Bracket Pool Scoring Systems: Why They Matter & How To Exploit Them (2024)

March 9, 2017 - by Tom Federico

Like Coach K, you need to exploit the scoring systems and adapt your strategies.

Love it or hate it, the “small ball” revolution has led to dramatic changes in the game of basketball.

In the NBA, teams like the Cleveland Cavaliers, Houston Rockets and Golden State Warriors are now averaging30-40 three point attempts per game — a figure unheard of just 10 years ago. And they sit atthe top of the NBAstandings.

If you want to dominate March Madness bracket pools, you need to take a page out of their playbook.

(Or let us do it for you.)

It All Starts With The Scoring System

What’s a big reason behind the success of “small ball” in the NBA?

Smart front offices who:

Analyzed historical NBA data
Identified anedge fromshooting more 3-pointers
Shifted their personnel and coachingstrategies to exploit that edge

In short, these outperforming teams optimized their gamefor the current NBA scoring system. They objectively evaluated the rules of the contestat a deep level, and figured out how to exploit them.

This post will showhow you can apply similar logic toyour bracket contest this year. It also will explore the dynamicsof some of the more popular bracket pool scoring systems.

Why Your Bracket Pool’s Scoring System Matters

Most people who play in NCAA bracket pools pay far too little attention to the implications of their bracket pool’s scoring system.

That can be a very costlymistake.

Let’s take an example. Imagine you’re in the middle of picking the first round games in your 2017 NCAA bracket. Next up is a game between a No. 6 seed and a No. 11 seed.

Using our NCAA Bracket Picks product, you quickly pull up the latest Vegas odds and algorithmicgame predictions.

There’s general consensus that the No. 6 seed has about a 60% chance to win the game; in the betting markets the No. 6 seed isfavored to win by 4 points.

So whichteam should you pick in order to maximize your odds to win your pool?

Trick question, of course. The right answer depends on several things — one of which is your scoring system.

Case 1: Don’t Pick The Upset!

In a lot of popular scoring systems, the first round games mean little relative to later round games.

Case 2: Pick The Upset!

On the other hand, some pools usevery “flat” scoring systems, where getting first round games correct is worth a lot more relative to later-round picks.

Maybe getting the NCAA champion pick right is only worth six times as much as a first round game — or maybe it’s even worth thesame number of points. Many customers of our NCAA bracket advice play in pools like these.

In these types of scoring systems, picking theNo. 11 seed to win could be a greatdecision, with significant expected value.

Good vs. Bad Again

After all, the risk involved isn’t terrible. You’ve got a decent shot (4-in-10) to get the upset pick right.

And the reward could be quite significant, especially if:

Your scoring system more highly weights early round games
You expect the No. 11 seed to be an unpopular pick in your pool.
You would havethe No. 6 seed losing in the next round anyway.

How Scoring Systems ImpactYour Odds To Win

Besides influencing your optimalgame-by-game pick decisions, there’s another angle to bracket pool scoring systems that nobody ever talks about.

Before you’ve even picked a game, your bracket contest’s scoring system has already impactedthe chance you have to win your pool.

Choose your scoring system wisely

Every March, youusually have a choice of at least a few bracket pools toenter, if you look hard enough.

(Because bracket pools are such great investments, we’d suggest you enter as many bracket contests as you possibly can, if you have the means. But let’s assume you have to pick and choose.)

When faced with a choice, smart bracket pickers can stack the odds in their favor simply by choosing to enter pools with scoring systems that give them betterchances to win.

The possible impacts of luck and skill

In short, the specifics of a given scoring system can:

Enable luck to potentially play a huge role in the final pool outcome, thus leveling the playing field between basketball neophytes and algorithm-wielding number crunchers like us (and, by extension, our customers)
Emphasize overall skill at picking many games right, thus providing a big edge to “sharp” players and making it far less likely that a casual entrant will win the pool
Encourage participants either to take big risks with their picks or to play it safe, which impacts the likelihood of big swings in the standings as the tournament goes on

So if you’re playing in a bracket pool this year, choose one with a scoring system that aligns with your assessment of your bracket picking skill level. All else being equal:

If you’re a great bracket picker, try to enter a pool whose scoring system limits the potential impact of luck.
If you’re clueless about college basketball (and aren’t going to pay for our advice to level-up to expert status), try to entera pool with a scoring system in whichluck can play a bigger role.

Round-Based BracketScoring: Options and Implications

To conclude, let’s dive into some specific scoring systems, review some of their implications, and compare how they emphasize luck vs. skill.

Last March Madness, our customers used our NCAA Bracket Picks product to create optimized brackets and multi-bracket portfolios for over 500 unique pool scoring systems.

As you might imagine, these scoring systems ranged from the straightforward, to the complex, to the downright insane.

While we can’t possibly analyze the implications of all them in a blog post (we’ve designed technology to do that for us), we’ll go overa few of the most popular options for round-based point values.

Note: The numbers in bold below represent the points you get for picking a game right, by round, starting with the first round and ending with the NCAA tournament champion.

1-2-4-8-16-32

This is the most popular bracket contest scoring system, used in roughly 50% of the pools that our customers enter.

There’s a certain simple logic to it, which is probably one of the reasons why it’s so popular. The points earned for correctly picking a team to advance doubles each round, and the total value of points available in each round remains constant at 32.

What most people don’t realize about this system is the very high leverage associated with getting later round picks correct.

The difference between an absolutely amazing first round (let’s say getting 30 of 32 picks right, which almost never happens) and a badone (let’s say getting 14 of 32 right) equates to a difference of 16 points in the pool standings.

Simply getting your NCAA champion pick correct in this scoring system is worth double that difference — 32 points. That one final pick could morethan make up fora horrible first round and/or second round.

Agood system for the clueless

Now consider this: In the first round, a poor performance still nets you some points, but what you earn from your NCAA champion round pick is a completely binary outcome.

A great NCAA champion pick in 1-2-4-8-16-32 scoring earns you 32 points. Anything else nets you zero.

That particular dynamic opens the door for luck to make a significant impact. Picking lots of tournament gamescorrectly is indicative of skill, butgetting a single NCAA finalist or champion pick right in a specific year depends much more on luck.

(Even the best teamsin recent memory, like 2015 Kentucky thatwas undefeated going into the NCAA tournament, had less than a 50/50 chance of winning it all.)

As a result, the 1-2-4-8-16-32 scoring system is one of the more forgiving systems for basketball neophytes.

There are still plenty of ways for sharp players to get a big long-termedge by using game theory and other approaches, like our bracket picks do. Butif you’re clueless and want at least a fighting chance to win a bracket pool, entering a pool with 1-2-4-8-16-32 scoring is a fine enough choice.

10-20-40-80-160-320 (ESPN Scoring)

For whatever reason, ESPN’s Tournament Challenge bracket game uses these point values instead of 1-2-4-8-16-32.

It’s the exact same as 1-2-4-8-16-32. Multiplying all the round values by 10 doesn’t impact the competitive dynamic, optimal picking strategy, or relative potential impact of skill vs. luck.

1-2-3-4-5-6

This is the second most popular round-based scoring system according to our customer data, used in around 5% of our customer pools.

(Yes, roughly 5% popularity was the next most common system after the 50% of pools using 1-2-4-8-16-32. However, about 25% of pools in our system used a different scoring system than 1-2-4-16-32. So there’s simply a huge variety of round-based point structures in use, with no singleone besides 1-2-4-8-16-32 being superpopular.)

The immediately obvious difference between 1-2-3-4-5-6 scoring and 1-2-4-8-16-32 scoring is the greatly reduced point valuesof the late round picks:

In 1-2-3-4-5-6 scoring, the first two rounds both have a total of 32 points up for grabs, then the points available per round drop quickly.
The NCAA champion pick is only worth 5% of the total available points in the pool, compared to nearly 17% of total available points in 1-2-4-8-16-32 scoring.
Getting two Final Four picks right is worth more than getting your NCAA champion pick correct, while in 1-2-4-8-16-32 it’s worth half as much.

This system is nice for emphasizing picking skill through the first two rounds, while still placing a moderate amount of importance on Sweet 16 winners.

If you’re not in great shape by the Elite 8, however, it becomes very difficult to leapfrog lots of opponents in the standings with a lucky late round pick or two.

So this system puts unskilled participants at a significantly greater disadvantage than 1-2-4-8-16-32 scoring does.

1-1-1-1-1-1

Want to minimize the role of luck in your pool’s final outcome, and all but guarantee that your pool’s top finishers are solidified by the Elite 8?

In this structure, over 83% of available points are up for grabs in the first three rounds. And unlike 1-2-4-8-16-32 and 1-2-3-4-5-6 scoring, the total points available per round decreases with each successful round.

In fact, the action packed 32-game first round is worth more than all other tournament rounds combined!

Consequently, overall picking accuracy in the early rounds is really all that matters in this scoring structure, and the results of a few very closely matched first round games are likely to make a significantimpact in the pool’s outcome.

For purely round-based scoring, this is probably the most “sharp-friendly” scoring system. Participants who aren’t sophisticated enough to look beyond seed numbers and jersey colors to pick winners will be at a big disadvantage.

However, it can be a fun scoring system to use for a pool filled with skilled players, since the ability to identify subtle matchup advantages in early round games expected to be close could make all the difference in the final standings.

2-3-5-8-13-21

This scoring system is also known as “Fibonacci,” named after thebadass 13th century Italian mathematician who introduced the numerical sequence to Western European mathematics.

The concept here is that each round value is worth the sum of the previous two round values. That progression modestly decreases the relative valueof late-round picks compared to traditional 1-2-4-8-16-32 scoring, but the altered ratios of round-to-round values have other effects as well.

With a total of 64 points up for grabs in the first round, the opening two days of the tournament are the most important in Fibonacci, but the next three rounds still offer good opportunities to distance your bracket from the pack.

As in the 1-1-1-1-1-1 system, available points per round decreases in every round, but the value decay here is much more gradual, so randomness will more frequently impact the pool’s final standings — just not as much often as it does in traditional 1-2-4-8-16-32.

If you like the concept of rewarding late-round pick accuracy to some degree, but to want to generally focus the pool more on early round performance, Fibonacci is a good option.

2-3-5-7-10-50

Here’s one of the random ones we picked out from our customer pool details database.

It’s not too different from Fibonacci, but has even more randomness thrown in thanks to the much higher point value for the NCAA champion pick. So compared to Fibonacci, it levels the playing field a bit more between skilled and unskilled players.

The first round remains the most important round in terms of points available (64), followed by the NCAA champion (50), and then the second round (48).

Meanwhile, the finalist and Final Four picks are a relative dead zone, so anyone who picks a team that makes the championship game but then doesn’t win itreally gets screwed. That could lead to some nice participant anguish and subsequent trash-talking.

Compared to traditional 1-2-4-8-16-32 scoring, this system demands excellence at the beginning and/or the very end of the bracket, but still rewards a great performance in the early rounds slightly more.

Did you learn something?

In case you haven’t gotten the impressionby now, we’ve spent a lot of time researching bracket strategy. And scoring system is just one of several factorsyou need to take into account tomaximize your edge in a bracket contest.

If you want to see the bracket we’d use foryour pool this year, we’vecrunched all the numbers and optimized the picks.

Get your bracket here.

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