A different way to do a NCAA tourney pool.

[MtnBuff]

This is the time of year when people fill in brackets, pick their winners, and normally watch them crash and burn while somebody who picked games based on "pretty" uniform colors wins.

I have kicked around a way to compete without having to follow every game in every bracket and watch the highest seeds win most of the time in the end. Here's how it works

1. Each person in the pool picks 4-6 teams. You can make it like a draft or you can allow more than one competitor to select each individual team.

2. Points are awared for each win by a team a competitor has selected. The point system is what makes it very different.

3. Point values for each win are based on mulitiplying the teams seed (1-16) by the tourney round, Play ins count as 1st round as does the actual first full round of competition.

Example: This year CU is an 8th seed. If someone had the Buffs and they beat Pitt they would be worth 8 points (8X1). If they went on and beat Florida in the next round they would be worth 16 points (8X2). Next round they would be worth 24 then 32, etc. On the other hand if you have somebody who picks a #1 seed and follows that team to the championship would get a total of 21 points from that team. Someone who picks a #4 seed who makes the final 8 would get 24 from that team.

The objective in the end then is not to just pick the winners but pick the teams with the lowest seeds who have the best chance to win enough games to produce significant points.

 

[tante]

Filling out a bracket is not very hard

 

[MtnBuff]

Filling out a bracket is not very hard

No one said it was. Simply looking at a different way of looking at the tourney that rewards picking the upsets, looking for value instead of sure winners.

 

[tante]

A regular bracket already does that to a degree. Each round is worth more points.

 

[buff190]

I saw a pretty cool pool that I had never heard of before. You do the tourney in squares like you do football.

The squares are all filled, then the numbers are drawn for each column(home) and row(away). The pool I saw was $20 a square.

So say you draw a 5 for the home team and 2 for the away team. Those would be your numbers for every game in the tourney. The payout is only for the final score but you have a chance to win on every single game of the tourney. You win a small amount for the second round (play in games were not included) and the amount you win per game goes up each round.

Not sure how you would do that online but I just thought it was an interesting way to do a tournament pool.

edit: this more like playing the lottery though. blind luck and it doesn't matter who wins the games but it would still be fun.