March Madness Bracket Tutorial

March is that time of the year when the best College Basketball teams go head-to-head for the championship title. Better known as March Madness, it is an exciting time for both basketball fans and those who bet on basketball. While the NCAA Men’s basketball tournament is not for everyone, there is something fans and non-fans can enjoy. Yes, we are talking about taking part in a March madness Bracket pool at the office or amongst friends. For those unfamiliar with it, this March Madness Bracket Tutorial will teach you everything you need to know about it.

Before we begin, let’s talk about the March Madness tournament so you can understand how a March Madness Pool works. The NCAA basketball tournament is a 68-team single elimination tournament. This means the losing team is out of the tournament while the winner goes on to the next tournament bracket.

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March Madness Bracket Tutorial for Beginners

What is a March Madness Bracket Pool?

Outside of watching the tournament and betting, a March Madness Pool is the most popular way to experience March Madness. So exactly what is a March Madness Pool? This is where someone prints out a March Madness bracket or makes it available online for people to fill out. From there, everyone enters their prediction of what will happen thru each round of the tournament.

To enter the pool, the person who made it will usually charge an entry fee. Most fees will range from $1 to as high as people are willing to pay per bracket. Since there is no limit to the number of entries, some March Madness Pools can have some very large prizes. Some have eve gone as high as tens of thousands of dollars! Of course, most office pools will usually be a few hundred dollars at the most.

Cash prizes are given out to the people that have the top-ranking brackets from the entry fees. Depending on the pool, the division of all of cash prizes will vary. In most cases, the top bracket will get 50% of the entry fees as a prize. The rest, will be divided amongst the top 5 entries. Of course, there is not set rule to so anything can go!

Sportsbooks and bookies also offer March Madness Pool to their players. They will usually have several pools going on at once and even match the entry fees for even bigger prizes. They do this because it encourages players to bet more on college basketball. For those thinking about starting a basketball betting site in March, this is a good strategy to get more players faster.

Related Article >> Is your sportsbook Ready for March Madness?

How to Fill Out a March Madness Bracket

The point of a March Madness Bracket is not to get a perfect bracket but to earn the most point. This is because it is almost impossible to get a perfect bracket. According to how to pick a winning March Madness Bracket, the odds are 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to get a perfect bracket.

A March Madness tournament is made up of 6 rounds with 68 teams. Therefore, you have to guess the outcome of every matchup for each round. Whenever you guess correctly the outcome of a matchup, you earn points.

In the end of the tournament, the person in the March Madness Pool with the highest score wins!

This is what a March Madness Tournament Bracket looks like:

How is a March Madness Bracket Graded?

The numbers of points will vary depending on the rules but in general, points are worth this much per round:

First Round = 1 point
Second Round = 2 Points
Third Round = 3 Points
Fourth Round =4 Points
Fifth Round = 6 Points
Sixth Round =10 Points

There are also alternative point systems to a March Madness Bracket that other people use such as:

First Round = 1 point
Second Round = 2 Points
Third Round = 4 Points
Fourth Round =8 Points
Fifth Round = 16 Points
Sixth Round =32 Points

While it may not seem like much of a difference, the point scoring system of a bracket is important. At least, it is when coming up with a strategy to win a March Madness Pool contest. This is because some contests give you a lot of points if you can correctly predict the tournament winner.

Thus, that can be a game changer to those who did very well in the early rounds of the contest. This is because they could still lose if they do not predict correctly the last 2 rounds of March Madness.

In case of a tie between contestants, each participant needs to enter the final score of the championship game. Thus, if there is a tie, the person whose prediction is closest to the actual score wins!

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