Okay- this is serious cash for a perfect bracket

[InSpades]

In a 64 team tournament (I know there's 68 now but this is for the sake of easier math) there are 4,295,033,110 different permutations I believe. And if you rule out the possibility of a #16 upsetting a #1 then it drops dramatically down to 268,501,270 permutations. If we can get 1000 DBR'ers to fill out 268,502 brackets each then we're guaranteed a cool million each.

If it was truly that low then they'd actually be at a significant risk. As it stands... the odds are much much worse. As stated earlier... if the games are all 50/50 then it's like 2^67. It's like a billion times a billion.

By my calculations... if every game was 60/40 and you had a billion people enter every year it would take more than 700,000 years to get a perfect bracket on average.

My math is probably wrong but... (1/(1-(1-.6^67)^1*(10^9))) in the right ballpark I think.

[InSpades]

It's happened before, hasn't it? A quick google shows that an autistic kid picked every game correctly in 2010, he had UNI over KU (grrr).

He got the Sweet 16 right. Which is impressive... but a lot different than getting the whole thing right.

[hurleyfor3]

Presuming all four play-in games are included, there are 67 games in the tournament. So there are 2^67 possible brackets. The most obvious way to see this is in each initial game, call one team "Heads" and the other team "Tails", and keep those names constant throughout the tournament. Then you just have 67 coin flips. 2^67 is 1.4E20, or 147.5 billion billion.

Say an extraordinarily good picker can predict a game with 70% accuracy. It is reasonable to assume the average contestant can get over half the games right, mainly because a good chunk of games are in the first few rounds where there is a wide difference in seeds, and where the higher seed wins a great deal of the time. But overall, a 70% picker can can do very well at Vegas by just betting money lines until he gets cut off. I've never heard of anyone getting cut off from sports betting without trying to fix a game or otherwise cheat the casino, which should tell you how likely this is.

Anyway, the chance a 70% right contestant gets the bracket perfect is 1 in 24 billion (23.902 and change billion, actually). So the expected value of participating in this pool would be slightly over four cents.

We can calculate the level of accuracy required for the expected value of an entry to be one cent. It's just the 67th root of 100 billion (1E11). This comes out to .68521, or 68.5%, just over two-thirds. You'd have to get 46 out of 64 games right on average. One way to do this is to get the ENTIRE play-in round, the ENTIRE Round of 64, and 10 out of the Sweet 16, and everything wrong the rest of way. That's not just getting lucky, that would have to be your AVERAGE bracket.

What Buffet really should do is allow anyone to enter an unlimited number of brackets, but charge one cent for each entry.

[Ichabod Drain]

If it was truly that low then they'd actually be at a significant risk. As it stands... the odds are much much worse. As stated earlier... if the games are all 50/50 then it's like 2^67. It's like a billion times a billion.

By my calculations... if every game was 60/40 and you had a billion people enter every year it would take more than 700,000 years to get a perfect bracket on average.

My math is probably wrong but... (1/(1-(1-.6^67)^1*(10^9))) in the right ballpark I think.

Yes sorry my math was wrong... it's actually one in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 for a 64 team field. It's been a few years since that college statistics class.

[Wander]

Just a darn minute, here. What's going on? Where did the 67 games figure come from? Things aren't very clear. By my count, the NCAA Div I championship tourney requires just 35 games. Is Mr. Buffet also including the NIT? I have no idea how many teams compete in the NIT, but those NIT games could possibly reach the 67 total. Come on, Warren. Straighten this out.
Maybe I'm missing something.

Think of it this way. There are 68 teams at the start of the tournament and 1 team at the end of the tournament. Each game eliminates exactly 1 team. So, 67 games.

I think it's possible that someone picks a perfect bracket in our lifetime, but it'd probably have to be during a year like 2007 where the tournament is super boring with few upsets.

[weezie]

Oh whatever, considering I'd have to dance around all those taxes, leverage the remainder, pay estimateds, blarrgh, what a pain.

[TexHawk]

He got the Sweet 16 right. Which is impressive... but a lot different than getting the whole thing right.

Oh wow... The title fooled me, maybe I should read the article first. :/

[TruBlu]

Yes sorry my math was wrong... it's actually one in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 for a 64 team field. It's been a few years since that college statistics class.

So, you're saying there is a chance?

[Mtn.Devil.91.92.01.10.15]

Yes sorry my math was wrong... it's actually one in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 for a 64 team field. It's been a few years since that college statistics class.

Except that that's not really the case. I mean, it is in your coin-flip scenario, but in reality, Syracuse has a much better than 50/50 chance to win their first few games. If you were truly "guessing" rather than "picking," you would have that blind-squirrel chance. However, I like to think that as a bit of a fan, I can guess whether Syracuse beats Directional State University more than half the time.

It's a damned complex equation.

[Jarhead]

Think of it this way. There are 68 teams at the start of the tournament and 1 team at the end of the tournament. Each game eliminates exactly 1 team. So, 67 games.

I think it's possible that someone picks a perfect bracket in our lifetime, but it'd probably have to be during a year like 2007 where the tournament is super boring with few upsets.

I left one whole round out of my adding machine, but I deleted the message to avoid embarrassment.

[gam7]

In a 64 team tournament (I know there's 68 now but this is for the sake of easier math) there are 4,295,033,110 different permutations I believe. And if you rule out the possibility of a #16 upsetting a #1 then it drops dramatically down to 268,501,270 permutations. If we can get 1000 DBR'ers to fill out 268,502 brackets each then we're guaranteed a cool million each.

An article I read said that one of the rules is that submissions are limited to one per household.

[PSurprise]

Darn it, where's Paul when you need him?

[Dev11]

Oh whatever, considering I'd have to dance around all those taxes, leverage the remainder, pay estimateds, blarrgh, what a pain.

If you want to split it, I'll be happy to take care of all of the headaches for you.

[uh_no]

This kid did pretty good a few years ago though...

went a bit downhill after that, though.

[moonpie23]

I
-Jason "no one is going to come close to winning this" Evans

but there have been perfect brackets picked out….no?

[77devil]

What Buffet really should do is allow anyone to enter an unlimited number of brackets, but charge one cent for each entry.

I believe that would constitute illegal internet sports gambling.