Yes, it’s NCAA March Madness time again! While it’s fun to fill out brackets the usual way, I thought it might be interesting to try a different way to “play” the tournament.
There’s always some disagreement and discussion about the seeding of the tournament. Let’s make a game of it. Of the 64 teams in the tournament, there’s four 1 seeds, four 2 seeds, four 3 seeds, etc. Everyone playing along will choose their own seeding. That is, you’ll need four teams for at each seed level. You don’t need to divide into regions. The idea is to give better seeds to the better team and worse seed to the worse teams. The goal is to do better than the official seeding, and better than the other players.
How do we judge who seeded better? Whenever a team wins, everyone gets points. No one gets points when a team loses. The points you get depend on the official seed and your seed of the team. The better your seed of a team, the more points you’ll get win they win, while the worse your seed for them, the fewer points.
Details for the math impaired: {Points from Team} = {Wins by Team} x {Original Seed of Team} x (17 - {Your Seed of Team}). Example from 2018. Last year I got 3411 points vs the official seeding with 3026 points. I’ll keep a Google Sheet for scoring. If you’re interested in playing, please send me your seeding by posting here or private message before the first game starts. You may submit more than once, but only the last version will “count”. I hope there’s some interest and feel free to ask questions.
Note: I think this thread is a better fit for the Game Room because we’re not actually actually playing a game in the thread, but looking at sports results.
I planned to ignore them, just because I like the elegance of four teams at each seed. And it gives everyone more time to decide their seeding before the games start. But there’s no reason in principle that we’d have to ignore them.
For a play-in game between Team A and B: if we want to submit our “bracket” before the play-in games, can we list Team A/Team B and get credit if either wins?
The seeds are out. I’m working out my seeds now, but wait to post until after the play-in.
The fun thing about this compared to the usual brackets is you’ll always get points no matter who wins. But one team will give you more than the other, at least until the finals.
This thread is both a commentary on a game and a game in itself, so I could see justification for it being either here or in Thread Games. Since it could fit in in either forum, I’m going to take the path of least resistance and leave it where it started.
I might’ve been eliminated after Day 2, but I’m pretty sure I am now. My losing secret: take 538’s winning probabilities, use them to come up with the expected number of points each team would earn, and seed the teams that way.
If I did my math right, I’m 64 points behind Pleonast and can only gain points through:
UNC (max 1 point per win * 5 games left = 5 points)
Michigan (2 * 4 = 8)
Houston (3 * 5 = 15)
Even if all 3 teams won the tournament, I’d still be 36 points behind. I believe the closest I can get is 5 wins for Houston, 3 for Michigan, and 2 for UNC – that’s 41 points behind.
(Unofficial totals: Pleonast 2052, Troutman 2024, me 1988, official 1934, Biotop 1925. I haven’t checked whether or not anyone else is eliminated.)
Surprising that we’re all over the official seeding, when the sweet 16 has only two seeds outside of 1-4 (and one of those is a 5). I guess the high number of 1st round 10 and 12 seeds was enough to push us ahead.
Whether I can overtake Pleonast or not, I will consider it a victory if we all beat the seeds.
My losing secret: take 538’s winning probabilities, use them to come up with the expected number of points each team would earn, and seed the teams that way.