(1) Your standard office pool
This is the one everyone enters and the secretary who let her 8-year-old daughter pick her teams somehow seems to win. So how do you curb this? Go big. Listen, odds are your standard office pool has more than 20 people in it. If you chalk your bracket, you might as well be writing a blank check. Chalk never happens unless you are accidentally filling out the dykes bracket in between munching Pokey Chatman's box. Too many people take nearly-chalked brackets and the guy who takes the year's sleeper will leapfrog you. Identify your sleepers and go with it. Find the 1-seeds who will fall early and follow through. You're not winning anything big unless you're taking some calculated risks.
My biggest pet peeve of the office pools is the number of different formats. Does your pool reward lower seeded winners? Then be inclined to take more first round upsets (that's where you make the points). Do the points in your bracket double each round or are the points curbed back to the earlier rounds (my preference)? Better focus your efforts on the right rounds.
(2) Fantasy Madness
Think your typical fantasy league and think March. Pre-tournament you line up a player draft (selecting anywhere from 6-10 players per team) and add up each players' tournament points scored come April. One of my co-workers swears by this each year. Obviously, the leading scorers of the top seeds (guys like Oden, Hansborough, Wright and Horford) are going to come off the board first, but after that it's a crapshoot. Much like your standard pool, you gotta go big to take the pot - conservative won't get you anywhere. I suggest spreading your players through different teams (don't double up on Tar Heels or Jayhawks, etc.), even if it means taking lower seeds you think could make a run, because the majority of teams get eliminated early (32 teams get just one game), so you need to hit a team that makes the deep run.
Not my cup of tea, but another fun gambling method.
(3) Straight Lines
Spreads from Vegas pop on the board shortly after the brackets are released. What better time to lay some dough on the lines you like? You're going to be analyzing this shit all week, so you *should* be able to take some lines. A few I like in Round 1:- Texas Tech (+2) over Boston College - I think the loss of Sean Williams was on delay for a bit. In their last 7, they've beaten the two teams sitting at home and lost to the 5 prepping for the NCAAs. I'll take Coach Knight on a weeks worth of prep as well.
- Michigan State (-2) over Marquette - Dominic James has been brutally cold from the field since February and I've been noticing. The Eagles have struggled down the stretch without him filling the hoop.
- Wisconsin (-13) over Texas A&M-Corpus Christi - This is the lowest of top seed lines and I think it's reflective of the Badgers recent struggles on offense since the Brian Butch injury. But one of the reason for the struggle scoring has been the opposition - Ohio State and Illinois - two of the better teams of the defensive end of the floor. I expect A&M to be a relief and the Badgers to win easily.
- Villanova (-1.5) over Kentucky - I feel like UK has been smoke and mirrors this season. A closer look at their conference schedule shows they really only beat the teams they should have. Nova's Scottie Reynolds has been carrying the load and coming on his own and I don't expect him to step down to second fiddle even if Mike Nardi comes back from injury.
Bonus NIT pick: Michigan's money line at Florida State (UM is 7 point dogs). You can't put a price on senior-NIT leadership and experience for the Wolverines. I'm only half-kidding.
(4) Superbowl Squares
A new one for me. Think your standard Super Bowl squares, but for all the NCAA games. Some genius in Chicago started this for this year and I jumped on it. My $100 entry has me looking at 2 (home - better seed) and 3 (road) for a combo. Root for it. First round winners pay $65 back and each following round pays an increasing amount, so you got 64 (63 games and halftime of the championship) winner dividing the $10,000 pot.
Sure, it's completely luck (especially considering basketball numbers are pretty goddamn random, unlike football), but can you really put a price on the following conversation...?
Me: Hey, you catch the score to the Kansas-Niagara game?
Random: Yeah, Kansas won by like 23.
Me: I didn't ask who won! I need to know the exact score, fucker!
Get your money in the books. You got 12 more hours.
-- RK
2 comments:
Good point on the not taking chalk. Assuming you play every year, your chances for a payoff have to be much higher if you can hit on some sleepers once every couple of years, especially for the Final Four - and you will get one right every once in awhile. If you usually stick with mostly chalk, even if you do very well, you still have to have a pretty dominating first couple of rounds to win.
Having said that, I have a pretty chalk-ish bracket. My "risk" was putting A&M in the final. The final is usually worth a lot of points, and although many do have A&M advancing pretty far, few seem to have them in the championship. If they make it to the final, I should be cashing in, assuming I don't totally screw up otherwise.
Just to be clear, I wasn't acting like my last post wasn't fairly obvious - just that most people who aren't really into this stuff don't seem to realize it.
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