"To our knowledge, no one has ever produced a perfect bracket, the three-minute mile of office pools. Perhaps one is buried in the boneyard of photocopied, hand-filled brackets of yesteryear. Internet-era contests are easier to track. Against the standard of perfection, more than 30 million ESPN brackets have failed, one by one, in the past 16 years, according to a spokeswoman. Over the last two years, no CBSSports.com bracket remained perfect through the second day of the tournament, a spokeswoman said. Yahoo’s entrant who came closest to perfection got 58 of 63 games right in 2007, according to a spokesman; last year no one picked more than 50 games correctly at either CBS or Yahoo. (Yahoo is partnering with Buffett’s perfect bracket contest.)"

http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2014/03/billion_dollar_bracket_challenge_why_it_s_a_bad_idea_to_enter_warren_buffett.html

"2) No one will win.

ESPN has been running a large-scale bracket contest for 13 years. Nobody has ever come close to perfection, the sports network’s John Diver told CNN in January. Only one person in the last seven years managed to pick just the first-round winners correctly.

“I don’t want to say it’s impossible,” Diver said, “but it’s basically impossible.”"

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ok look, its obviously a ridiculous long shot, but those articles are overstating it,

tradition brackets aren't a good predictor of how this bracket will play out because the incentives are different

in most polls its sort of silly to shoot for perfection for 2 reasons

1) if you're playing against other people, missing big upsets don't hurt you, if no one picked the #15 seed to win, the #15 seed winning doesn't hurt you relatively,

2) in most bracket, later rounds are seeded more heavily, so if your picking a big upset and miss, you're leaving alot of potential future points on the table

both of these reason disincentive picking alot of upsets

neither reason applies here, in fact in order to put in a plausible bracket, you better roll the dice on some fairly unlikely bracket

from my counting yesterday, if you want history to be your guide, you should probably pick 8-10 9 or lower seeds winning in the first round, and 3-5 12 or lower seeds winning in the first round

which would be way more agressive than would make sense in a traditional bracket

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2520918&forum_id=2#25211980)

but not as low as "OMG no one's ever done it, its impossible"

its never been tried on a mass scale

picking 14 and 15 seeds is usually reserved for the idiots

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2520918&forum_id=2#25212310)

the range of plausibly random outcomes is way smaller

also Buffet has already said he'll buy someone out if they make it to the final four

if they run it for 10+ years, someone will make it to the final four with a shot

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2520918&forum_id=2#25212333)

Still not so hot. As Bergen explained, that would mean you’d need to fill out about 90 billion brackets before you even had a 50-50 chance to win.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2520918&forum_id=2#25212344)

and your odds are better if you're just trying to make it to the point where you can get bought out

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2520918&forum_id=2#25212355)

(probably in the fine print that Buffett's the only one who can make a buyout bid)

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2520918&forum_id=2#25212368)

Still not so hot. As Bergen explained, that would mean you’d need to fill out about 90 billion brackets before you even had a 50-50 chance to win.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2520918&forum_id=2#25212342)

how many random combinations are there if posit that we have to have 8-10 >=9 seeds winning in the first round, and 3-5 >=12 seeds winning in the first round, and 0 16 seeds winning, and we don't give a shit what happens in the final four because we going to take the buyout number

any math people want to take a shot at how many of the 1/9quintillion brackets we have left?

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2520918&forum_id=2#25212663)

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/we-have-a-1-in-6001225228-chance-of-winning-buffetts-billion/

which still seems like the wrong way to do it

if you have to pick 10 different game all with 60% chance of winning,

are you odds of picking every single game better picking all 10 favorites

or 6/10 favorites?

seems like expecting 10/10 favorites to win is obviously the wrong way to do it

(though there are more random combinations of 6/10 to sort through)

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2520918&forum_id=2#25218847)

wouldn't 10/10 favorites winning be outside that distribution?

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2520918&forum_id=2#25219254)

or should that be the bet that makes the most sense to make?

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2520918&forum_id=2#25225158)

what do you think of the strategy of using Sagrin, (or someother rating system) to guess which is the most likely 2-3 14-15 upsets are, and then picking one of those?

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2520918&forum_id=2#25225182)

people have no idea how much 7 billion is.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2520918&forum_id=2#25225226)

rate my methodology

when with historical averages for number of upsets: 1 14-15 seed; 3 12-13 seeds; 5 9-11 seeds

then there after roughly 20-30 % of games with the lower seed winning

then used the Sagrins ratings to try and figure out which upsets in those categories were most likely

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2520918&forum_id=2#25225136)

http://www.takebuffettsbillion.com

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2520918&forum_id=2#25225188)

But srsly, devise something that creates a unique bracket on each entry. Could it be all that hard?

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2520918&forum_id=2#25225194)

this part would make it interesting too:

“If you get to the Final Four with a perfect bracket, I may buy you out of your position,” Buffett said. “I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse. I will accept your phone call, you better believe it.”

http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-warren-buffett-billion-dollar-bet-ncaa-basketball-20140121,0,1345560.story

someone signs up on that site and does reach the final four with a perfect bracket, then refuses Buffet's buy out offer. then their bracket fails. chances one of the other entrants sues?

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2520918&forum_id=2#25225242)

let people write algorithms that generate a million brackets, if anyone can generate a perfect one, they win 10 grand or something

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2520918&forum_id=2#25225202)

Side note: Not sure what all this chatter about needing to put it the number of upsets to be in line with historical averages, etc. is. The single most likely combination is the one with all favorites. Of course, that goes outside the realm of what you need to do to ensure that you have a unique bracket if you're trying to cop dat billion for yourself.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2520918&forum_id=2#25225583)