bracket busters

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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