How to Guarantee Beginner’s Luck in March

Overthinking is a silent killer. No one is safe. It can adversely impact your relationships and career and make your life much harder than it needs to be. However, one thing is for certain: you absolutely can not let it take over your March Madness bracket. Following the KISS plan of Keep It Simple Stupid is the most efficient way to set yourself up for success in all your bracket pools. 

Every year there are upsets, but picking them at a high enough rate to be worthwhile is impossible. For example, there is an average of about one 13-seed over 4-seed upset every year. This means the 4-seed has roughly a 75% chance to win their first round game. If you pick every 4-seed to advance in your bracket, you will on average go 3 for 4. A nice hit rate. However, if you try to pick just one 13-seed over 4-seed upset and take the other three 5-seed teams to win, your projected hit rate goes down to 2.5 for 4. If you are not careful, the impact of this can compound quickly if you keep predicting upsets that are unlikely to hit, especially in later rounds as every consecutive round games are worth double the points as the one before. Most other seeded upsets are just as bad. Ultimately, picking the correct champion is all that really matters, as that is worth the same amount of points as correctly picking every single Round of 64 game. You just have to get yourself to a good enough spot after the early round games to be ahead of everyone else in your pool that picked the same champion. Your best strategy is simply to pick the team ranked higher in your team valuation metric of choice until the Final Four and then go off script for the champion if you must.

Last year in 2023, the average bracket filled out on ESPN only scored a total of about 430 points given the aforementioned scoring system that weighs games further on in the tournament much heavier than early ones. If you had merely picked the higher seed to win every game, you would have ended up with 470 points, in the 68th percentile well above the average score, and that is in a year known for having more upsets than usual. Picking the higher KenPom ranked team would have done even better, resulting in a score of 510, which is 81st percentile. 

At the end of the day, winning your bracket pool hinges on getting the right champion, which is mostly luck. However, putting yourself in the best situation to be able to capitalize on that luck is crucial. I apologize for not posting this article earlier, but at least you can keep it in mind for next year. Save yourself the trouble and just pick the higher team in either seed, KenPom or T-Rank until at least the Final Four. Keep it simple stupid.