Veteran handicapper Mike Somich offers his strategies on how to win your March Madness pool.Strategies to Win Your March Madness Pool
We are just two weeks away from March Madness, and office pools across the country are firing up bracket contests! Each year, you hear about a #12 seed knocking off a #5 seed, and people will be talking about the #15 over #2 and #16 over #1 upsets that have happened over the last two years. But does predicting those really help you win your bracket? Let’s jump into some basic strategies that can help you give yourself the best chance to win your pools!Know Your Pool
This one seems obvious, but you’d be surprised by how few people know the simple things like how your pools are scored and how many people are entered. Both are extremely important when determining how you’d like to fill out your bracket. For this article, I will assume that in each round, there are 64 or 640 (how many ESPN scores) points possible. That would mean that each first-round game is worth 20 points, the second-round games are worth 40 points each, and so on. If your pool is scored differently, you may need to adjust accordingly.This also may seem obvious, but picking the tournament winner is the most important thing you need to do in most formats. However, how you get to that champion is key, and who you select should depend on the size of your pool. If you are playing with 10 people, taking someone like UConn or Houston, the two teams who will be selected the most, could help you win the pool. You won’t be the only one with either team, but you will essentially need to be better in the early rounds than 1-3 people who also selected your champ. That is doable.
If you are in a larger pool, say 100 plus, it’s much more difficult to select a popular champion and win. I expect around 25-30% of pools will have UConn as the victor. If you select UConn in a pool of 100 people, you will need to beat 25-30 peoples’ scores in the early rounds. That is not easy to do. Instead, selecting someone like Arizona, North Carolina, or possibly even Purdue will drastically increase your chances of winning the pool if they win the title.
The general rule of thumb should be the larger your pool, the more you want to reach when picking the winner.
Playing the Early Rounds
We’ve got our champion, so we must fill out the rest of the March Madness bracket. It’s important to pick your champion first because, based on the number of people playing that champion, your style for the early rounds needs to adjust.Let’s say you landed on UConn, a very likely winner. You must create a unique early-round scenario to separate yourself from other people who selected UConn. If someone played UConn to win it all, they will most likely have a more chalk-filled bracket. Do the opposite. Take some early shots with other high seeds losing early. You do not need to go crazy, but you have to make sure you can separate yourself before the final four since you will not be able to make up as much ground late.
Conversely, if you selected someone like North Carolina to win it all, then being aggressive early is not the proper strategy. Your goal is to simply stay in range of the leaders since you have a unique champion and can make up ground in the later rounds. While it’s fun to say you have a big upset in the first round, it’s better to play the likely winner and bank those points. Let the other people with your champion take stabs early and take advantage of their style. Remember, if someone picks a longshot champion, they are more likely to pick upsets early as well.
The general rule here for your March Madness bracket is to do the opposite of your champion. Take more risks with a favorite winning it all and less with a longshot.
Good luck in all your brackets!
