I've wasted a lot of time on this kind of analysis for picking brackets. I estimated that the odds of a person picking a perfect bracket are 1 in 924 trillion:

I've wasted a lot of time on this kind of analysis for picking brackets. I estimated that the odds of a person picking a perfect bracket are 1 in 924 trillion: http://www.codeswimming.com/blog/2008/03/the-perfect-ncaa-bracket/ http://www.codeswimming.com/blog/2008/03/the-perfect-ncaa-br... If you want a shortcut to estimate win probability instead of looking it up in a chart: Prob Team 1 winning = Rank Team 2 / (Rank Team 1 + Rank Team 2) That formula only breaks down at 1 vs. 16 and 1 vs. 2. It's fun to postulate, but it won't really help in picking your bracket. What I do is look for teams highly rated by Sagarin or kenpom, but underrated by seeding. I have Wisconsin winning the whole thing in my bracket. You've gotta maximize the probability of occurance while also minimizing redundant picks with the rest of the pool. However, I've never done especially well in practice and regularly get beat by people who choose by jersey color. It's still fun though.