Odds of Picking a Perfect Bracket


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So you have high hopes of picking a perfect bracket this year and collecting one of the large prizes for doing so.  Just be ready for disappointment since Bodog has listed the odds on doing so at 9,223,372,036,854,775,808-to-1.  Yes, that’s nine quintillion-to-one!  Maybe that is why so many online sportsbooks offer multi-million dollar payouts to anyone giving it their best efforts.  Like Sportsbook.com giving out $13 million this year to anyone able to do so.

Want to put that massive number in perspective?  Nine quintillion is one billion times as big as nine billion.  If every person on the planet where to fill out 10 MILLION brackets each, the odds are less than 1% that even one of them would have a perfect bracket.  Of course, that’s even assuming that each one of them filled theirs out differently.

Even with around 10% of American’s filling out some kind of office pool bracket, and several of the ones participating filling out more than one the odds of someone attaining perfection are not good.  With 307 million people living here, that’s 30.7 million filling out brackets.  If those participating each filled two different versions out, that gives up 61.4 million brackets out there.  No wonder we don’t see people going flawless, even in year’s where the favorites hold serve.

That high number though is assuming the same chance of every team beating their opponent.  A 16 seed has never beaten a No. 1, so toss those out and your chances increase significantly.  Other favorites are more than just a toss up to win their respective games as well, not many 15 seeds have taken down a No. 2 (it’s happened four times, and not once since 2001).

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