Non-random events are generally a lot easier guess correctly at than random events. This is why people will do things like card count or use weighted dice / coi

Non-random events are generally a lot easier guess correctly at than random events. This is why people will do things like card count or use weighted dice / coins with two heads / tails, etc. This is also why SSL keys are generated from random data rather than weighted data. I'd love to play the lottery if I knew certain balls were weighted more heavily than others. If you think non-random events are difficult to predict, give me your longitude and latitude and I'll predict with in five minutes what time the sun will rise tomorrow. Want to bet $1000 against? The real reason the it is more difficult is because the odds randomly are 1 in 4 billion for the first round, where as a lottery like the 6/49 is 1 in 13,983,816. However, the NCAA is not completely random, it would be difficult to discern what the real odds are but the fact that many players are within a couple games should give you some clue to the decrease in odds given the extra information. If 100 million brackets are filled out and the realistic odds are 1 in 1.5 billion (given the extra information) then someone should fill out a perfect bracket every 15 years. If you look at the prizes being offered for a correct bracket, it should give you some indication as to the greatly reduced odds that one actually faces. If the odds are really 2^48 for a correct 2 round bracket then it would stand to reason that you could offer a 1 trillion dollar prize for a correct bracket with a ticket price of $1 and still have a house margin of 99.64% 100 - ((1 / ((2^48) / 1 trillion)) * 100) = 99.644 This simply isn't the case. (My math may be way off, I was never a stats major)