March Madness consistently brings out the gambler deep inside of all
of us and the office and buddy pools reach an all time high. But
if you're new to the experience here are a couple of tips and how to's
to make sure your pool is the best (and most fair) out there.
There are really two main styles to the March Madness Pool
The classic March Madness pick style is the standard 64 team bracket
with 63 games, which means 63 chances to bring home the bacon or fail
miserably in a puddle of March Madness shame and disappointment. The
catch to this style is...All 63 picks must be made before the game 1
tip-off of March Madness. So make your picks and forever hold your
peace. This style is widely used but doesn't allow too much room for
error and is better designed for the veterans and hardcore fans.
The second style is the progressive "Daily Pick'em" style that
allows you to pick each game before its respective tip-off. This means
that if you chose the University of Oregon to lose in the the first
round and they win, you can still pick U of O in the second round.
This is a nice way to play if you are going to be on top of every game
and want a few more chances to hedge your scores.
The Scoring!
There are several different scoring methodologies that can be used
and people will be arguing the best ones until the end of time.
But here are some quality methods that work well and are relative
standards.
Standard round scoring:
Round 1 picks: 1
Round 2 picks: 2
Round 3 picks: 4
Round 4 picks: 8
Round 5 picks: 16
Round 6 picks: 32
This method of scoring is a pretty traditional stand-by but you'll
notice its a little heavy on the final four rounds and also doesn't
take into consideration any type of seeding. For example, if you took a
risk and picked a low seed team to go all the way and they do, you
should be rewarded for taking the risk. To compensate for the late
round point mongering you can change the scoring to 2-3-5-8-13-21. If
you want to reward people for braving the odds and going with the
underdog then you can add an additional point stipulation: Round # x
Seed #
Happy Pooling
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