Posts
March
Madness is here!!!! I was watching CBS's 2-hour bracket reveal
program, and I have to say CBS is dramatically incorrect if they think
that people are watching that show to see analysis by Charles Barkley,
Seth Davis or anyone else. Just get to the brackets already!!!!
Luckily, someone was kind enough to leak the entire brackets on Twitter,
so I didn't have to subject myself to that 2-hour horror show.
Below
you will find the same message I sent out earlier this month. I
changed some stuff, since I was clued in that some of the dates were off
the first time and in one of the scenarios, the payouts didn't add up
to 100%. the rest of the information is the same.
Here are few additional notes:
1.
If you still actually work at Pratt&Whitney in San Diego, you can
drop off sheets and money on Joe Kallio's desk. He'll be picking it up
on Wednesday when we go out for lunch. So, if you want to enter that
way, the deadline is probably going to be about 10:00 on Wednesday
morning.
2.
I've attached a spreadsheet with this years bracket. You can use this
if you want. You can send a PDF if you want. However you want to send
me your picks, as long as I get them (along with payment), you are in.
3.
There are some people that I owe money to from previous adventures
(mostly the Bowl Pool or the Pick 'em League). Here is a rundown of
those people and how much credit you currently have with me:
- Howard Szeto ($10)
- Herder family ($20)
- Dan Stuart ($25)
- Jonathan Marquez ($25)
- Harrell Robinson ($25)
- Jason Garcia ($25)
- Joe Kallio ($50)
I
looked up last years numbers and we had 206 entries, and everything
went pretty smoothly. I'm hoping that is the case again this year.
Here's the rest of the old intro:
For those that are getting into the
pool for the first time, let me give you a little introduction. I’ve been
running this pool since 2006, and it has grown every year. In 2005, I put
together a spreadsheet so that I could tell if my entry in a pool had any
chance of winning (or what had to happen to keep me from being
eliminated). After that, I figured I could provide that type of
information to anyone in a pool, as well as provide some rough probabilities of
winning at various stages of the tournament. Every year, I spend the
first Thursday and Friday at my brother’s place in front of 4 screens watching
a ton of basketball, eating bad food and scoring all of the entries.
After the opening weekend, I am able to generate preliminary probabilities of
getting all of the payouts. I can also tell if and when entries are
eliminated from contention for the various payouts. It makes it much more
interesting than just figuring out who has the most points at any particular
time.
Changes
The pool is more or less the same as
last year. Last year was probably the
most stress free pool I have run since I started doing this, so I see no reason
to change now. There is one change, and
that will be to the payment methods. I
will try to accept Venmo payments if anyone happens to use Venmo. More details on that in the "How to
pay" section.
Tracking Entries
As with last year, I am keeping a
blog where I am writing all of the information. This is easier and more
convenient for me than e-mail lists, and I've yet to hear any complaints.
There is an icon on the site if you want email updates whenever I post anything
if you still like the email notification. The site is located at: http://kleisports.blogspot.com/. There is no password required.
Who can Enter
Basketball fans… Fans of
pools…. Anyone with five bucks….. Anyone can enter. Feel free
to forward this on to anyone that wants to enter. All are welcome as long
as they follow the instructions laid out here. You can enter as many
times as you want. There is no limit to the number of entries.
How to Enter
There are a few ways to enter.
The easiest way is to print out a bracket, fill it out and hand it to me. That's prohibitively harder where I work
now. My previous workplace is in the
process of shutting down, so I'm not sure if I will be making the trip out
there to pick up sheets this week, but I will contact some people that are
still there to see if that's feasible or not.
You can fill out a sheet and send me
a scanned version. You can do this via Yahoo or ESPN, or any other place
that allows you to print out brackets. Make sure that you let me know
how you are going to pay for it when you send me the sheet.
Play-in Games
I think this is a hidden value and
as these pools get bigger they may make a bigger difference to who wins.
There are 4 play-in games that go off on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The NCAA finally submitted to my
longtime protests and call these "Play-in" games instead of "1st
round" games". Whatever you call them, if you want to pick one
of those teams to advance, you essentially get whoever wins that game.
For instance last year, if you liked Boise State to advance to the Sweet 16,
you still got points for Dayton advancing because Dayton beat Boise State in
the play-in game. I think that at least one team from the play-in game has
made the Sweet 16 the last 5 years and VCU made it to the Final 4 as a play-in
winner. That’s a lot of points to leave on the table.
Tiebreaker
I never like deciding places via a
tiebreaker, but sometimes 63 games aren’t enough to determine who gets what, so
I need one. The tiebreaker is the total points scored in the championship
game. The winner of the tiebreaker is the entry that is closest to the
actual number of points, regardless of whether or not it is higher or lower.
How to pay
The cost is $5 per entry.
There are no volume discounts or anything like that.
There are a few ways to pay, but
I’ll accept most types of payment except for PayPal. I had everyone use
that a few years back and it got flagged for “suspicious activity”. That
seems so strange since I never use my Paypal account except for about a week
where I would receive a ton of activity in $5 increments. Anyway, I don’t
use PayPal since I don’t want my account frozen.
I will however accept Venmo, as they
haven't barred me yet. The email address
there is b_nittmo@yahoo.com.
You can pay in cash. As I
mentioned earlier, I may or may not be heading back to my old job to pick up brackets. If it turns out that I am, we will coordinate
the cash pick up then.
If you want to mail me payments or
set up a payment from your bank, here’s my address (Note: It is different from last year):
Klei Richards
1882 Black Mustard Ln.
Carlsbad, CA 92011
I personally prefer if you set me up as a payee if you use on-line banking. The bank consolidates all the checks that I get that way. It makes it slightly easier for me.
As I mentioned above, you MUST send me an email with your entry and
how you intend to pay for it.
Deadlines
The deadline for entry is tip off of
the first game on Thursday, March 17th. Brackets will be released on
Sunday, March 13th. I am very
strict about this deadline. I WILL NOT accept entries after tipoff of
the first game. It's one of the most
stressful times running this pool, and the last thing I want to do is argue
about whether someone submitted picks on time or not. If I don't have picks by tip off, you are not
getting in.
Scoring
The scoring is the same as it’s been
in years past. There will be 32 points available in each round for a
total of 192 points in all. That means that every game you get right on
the opening Thursday and Friday will be worth 1 point, every game on the
opening Saturday and Sunday will be worth 2 pts. It also means that
picking the Champion gets you 32 points. With a pool as big as mine has
turned into, you almost certainly need to get the winner right to have any
chance at the money.
Payouts
Last year, I paid out 4
places. I said that if I managed to get 250 entries, I would pay out 5
places. I pay out everything that I take in, so this whole escapade is
charity work on my behalf. If I pay out 4 places, the breakdown will be:
1st – 50%, 2nd – 25%, 3rd – 15%, 4th
– 10%. If it turns out to be 5 places, the breakdown will be: 1st
– 45%, 2nd – 25%, 3rd – 15%, 4th – 10%, 5th
– 5%. I won’t know what the actual dollar amounts will be until I know
how many entries I have.
I think that more or less covers
everything. If you’ve read all the way through this,
congratulations!!! It’s a bit of a long-winded message, but there’s a lot
of information in there that people have asked about in the past as well as
things that have caused me grief before. I hope everyone can join.
It promises to be a fun tournament. I’ll be hoping for a ton of
upsets. That always makes for a fun tournament. I don’t like it as
much when all the higher seeds win. I actively discourage people from
entering a bracket only by the seeds. My favorite day of the tournament
is selection Sunday, and my second favorite day is the day all gutless brackets
are mathematically eliminated from any money. I really can’t stand those
types of picks.
Good luck to everyone!!!!
Klei
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