2009 NCAA LoT Bracket Challenge

[Moonliner]

Originally Posted by BarTopDancer

San Jose Sharks for the Cup!



Oh wait. Wrong sport. How come there is never a hockey thread around here.

/runs away sobbing.

I really should start one. It's the only pro sport that DC does not currently suck at.

[Drince88]

Since it wouldn't let me use my screen name, I used the 'definition' of my screen name - (Old English Princess) and did my traditional "I have no idea, but let's favor Pac 10, Northwest, and high seeded teams" method of picking. And throw in a couple other twists for the heck of it!

[Moonliner]

Last call for brackets, get your brackets here! Brackets!

So far we have brackets from:

BDBopper, Drince88, Lashbear, Deebs, SacTown, GD, Obama, the Unauthorized Scaeagles and my own.

[Moonliner]

Interesting tidbit...

March Madness bracket odds are over 9-quintillion-to-1

The odds of you picking a perfect March Madness bracket are not just horrible, they're almost impossibly bad. You have a substantially better shot at winning the Powerball than you do at picking a perfect bracket.

There are a total of 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 possible bracket outcomes, making the odds of a perfect bracket over 9.2-quintillion-to-1. In fact, the odds are so bad that, according to RJ Bell at Pregame.com, if every individual alive in the world completed a bracket, the odds are a billion-to-one against any of them being perfect.

That seems a bit high to me...

Let's see there are 32 First round games, so the possible combinations in the first round is only 2 ^ number of games or 2^ 32nd

2^32= 4,294,967,296

Now for the second round

For each one of the 4,294,967,296 possible first round outcomes there are an addational 2^16 possible second round outcomes..... Errr, never mind....

[Alex]

Originally Posted by Moonliner

That seems a bit high to me...

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.

[Moonliner]

Originally Posted by Alex

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.

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

[Alex]

Originally Posted by Moonliner

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

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.

[Moonliner]

And we're off and running

Drince88 jumps off to an early lead with a 3-0 record and Deebs is falling behind the pack with an 0-3 record.