes. Thanks again for your support.