NCAA Pool Update

I ended up with 25 out of 32, with only one Sweet 16 pick eliminated. Not great, but better than I usually do, and I already took a nap, so I'll share a tip I read that likely helped me.

I read this on the blog of a professional sports bettor. It's particularly good for people who know very little about college basketball, such as me.

For the first round, visit a sports betting web site and look at the point spread for each match-up. If the point spread is more than two points, pick the favored team. If the point spread is two points or less, pick the team most people are unlikely to pick (usually the lower seed, but sometimes it's a higher-seeded unknown team when they play a well-known school).

There are two ideas behind this. One, bookies know a lot more about sports than your average person. They base their livelihood on accurately approximating the chance each team has of winning. If you are unsure whether a7 seed is better than a 10 seed, look at what the odds-makers are saying. They also give odds on each team's chances of wining the tournament, which may help you picking later rounds.

Two, the point of a NCAA pool isn't to finish with as many points as you can. It's to finish with the most points, or at least close to the most depending on how the payout is structured. That requires taking some risks to separate yourself from the pack, but silly risks aren't going to help. Sure, if you pick a 14 seed that is a 8-point underdog to a 3 seed, and the 14th seed wins, you'll earn a point when most of your competition won't. But the chance of your pick winning vs. your gain (1 point that most other people won't get) makes it a bad choice in the long run.

The trick is to find situations where one team is a marginal favorite over another, but due to seeding or name recognition, people will assume that the marginal favorite is a bigger favorite than the team really is. By betting on the small underdog, you're making close to a 50/50 "bet", but since 60%+ of the people in your pool are picking the favorite, for example, you're essentially taking the same chance as everyone but getting a bigger reward (separation between more opponents).

Hence the guideline of picking the underdog when the point spread is small (2 points or less). For example:

Texas A&M (12) vs Syracuse (5).

Guess what the point spread on the match-up was? Syracuse was only favored by 1.5 points. Most people see the high seed, and recognize the name Syracuse, so they pick them. And because well more than 50% of people are going to pick Syrcause while it's essentially a 50/50 match-up, it's better to pick Texas A&M.

I would have gotten another point or two if I followed the system exactly, but I fell to the allure of the "big name school" for a few match-ups that didn't turn out well.

I know this isn't helpful now, but I wanted to try the system out to see if there was anything to it before promoting it. While this year could just be a fluke, I don't think it is because the logic behind the system makes a lot of sense. I think picking 2-points-or-less underdogs will give one an edge in an office pool. For a huge pool, like ESPN's, I would increase the guideline to 3 or 4 points because the huge number of opponents requires one to take more risks to have a shot at winning.