The question of intramolecular energy distribution in polyatomic molecules or, more precisely, whether reacting molecules display ergodic or non-ergodic behavior, is of central importance in reaction dynamics.[1] For ionic gas-phase systems, the unimolecular behavior of the enol and keto forms of ionized acetone, 1 and 2, respectively, constitutes one of the best studied systems. [2,3] Detailed 2 H-and 13 C-labeling experiments, energetic measurements, analysis of kinetic energy release distributions as well as electronic-structure calculations of the potential-energy surface with the inclusion of trajectory studies reveal the following (Scheme 1): Direct dissociation of 1 to generate the hydroxyvinyl cation 4 does not occur; rather, irreversible isomerization to a highly excited, short-lived acetone ion 2 takes place, which decomposes to the acylium ion 3 concomitant with loss of a CH 3 radical at a time-scale of 5 10 À13 s. From 2, the newly formed methyl group is eliminated preferentially as compared to the one which is already present in 1, and the kinetic energy release associated with elimination of this process is smaller than that for the loss of the newly generated methyl group. All these findings clearly point to a non-statistical (i.e., "non-ergodic") behavior of the chemically activated acetone ion 2. Inspired by the detailed mechanistic information which can be achieved from kinetic analysis of multiple labeling data, [4] here we report a re-investigation of the dissociation of 1 for a wide set of isotopologues, generated via dissociative electron ionization of the corresponding labeled 2-hexanones in a McLafferty reaction. [5,6] To our surprise, however, it turned out that the unimolecular dissociation of ionized acetone and its enol form offers additional mechanistic puzzles which have not been recognized before. [2,3] The experimentally obtained data for the unimolecular dissociation of the enol ions 1-1 h (Table 1) can be accounted for by a rate-determining, irreversible enol-keto tautomerization 1 ! 2 followed by a rapid dissociation of the latter in which the two methyl groups do not have sufficient time to completely equilibrate their originally different energy content. As a consequence, both CÀCH 3 bonds are cleaved with different rates. This view has been supported by numerous computational studies. [1b,2c,d,f,h,i,j] Further, the analysis of the data for 1-1 h implies that a degenerate [1,3]-hydrogen migration, by which the methyl and the methylene groups of 1 equilibrate, cannot energetically compete with the tautomerization 1 ! 2. This is in line with exploratory, [a] Dr.