Mike Furley
03-15-2009, 07:50 PM
For those of you who are tired of getting into a normal bracket pool, and then realizing you're out of it by Friday afternoon, here's an alternative way to get immersed in March Madness and stretch it out a few more rounds.:
Step 1: Find 7 other buddies to participate
Step 2: Prior to the start of Thurdays games, the eight of you get together and hold a draft. Using a "snake" format, each player takes a turn drafting one team. Once a team has been drafted, it cannot be drafted by another person. At the conclusion of the draft, each participant has 8 teams assigned to him.
Step 3: You can assign any value for your pool. I recommend $80 per person, but if your friends balk, you can drop it down to $40. For the purpose of this explanation, I'll use $80 per person. Participants due not have to pay their fee up front. Everyone just starts with an $80 debt.
Step 4: Keep track of the NCAA tourney games. Every time one of your assigned eight teams wins a game, you win back $10. Once one of your teams has been eliminated, that team can no longer win you any money.
Step 5: At the end of the tourney, the participants who still have a negative balance pay out that negative balance to the participants who finish with a credit.
A few notes:
- if you draft the eventual champion, you win back 75% of your investment with just that one team (6 wins = $60).
- you want to avoid drafting teams that meet in the first round - you gaurantee you'll win at least $10 but the goal is to keep as many teams alive for as long as possible.
- nobody ever really loses their shirt. The worst I've seen in ten years of doing this is somebody only winning 4 games, and that's only happened once. Most of the time, the big loser only wins 5 games.
- most players finish in the 7 to 9 win range, so you're most likely pay out small, break even, or win a little.
- odds are, everybody will have one or two teams still alive going into the sweet sixteen, so everybody still has a rooting interest three weeks into the tourney.
If anybody wants to try it out here for free, I'm up for it.
Step 1: Find 7 other buddies to participate
Step 2: Prior to the start of Thurdays games, the eight of you get together and hold a draft. Using a "snake" format, each player takes a turn drafting one team. Once a team has been drafted, it cannot be drafted by another person. At the conclusion of the draft, each participant has 8 teams assigned to him.
Step 3: You can assign any value for your pool. I recommend $80 per person, but if your friends balk, you can drop it down to $40. For the purpose of this explanation, I'll use $80 per person. Participants due not have to pay their fee up front. Everyone just starts with an $80 debt.
Step 4: Keep track of the NCAA tourney games. Every time one of your assigned eight teams wins a game, you win back $10. Once one of your teams has been eliminated, that team can no longer win you any money.
Step 5: At the end of the tourney, the participants who still have a negative balance pay out that negative balance to the participants who finish with a credit.
A few notes:
- if you draft the eventual champion, you win back 75% of your investment with just that one team (6 wins = $60).
- you want to avoid drafting teams that meet in the first round - you gaurantee you'll win at least $10 but the goal is to keep as many teams alive for as long as possible.
- nobody ever really loses their shirt. The worst I've seen in ten years of doing this is somebody only winning 4 games, and that's only happened once. Most of the time, the big loser only wins 5 games.
- most players finish in the 7 to 9 win range, so you're most likely pay out small, break even, or win a little.
- odds are, everybody will have one or two teams still alive going into the sweet sixteen, so everybody still has a rooting interest three weeks into the tourney.
If anybody wants to try it out here for free, I'm up for it.