Winning in March Madness
Being a sports guy, it should come as no surprise to any of you that I participate in an annual sports gambling ritual. I put down $5 to say that my ability to predict the outcome of the NCAA basketball championship tournament every March. Generally I'm pretty frugal with my money, so you'd think I'd be pretty confident in my skills, and I am. You'd also think then that I have a solid understanding of NCAA basketball schools and their programs, but you'd be wrong.
Quick math suggests that there are roughly 2 to the 64th possible brackets. That works out to 1.84 times 10 to the 19th power, but really only about 1/8th of those are within the realm of possibility. Given that many possible outcomes, anybody can win, and anybody can lose. Hardcore basketball people lose these pools all the time to people who know next to nothing about sports.
Although I agree that the principle behind college basketball makes for a more interesting sport to follow than the NBA, I do feel that intense fanfare around it worsens the commercialization of the amateur game. I also feel that not following gives me an advantage in this pool, yes you read correctly, an advantage, here's why:
- I have no emotional allegiance to the success or failure of any one team, because I don't follow any one team, and I generally forget from year to year who my good picks were
- I follow the trends, I know that the #10 seed wins 55% of their first round games, and the 9th seed wins 60% of theirs
- You can't predict the obvious and still call yourself an expert, even if it then comes true. Hardcore ballers know this, and avoid the easy picks, I don't care how easy the picks are.
Here is how I fill out my brackets.
- First round - every #1, 2 and 3 seed advances, only one from each #13, 12 and 11 seed advance, and half of the #9 and #10 seed advances
- Final Four - 2 or 3 #1 seeds, never four
- Pairs - this is an authentic Will suggestion
- pick four first round pairs (teams with similar names, same state, similar mascots, whatever)
- two of those pairs advance, one pair advances to the Sweet 16 as well
- one pair does not advance
- with the final pairing, one team advances that shouldn't, and the other that should win, doesn't
(make it tough too, don't just say UTEP and ETSU have similar names and they both get eliminated, that's clearly already going to happen, but if you pick them to both advance, and they do, HELLO!)
- Make up your own quirky method. If you win, hey you've got a good selection algorithm, if you lose it doesn't matter, because you don't know anything about sports anyway.

   [ posted by William @ 1:11 PM ]