2023 March Madness - Weighted averages and eliminations.

Good morning.  After what seemed like an eternity, we are back today with more basketball.  Only 12 people are alive for anything today, and after today’s games, that number could still be as high as 8.  My hope for today is that San Diego State wins, and whatever the result of the other game, no tiebreakers will be needed to determine any of the payouts.

One gripe I’ve heard (mostly from myself) has been the way I’ve weighted the games in order to generate the probabilities of winning.  If you remember, I treat every outcome as being equally likely to happen.  So, a Florida Atlantic beating Miami in the finals scenario get just as much weight as a Connecticut over SDSU final.  We all know those probably aren't reality (especially when there are 16 teams involved).  The reason I do that is because in order to figure out the weight of any one scenario, I’d need to derive the odds of every game winner in that scenario.  When we are in the Sweet 16, that would mean deriving odds for 15 games over 32,000+ scenarios and applying them.  That’s a lot of work.  However, now that there are only 3 games left, it’s much, much easier.  As a matter of fact, I needed to do very little as most gambling sites have what they call the “Exact Result” odds.  Since there are only 8 possible outcomes, there are odds for every remaining scenario.  I just needed to do a little normalizing to get things to add up to 1 and voila!!  Weighted probabilities of winning.

First, here’s the matrix with even probabilities for every outcome:

…and here’s what the weighted matrix looks like:

For some people, you can see the odds go way up.  For others, their odds get longer.  You can see that Charlotte’s probability of winning goes over 50% because she will win if Connecticut beats SDSU (the most likely outcome) and also if she wins the tiebreaker if Miami beats SDSU in the finals.  If you look at the unweighted probabilities, it looks like Hack a Zach has about the same chance as Charlotte, but remember that he has Purdue winning it all, so he kind of needs chaos.  He only wins if there is a Florida Atlantic / Miami final or he wins the tie-breaker with an SDSU / Miami final.  Right now, those outcomes seem a lot less likely.  But that, they say, is why they play the games – especially this year.

Game 61

San Diego State v Florida Atlantic

Vegas Line: SDSU -2.5

Picks for SDSU: 4

Picks for Florida Atlantic: 0

I feel bad for Paul K. #3 here.  There are 4 people that picked San Diego State to make the Championship game and he’s the only one eliminated from all spots.  I always say that they key to winning these pools is taking some risks and then having those risks work out.  Well, Paul K. #3 took a big risk taking SDSU to the finals, and it may still work out.  His problem was that he only has 40 points right now, which puts him in 174^th place.  If SDSU wins, he’ll get 16 points.  That would put him around 32^nd place.  A big jump, but that’s all the points he can get.  Unfortunately, his bracket died with Houston way back in the Sweet 16.  At least he can have some bragging rights about getting at least SDSU in the Final 4.

I am not going to even pretend to be unbiased here.  Florida Atlantic is a cute story, and if situations were different, I’d probably be rooting for them.  Not today.  I hope they get mercilessly pounded.  I hope the announcers are hyping up the second game with about 15 minutes to go in the second half.  I remember the second time I went to the Final 4 in Houston.  The National Semifinal was Villanova / Oklahoma.  Villanova was killing Oklahoma by so much, my wife and I decided to stop watching the beatdown and beat the crowds to the concession stand for dinner.  Villanova won that game by 44 points.  That’s the kind of game I want here….

I guess the consolation would be that the loser can go to their respective beaches.  That’s not the worst thing in the world.

Here are the eliminations:

If San Diego State wins:

Chun W. #3 is eliminated from 3rd place contention.

Emily T. is eliminated from 2nd, 3rd & 4th place contention.

Noah N. is eliminated from 3rd place contention.

Ryan W. is eliminated from 1st place contention.

Steve D. #1 is eliminated from 2nd place contention.

If Florida Atlantic wins:

Mustard (Nikolajs B.) is eliminated from 2nd & 3rd place contention.

Rob I. #1 is eliminated from 1st & 4th place contention.

Ryan W. is eliminated from 4th place contention.

Steve D. #1 is eliminated from 3rd place contention.

I’m going to guess that none of those eliminations are a surprise to those people.  Steve D. and Ryan W. look like they are going to lose an option either way.  Or, you could look at it positively and say that they will still be alive for something either way.

Back with more commentary and an updated breakdown between games.

Good luck everyone!!!