Someone still has a perfect bracket.
March 21st, 2015 at 11:21 AM ^
I will personally give every dollar I earn from now until death to anyone who finishes this tournament with a perfect bracket. Proof of perfect bracket required before payment. Offer not valid in all 50 states.
March 21st, 2015 at 12:23 PM ^
So for us residents of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, we're still in the hunt.
March 21st, 2015 at 11:23 AM ^
Not a big tournament guy but do they not pick the "first round games"? The ones that go from 68 -> 64?
March 21st, 2015 at 11:52 AM ^
for almost all real office pools, and further. Since they would be but a tie-breaker determinant in almost all real pools, the default option offered by most sites (e.g. ESPN.com) is to exclude them.
Rounding up 20-100+ entrants, collecting their fees, allowing enough time for the entrants to fit in a little analysis (1 hr?) before noon EST on Thursday is rushed enough. Moving that deadline up to ~7pm Tuesday EST for four sideshow games would lessen the quality of the experience for just about everyone.
March 21st, 2015 at 11:26 AM ^
March 21st, 2015 at 12:06 PM ^
March 21st, 2015 at 12:24 PM ^
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The chalk dominated the first round after those early upsets on Thursday. If you went all chalk, your bracket was 27-5.
after starting out 2-6 (which at the time put me in ESPN's 4th percentile).
March 21st, 2015 at 11:31 AM ^
To hell with Notre Dame.
March 21st, 2015 at 11:44 AM ^
He or she has ND losing to Butler today. The only currently listed favorite team on the account is USA Soccer
March 21st, 2015 at 11:58 AM ^
(posted reply based on misunderstanding of comment)
March 21st, 2015 at 11:36 AM ^
Duke over Kansas I believe
March 21st, 2015 at 11:43 AM ^
lolwut? everyone knows Kentucky will win every game from now until the end of time.
March 21st, 2015 at 11:44 AM ^
Kansas?! From the Mighty Big 12? Beating Wichita seems like a stretch, much less ND, Kentucky and then the winner of the Wiscy-AZ draw.
But hey! 32 & F*n 0 so far pat yourself on the back! Some pools do reward best 1st round, so maybe she's got that goin for her?!
March 21st, 2015 at 12:46 PM ^
58 - 0
March 21st, 2015 at 11:40 AM ^
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March 21st, 2015 at 11:45 AM ^
highly unlikely
There are 2^63 or 9.2 quintillion possibilities for the possible winners in a 64-team NCAA bracket, making the odds of randomly picking a perfect bracket (i.e. without weighting for seed number) 9.2 quintillion to 1.[50] With the expansion of the tournament field to 68 teams in 2011, there are now 2^67 or 147.57 quintillion possibilities if one includes the first four opening round games.
There are numerous awards and prizes given by companies for anyone who can make the perfect bracket. One of the largest was done by a partnership between Quicken Loans and Berkshire Hathaway, which was backed byWarren Buffett, with a $1 billion prize to any person(s) who could correctly predict the outcome of the 2014 tournament. No one was able to complete the challenge and win the $1 billion prize.[51]
March 21st, 2015 at 12:03 PM ^
Your conclusion (na gonna happen) is fine but I don't think we want the chance of a particular given person choosing correctly (147.57 quintillion) but of SOME person doing so - the chance of the event happening at all.
We've got 11.57 million tickets to the "perfect bracket" lottery on ESPN alone. So one way of calculating the chance of someone getting a perfect bracket on ESPN are presumably .....ohf*ck someone else calculate it for me.
But this is still not right, because we are not picking a truly random event. It would only be the right calculation if Kentucky vs. Hampton etc had a 50/50 outcome.
Imagine I, a middle-aged college professor with a negative vertical leap, were playing a competitive game of HORSE v. Trey Burke. And yall were betting on it. Lots of people would win that one, not just 50%, because the outcome would not be a random event. Now imagine Trey Burke is playing vs. 63 middle-aged professors in a bracket. The probability of a winning bracket existingn would not be 1 out of 147.57 quintillion.
Right?
March 21st, 2015 at 12:17 PM ^
All true, of course. But even after accounting for all of that, the odds are still incredibly miniscule -- enough that no one has ever claimed a perfect bracket since people started making them. Which is why Quicken's move was such a great marketing campaign -- tons of press for virtually no risk.
March 21st, 2015 at 12:50 PM ^
I'll bet they insured the hell out of it anyway.
of that insurance contract (e.g. Lloyd's of London)
March 21st, 2015 at 12:26 PM ^
were 1 in a trillion. One trillion is, of course, a very large number but it's still a hell of a lot smaller than 147.57 quintillion.
Anyway, the odds of NOT having a perfect bracket are then (1 trillion - 1)/(1 trillion).
If 12 million people selected brackets, the odds of ALL of them being non-perfect are that number above, multiplied by itself 12 million times.
Excel indicates that number is 99.9988%.
Or, the odds of at least one of the 12 million brackets BEING perfect is 0.0012%.
Anyway, that's the math. Even if one were to follow rules like "always advance 1s into the Sweet 16 automatically, always pick 2s over 15", to make each individual bracket truly non-random, that 1 trillion number is likely unrealisticly small versus the actual number we should be using for this exercise.
Big picture: the odds of a perfect bracket ever occurring are incredibly small.
March 21st, 2015 at 12:49 PM ^
Fun facts:
There are better odds that the Bears win the next 12 Superbowls or the Cubs and White Sox combine to win the next 16 WS titles than the 1 in 9.23 quintillion number.
But, due to the games not being totally random (1 v 16, etc...), the odds are closer to 1 in 123 billion if you have a clue of what you're doing. Not great, but much better.
March 21st, 2015 at 11:45 AM ^
March 21st, 2015 at 11:58 AM ^
Person has Ohio State beating Arizona. lolwut
March 21st, 2015 at 12:02 PM ^
Yea, only reason I gave OSU a chance against VCU was because VCU didn't have any big starters, allowing OSU to play their small line up. Any other match up and I doubt they would have won.
March 21st, 2015 at 12:52 PM ^
OSU is good. (that was one of our best wins, so let's pretend they are great.)
There are three games I see on his bracket that have a good chance to lose today.
OSU over Arizona - we've seen crazier, but I think Arizona should win swimmingly.
Butler over ND - Could happen, but really doubt it.
Maryland over WVU... that's just a toss up game, that's why i put it on here.
You would assume one of these three go wrong for him today.. but who knows.
side note: ive been referring to this person as a man, but I think I heard it was a girl? I don't feel like going back and changing a few words, plus i'm not positive. Anyway, be cool if he/she made it til tomorrow.
March 21st, 2015 at 12:10 PM ^
Is Warren Buffett still promising to pay a billion dollars to anyone with a perfect bracket, or was that just last year?
March 21st, 2015 at 12:59 PM ^
cheapskate.
March 21st, 2015 at 12:10 PM ^
on day 1. But I nearly aced Friday, only failing on the final game when Dayton had the upset over Providence. So kudos to this person for having two consecutive perfect days, regardless of how they do the rest of the way.
March 21st, 2015 at 12:12 PM ^
So you just picked the higher seed every time? Providence was the only higher seed to lose yesterday.
March 21st, 2015 at 12:13 PM ^
March 21st, 2015 at 12:17 PM ^
Going straight chalk will get you a decent enough record in the first round. But it's a bit lame to brag about it.
March 21st, 2015 at 12:32 PM ^
My first rd took 3 losses... On ESPN that's 10 pts each so I have 290 out of 320 for the rd of 64. Im guessing that'll take a hit tonight, though.
March 21st, 2015 at 12:56 PM ^
A) this person is female
B) she has never watched a complete basketball game in her life
C) chose teams based on mascot, school colors or how cute the coach is
Drjaws. Not cool.
For the tiebreaker she predicted a 58-0 score in the finals.
the tie breaker won't be needed.