Using Strategy and BracketBrains Odds to Win NCAA Bracket Pools

Thoughts on Winning NCAA Tournament Pools from the Nerds at TeamRankings.com

You have one goal in your bracket pool: to win.

You need to do one thing to win: outperform your competitors.

The reality that many college basketball fans either don't realize (or don't care to admit) is that winning an NCAA bracket pool has less to do with the number of games you pick correctly than you think.

In fact, smart NCAA bracket strategies focus first on the teams that your competitors are picking. These strategies recognize that you gain nothing by picking winners that your competition picks too. On the other hand, finding even just a few situations where you can go against popular sentiment with the odds in your favor can make all the difference between first and twentieth place.

Independent of any knowledge about your bracket competitors, over the long term, BracketBrains should serve as a valuable tool for improving your office pool performance. But once you learn to use it as means to identify undervalued NCAA tournament teams, it becomes a lethal weapon.

Brace yourself, because this is not going to be easy. You'll need to find a way to ignore your personal biases about teams that you've watched play and teams you like. You'll have to face the ridicule of the guys at the sports bar. You'll also need to block out all the hype and misinformation shoveled at you by the media, the bloggers, and your best friend who thinks he knows college hoops better than 99% of people in the galaxy.

We personally employ the bracket strategies outlined in this paper and consistently place in the top 10% of our bracket pools, including a two first place finishes and three second place finishes in seven tries over the past three years, all in pools of 15+ people.

We have achieved this performance despite the fact that the vast majority of college hoops fans out there watch many more games each year than we do. Look, I'll admit it right now. I barely watch any college hoops before the NCAA tournament. Off the top of my head, I can't name more than two or three players on any college hoops team except Stanford, my alma mater. Actually, now that the Lopez twins are gone, I take that back.

With only 64 games to pick in a bracket, it's a mathematical reality that luck can play a significant role in determining who wins your pool. Consequently, your ultimate goal is to employ systematic and repeatable tactics that position you for a shot at the title year after year. Fortune favors the well informed, and used together, BracketBrains and the strategies outlined below should help you achieve consistent high performance in bracket competitions. Guaranteed to win? No way. But you should be in the top 20% way more often than the bottom 20%.

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