It is. That number assumes that each game is a coin flip. They're not (or it would suggest that the seeders have no idea what they're going).

In the last two tournaments, there were 122 in which differently seeded teams played each other. The higher seeded team won 99 of them.

Of course, the odds are still really, really small.

I'm 3-1, 50-50 on my first 2 upset picks (admittedly, they were both #8 vs. #9 games). w00t

The question was how many possible combinations, not probable so I think in this case the number is accurate.

By stating it in terms of odds, they implied probability.

Thinking about the odds some more and maybe not quite so small as I thought.

Let's say you accurately predicted for the 2007 tournament that there would be 11 games out of the 63 that would not be accurately predicted by the seeding. What then are the odds of you correctly picking the correct eleven games? Assuming upsets are randomly distributed (which they're not, 9 beating 8 is much more likely than 16 beating 1) you'd have a 1 in 615 trillion chance of being right on picking all 11 upsets. Still really small but 10,000 times better than treating everything like a coin flip.

Considering that the range in actual upsets seen is probably pretty consistent, adding in the need to correctly predict that it will be 11 upsets probably doesn't add more than a degree or two of magnitude. This would be counteracted by the fact that the upsets aren't randomly distributed across all 63 game.

Ok, yes, the possible number of outcomes given was correct. I thought you were talking about the odds seeming wrong. They are (in the real world).

ETA: Though now that I think about it, I think the combinations number is too low by half but maybe I'm missing something. Because of the opening round game that determined the 16 seed for the midwest bracket there are 64 game played.

1 opening round game
15 games in each division
2 final four games
1 Finals game

So that is 2^64 possible outcomes or 18,446,744,073,709,600,000 (18.4 quintillion) outcomes. 9.2 quintillion is correct without the opening round game.

That's for the entire tournament. The brackets don't typically include the play in game.

Ok, then it's correct. I don't pay enough attention to know if people had to pick that one too.

Do we have any sense of how often people pick perfect brackets? Even the reduced odds I mention above (assuming random distribution of upsets) make it unlikely that it has ever happened.

Hey, the team that I'm not going to name or root for beat Akron! They owe me for this one- I totally ignored the game, even though it was on in the break room.

The early results are in:

Drince88 takes the early lead with 17 correct picks so far.

Ghoulish Delight, Sactown, and myself are tied for 2nd at 15 each

Next up Lashbear, Obama and BDBopper at 14 games

In the cellar we have Deebs and the Unauthorized Scaeagels with 10 and 6 correct picks respectively.