Layups: Gelf Magazine’s ‘Bracketless Bracket’
Posted by Neil Paine on March 14, 2011
Here's an interesting take on a March Madness pool from Gelf Magazine:
The Bracketless Bracket | Gelf Magazine
The premise is simple: everyone picks exactly one team at each seed #. You get 100 points when your 1-seed wins, 110 when your 2-seed wins, and so on and so forth up to 250 for a 16-seed win (hey, it has to happen eventually). It's pretty clever because in addition to testing on your ability to pick games, it also calls on your sense of who the committee over- or under-rated relative to the other teams at the same seed (hello, Utah State!).
March 14th, 2011 at 4:46 pm
This is a fabulous idea however when I submitted my entries there was an error and it did not post.
March 14th, 2011 at 5:36 pm
I received the error, too. Great idea, though.
March 16th, 2011 at 2:50 pm
I've been running virtually the same style pool since 1995. A friend of mine came up with the idea the year before and I offered to run it. The only difference with this is that the scoring is simpler and weighted. Points are seed # multiplied by round #. Last year, for instance, Duke's title was only worth 21 points. Cornell's run to the sweet 16 was 36. Butler's finals run was worth 75.
The only reason I ran it each year was the large response it got. Honestly, I hated the concept because it felt like filling out a lottery ticket where you know the weights of the ping pong balls. In 15 years, I finished in the top 3 on 7 occasions, as did a friend who is a walking gambling encyclopedia. So did my friend's mother who picked based on jersey color, location and whose friend's daughter went to which school. The novelty wore off quickly.