Bracket Picking Guide: How To Win Your NCAA Bracket Pool (Part 3)

(This post is a continuation of Part 2 of our Bracket Picking Guide.)

Step 3: Get Smart About Defining And Picking Upsets

Conventional wisdom regarding upset picking strategy is all over the map. “Always pick a 12 seed over a 5 seed,” right? Not so fast. It’s true that since 1985, an unexpectedly high percentage of 12 seeds have won a Round of 64 game. But that doesn’t mean you should blindly follow the historical trend.

Here’s a quick probability study. Let’s assume that in fact, out of every four games between 5 and 12 seeds, one 12 seed will win. Based on that assumption, if you blindly pick one 12 seed to beat a 5 this year, what is the expected outcome?

  • There’s a 25% chance that you choose the right 12 seed to win, and you get all four of the 5 vs. 12 seed games right. As a result, You would earn 4 points in most scoring systems.
  • There’s a 75% chance you pick the wrong 12 seed, meaning you only get two of the four 5 vs. 12 games right. As a result, you would earn 2 points in most scoring systems.

You would therefore expect to score 2.5 points on average by following this strategy of randomly guessing one 12 seed to beat a 5 seed.

Compare that to a strategy where you just pick all the 5 seeds to win. If you do that, your expected points scored is 3, or 20% higher.

Without deeper insight, blindly picking one 12 seed to win just because some self-professed March Madness “expert” told you it happens all the time is silly. What you need to do is figure out if any of this year’s 12 seeds are especially good values, meaning that they have solid odds to win and are also being underrated by the public. All 12-seeds are not created equal, neither within the same tournament nor across years.

Fortunately for you, most of your competition will likely use seed numbers as the guideline for picking upsets. Be smarter than that. Especially in the 7-10 seed range, the NCAA Selection Committee historically has done a relatively poor job grading relative team performance. This year, for example, Las Vegas odds actually favor 9-seed Oklahoma State to beat 8-seed Gonzaga.

Here’s another telling stat that illustrates that point. Over a recent 14 year period, 7 seeds had a win-loss record of only 30-26 against 10 seeds, making those games nearly a 50/50 proposition despite a seed difference of three. And it’s by no means historically uncommon for our computer predictions, which ignore seeds and focus on performance, to indicate that a #10 or #11 seed should actually be favored in their first round game.

You get the drift here. Unless your pool gives bonus points for seed-based upsets, forget about seed numbers and how people typically define upsets. All you should care about is having accurate and objective win odds information on all potential matchups, plus solid public picking data to provide competitive intelligence. When you come across games where the win odds for the worse-seeded team are likely to be the same (or even higher) than the win odds of the better-seeded team, and the better-seeded team happens to be a popular one, your opportunity radar should start beeping.

Of course, there are a few things to watch out for as you strategically choose upset picks. As you conduct game-by-game analysis, recognize that the lower the win odds of the teams you pick, the more risk you introduce into your overall bracket strategy. For example, #15 American has about a 12% chance to beat #2 Wisconsin in the Round of 64 this year. Yet only 2.5% of brackets nationally are picking that outcome. So American is technically a great “value” pick, but the fact remains that there’s a 90% chance they will lose. As such, American over Wisconsin is not a great pick for the majority of pool scoring systems.

Step 4: Employ a Risk-Based Strategy Appropriate For Your Pool

Now that you have a solid understanding of how to use predictions and public picking trends as a framework for evaluating individual games and upsets, you also need to craft a high level strategy to win your bracket pool. Your high level strategy should be driven by one simple question:

How much risk do I need to take to maximize my odds to win this pool, given the number of people I’m competing against, my scoring system, and other dynamics?

The answer to this question is critical because it influences the logic you should apply to many individual bracket decisions. More than any other variables, the number of people in your bracket pool and your scoring system should determine whether you apply an overall conservative (picking mostly favorites) versus aggressive (picking some significant upsets) strategy.

The laws of probability dictate that the more people in your pool, the lower your odds of winning. More specifically, the larger your pool is, the more likely it is that somebody will pick some highly improbable outcomes and, by sheer luck, get a bunch of them right. Taking it to the extreme, in ESPN’s 2011 bracket contest, which featured millions of players, two people actually picked the entire Final Four correctly, despite the fact that it featured an 8-seed, Butler, and also 11-seeded VCU, who was a play-in team!

As that example demonstrates, if your goal is to come in first on ESPN, or in any relatively large pool (say several hundred people or more), picking all favorites is generally a terrible strategy. In huge pools you have to take substantial risks in order to give yourself a better shot at finishing first.

On the other hand, in a bracket pool of 10 people, it absolutely does not pay to get all wild and crazy with your picks. All else being equal, you’re starting with 10% odds to win that pool, which isn’t bad at all. You have much more to lose making risky picks than you do in a 1,000 person pool, where your base odds to win are 0.1%.

Few people can get themselves to alter their strategy based on pool size, since it requires them to think objectively and, often times, to make unpopular picks. It’s emotionally difficult, but if you can muster the guts to do it, you gain a huge advantage.

Here’s an example of what we mean. A lot of bracket pickers we talk to seem to think that the best way to win a large pool is to pick a decent amount of favorites (to maximize their odds of staying in contention), but then make a few more upset picks than usual in the earlier rounds. They hope that with a little luck most of those upset picks will come through and serve as the “difference makers” that propel their chalk-filled Final Four bracket to victory.

The only problem is, lots of your competitors are thinking the same way. Using this approach, dozens of people in a 500 or 1,000 person pool going to have picks very similar to yours – and exactly the same as yours in the highest point value games that matter the most. You’re not going to have a relative edge.

On the other hand, taking a few big risks, such as picking an unpopular yet strong 4-seed or 5-seed to win the entire tournament, can significantly increase your odds to win. We’ve simulated millions of hypothetical bracket pools with our BracketBrains technology, and the results confirm this.

In a smaller pool, on the other hand, don’t even think about making a lot of longshot picks in a traditional scoring system. The primary strategic blunder in a small pool is to shoot yourself in the foot by being too risky with your picks, especially in the late rounds.

Part 4 of our Bracket Picking Guide keeps it rolling with our last two bracket strategy tips.

Read Part 4 »