Comments on: Odds of a perfect NCAA bracket

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 05:28:07 +0000

I tried the Yahoo NCAA bracket challenge this year (2009). There were a couple of million brackets. Anyone could see the highest scoring brackets. None of them were close to perfect. Once again… of the millions of brackets in Yahoo’s competition, NONE were perfect. Not even close. The best one got 57 of 63 picks right.

Sure, the real odds are not quite 1 in 9 quintillion because the games aren’t true 50:50 toss-ups. But, the odds are still astronomically high.

The proof? As someone mentioned in an earlier post, some online sites (such as Yahoo) are willing to offer 1 million dollars if someone gets a perfect bracket. Considering it is free to participate in the game, those sites must be incredibly confident that no one will be perfect. If the odds weren’t so high against the player, no one would make such an offer.

By: mike

mike — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 20:52:28 +0000

yeah the odds might be 9.2 quintillion or whatever but your forgetting that a lot of teams have much better odds, so that number would go down a lot. someones prolly done it before it doesnt have to be recorded..

By: joe DIB

joe DIB — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 15:23:07 +0000

morty, check out facebook, the guy who is winning the facebook pool after round 2 is perfect so far, he has picked all of the 16s. just thought id let you know…

By: thomas

thomas — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 00:25:50 +0000

Well okay odds are sliner beacuse u know that number 1 and mumber 2 are going to win. That slims it alittle but then u know that 4,3’s will usally win so that slims it then really get a life.

By: David

David — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 16:52:33 +0000

You can’t say a 16 will never beat a 1. By comparison, how many of you thought Michigan would lose to Appalachian State in football a few years ago? Or, how many people thought the USA would beat Russia in 1980 at Lake Placid. Other than the people playing on the underdog teams, nobody.

I am just waiting for some MIT computer-wiz to write a script that will generate every possible bracket, enter them all, and win the grand prize. Of course that many entries would probably would make any computer explode.

By: Morty McNutt

Morty McNutt — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 13:14:51 +0000

For normal people who only fill out one or two brackets, I would doubt any of them even fill out a perfect bracket for the first round. I mean, I am a huge Dayton fan. This year (2009) Dayton beat West Virginia in the first round. So what you say? Well according to ESPN, only about 15% of people thought they would win that game. So of those 15%, how many of them picked Cleveland State? Maybe about 25%, and of those, how many picked Michigan to beat Clemson? Maybe 45%, of those how many picked Wisconsin to beat Florida State? 40% tops. You see where I am going with this? I don’t think I have any of those Dayton pickers left, and I still have a bunch of other first round games. My name is Dr. Morty McNutt and you have just read the truth.

By: michael

michael — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 03:33:51 +0000

in response to clay, I do not think that the calculation you proposed is valid. Even though half the field gets eliminated every round, that does not change the fact that you have still have a 1 in 2 chance of picking every game, and you must do it 63 times in a row. I have no clue why you would add every round the way you did, that makes absolutely no sense to me.

I believe it will be a very long time before anyone gets a perfect bracket. Not only are the odds astronomical, you have to take into account the fact that out of the millions of brackets, most people take fairly obvious picks, which are likely to be the same as other peoples lowering the chances of hitting. Also, the people crazy enough to try and call the cinderellas (Davidson or George Mason) often are crazy enough to pick other huge upsets that don’t happen. It may happen eventually, but i haven’t found any legitimate cases of a perfect bracket.

By: corey

corey — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 03:29:43 +0000

has anyone ever gotten it all right

By: kyle

kyle — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 19:47:34 +0000

well the 1’s always win and the 2’s and 3’s almost always win so you can just pick those and change all the other ones. then the odd go way up. they still aren’t good but they improve significantly.

By: Clay

Clay — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 18:06:33 +0000

Actually, the 18 quintillion number doesn’t take in to account that half of the field gets eliminated every round…so your calc really should be.
2^32 + 2^16 + 2^8 + 2^4 + 2^1= 4,295,033,106….still a large number but 4 billion is better than 18 quintillion.

In the championship game, there can be one of two winners, team a or team b. so you get 2^1. in the round before, there are 4 possible out comes. Team a beats team d, team d beats team a, team b beats team c, or team c beats team b. So we get 2^2. double this to move back a bracket for 2^4, then 2^8, 2^16, then 2^32. Add the sum of these squares and you get 4,295,033,110.