I'm not doing a March Madness bracket this year.
✨ one can only predict the future so much. best not to waste the gift on popular frivolities.
but: some notes from last year.
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When filling out a bracket, it is important to realize one's goals. Is it:
- to win the group
- to get the best individual score
- to make picks that allow one to gloat to one's friends
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To win a bracket, the key is to correctly pick the national champion. If it is a team that nobody else in the group has picked, you will probably win even if the rest of your bracket is average.
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for other picks, the rule of "take the better seed (that is, the 1 seed, or then the 2 seed, etc.)" is a good starting point.
- it's no fun to take all the favorites
- very roughly: games with up to 3 seed difference (aka 7-10) are coin-flips; games with up to 8 seed differential (aka 5-12 or 1-8) are 80% favorites for the higher seed
- there will probably be one or two top-4 seeds that lose in the first round. trying to pick these is largely futile.
- the computers are generally pretty good at knowing which team is better. for the men, https://kenpom.com/ is a good baseline rating.
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other notes:
- actually having watched the teams play can help to know how good they are
- if there is a "good story" that isn't too unlikely, pick into it
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for the women's pool:
- seed differences mean more here. only a 1-seed difference is a pick-em, and a 4-seed difference is enough for 75-25 odds.
- picking all of the 1 and 2 seeds to reach the round of 8 is far more likely to be successful for the women's bracket