The Spiel

The Spiel, also known as the MC Spiel, is the introduction given at most poetry slams. It outlines the basic rules for the slam and explains what will happen to the audience. Though there is an official version endorsed by PSi, The Spiel has multiple variants because it is usually delivered from memory and because not all rules apply to different types of slams.

Basic Tenets
Regardless of variants, The Spiel almost always includes the following tenets of slam:
 * Each poem must be of the poet's own construction.
 * Each poet gets three minutes (plus a ten-second grace period) to read one poem. If the poet goes over time, points will be deducted from the total score.
 * The poet may not use props, costumes or musical instruments.
 * Of the scores the poet received from the five judges, the high and low scores are dropped and the middle three are added together, giving the poet a total score of 0-30.

Common Variants
The Spiel's two main variants derive from whether or not the slam uses teams. If the slam poets are competing individually, the text about group poems and group scoring is naturally omitted.

Sample Spiel
Listen up, because I'm only going to say this once: What you are about to witness is a poetry slam, and this is The Spiel. Each poet has three minutes to perform a completely original piece of their own creation. There will be no props, no costumes, no animal acts, and no musical accompaniment.

Five randomly selected judges will score them Olympic style, zero to ten based on how well the poem was wriiten and performed. Zero is the poem so bad that the poet should be forced to play in traffic so we never have to hear it again. Ten being the poem that causes world peace and spontaneous orgasms throughout the room. We drop the high, we drop the low, add the rest together and poof, we have a score somewhere between zero and thirty points. Judges have one – count ‘em – one decimal point. I don’t want to see any 3.14159s.

Each poet’s individual score will be added to the cumulative total, which is a maximum of 150 points per round. The poet with the highest cumulative score after three rounds is declared the winner.

Remember, poets: Three shall be the number of the minutes thou shalt have, and the number of the minutes shall be three. The penalty for exceeding the time limit is being taken out back and shot. Either that or we give you a ten second grace period and then start deducting half a point for every ten seconds you go over after that.

Everyone got all that? No? Too bad! First up in the slam is...

Sample Spiel (Clean Version)
Listen up, because I'm only going to say this once: What you are about to witness is a poetry slam, and this is The Spiel. Each poet has three minutes to perform a completely original piece of their own creation. There will be no props, no costumes, no animal acts, and no musical accompaniment.

The judges, of whom there are five, will take those hard wrought words and score them Olympic style, zero to ten. Zero: the poem that should never have been written. Ten: the poem that causes world peace and makes diet soda actually taste good. We drop the high, we drop the low, add the rest together and poof, we have a score somewhere between zero and thirty points. Judges have one – count ‘em – one decimal point. I don’t want to see any 3.14159s out there.

Poets are grouped in teams of five and may present five poems per round: one for each poet. Group pieces are not only permitted, they are encouraged. Each poet’s individual score will be added to the cumulative total for its respective team, which is a maximum of 150 points per round. The team with the highest cumulative score after three rounds is declared the winner.

Remember, poets: Three shall be the number of the minutes thou shalt have, and the number of the minutes shall be three. The penalty for exceeding the time limit is being heckled anytime you try to speak for the rest of the day. Either that or we give you a ten second grace period and then start deducting half a point for every ten seconds you go over after that.

Everyone got all that? No? Too bad! First up is a team from...