There has been a steady and constant tradition among all basketball players and fans that during March every year, their sole aim is to guess the perfect March Madness Bracket. However, this bracket which comes in the form of guessing the outcomes of several matches is open for everyone. So if you are good at predicting the results of sports then this madness may be perfect for you to win loads of money.
However, you should be warned right from the beginning that your chances of getting struck by lightning are much more than winning the perfect bracket. The NCAA organizes the Division 1 Men’s basketball tournament every year in March and it comprises 63 matches of single-elimination rounds. It means that you have to correctly estimate the results of all the matches. Thus it is great if you have some background in the NCAA basketball matches but that is not enough to get the prize. Let’s take a look at what this madness is all about.
What Is the Madness About?
March Madness refers to the tournament that is organized by NCAA Division 1 for the Men’s basketball tournament every year in March since 1939. Although it started with just 8 teams, now there are 68 teams with the possibility of it always increasing. If you want to take part in this March Madness then you have to predict the results of all the rounds correctly. So it is no easy job but you can try your luck without any harm.
Although there are hundreds of sports betting going on at every moment, none of them is tougher than the March Madness bracket due to the extremely low odds of any player winning the first prize.
What does it Take to Win?
Since there is no harm in filling up the form everyone should try it at least for fun but there are many strategies in which you can increase your chances. Many seasoned players watch all the basketball matches that were played by the teams in the past and determine the probability of their winning. However, there are 68 teams so it means if there are thousands of different probabilities of the outcome of the basketball tournament. This is why no one up till now has been able to correctly guess the results of all the matches till the final round.
So if you are thinking about guessing all the rounds correctly then you need some solid strategy and even after that, it is near impossible to predict the outcomes so accurately. The NCAA conducted research recently based on the data collected from the previous March Madness tournaments and found that any person has around one in 120.2 billion chances of guessing all the outcomes correctly. Thus you can understand why no one has been able to get the perfect bracket up till now.
What Chances Are there of Winning?
Since this March Madness challenge is one of those challenges in sports that remain unbroken there has been much research about what players do to correctly guess all the outcomes. It seems that people have more probability of getting struck by lightning or getting selected as a professional basketball player in the NBA than winning the prize.
Moreover, you have better chances of getting the first prize in any big lottery or getting hit by an asteroid from space than the perfect bracket. Every person has about one in 1.6 million chances of getting hit by an asteroid from space. So it is 75000 times more probable than guessing all the matches correctly. Thus the search for the genius who can finally win the perfect bracket is still on and it can be you too.
Who Has Got Close to the Perfect Bracket?
Although several people have tried their luck in the March madness challenge, only one person has been near to guessing the perfect bracket. In 2019, Gregg Nigl was successful in guessing correctly the outcomes till the third round. So he had correctly guessed 49 of the 63 matches and was very close to winning the perfect bracket. This shows that even though it is tough to achieve such high feats of prediction, it is not impossible.
