Here Are Your Odds for Perfect March Madness Bracket
Posted: March 7, 2016
Updated: May 25, 2017
The odds for perfect March Madness bracket don’t lie: nobody has ever even been close to reach it so far…
Last year, online gamblers had far better chances for making a faultless bracket compared to their chances from 2014. However, the odds for a perfect March Madness bracket are still pretty high which means it is still pretty much an impossible task to complete. Are you looking for reasons why? We’ll tell you why!
How many games during March Madness?
68 teams participate in March Madness, however, there are only 64 teams in the bracket because that’s how you can make it into a knock-out system. There are a total of 63 NCAA basketball games during the tournament. You have to pick the one team that will win all of their games as there are only 2 possible outcomes: either Team 1 wins and qualifies for the next round, or Team 2 wins and qualifies for the next round. The loser is knocked out.
Your chances for perfect March Madness bracket – mathematically speaking
The fact that there are only 2 possible outcomes for each game makes our mathematical counting rather easy: For each game, you have 50% (1/2) chance of guessing on the correct team. This means that in order to wager on a perfect bracket, you have to guess all the 63 games correctly. online sportsbooks in the US have proved on several occasions that your odds for perfect March Madness bracket are 1/(2^63). Let me show you the precise number: the odds for perfect March Madness bracket are 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 (over nine quintillion).
Sports are not that easily predictable using simple mathematics
However, we must realize that no sport can be predicted by simple mathematical algorithms. It is easy to say that there are 50% chances for each game as there are only 2 outcomes. We must realize that someone who follows the NCAA basketball league, has far better odds for perfect March Madness bracket: they know statistics, they know history, they know about strong and weak points of each team. They know a lot and that helps gives them better chances.
No.1 seeded team against No.16 seeded team is not 50% – according to history!
Let me give you actual information why the mathematical system doesn’t work perfectly: in the first round, the number 1 seeded teams meet against the lowest, number 16 seeded teams. No 16-seeded team has ever managed to beat a number 1 seeded team in recorded history. Since 1985, there has been 124 matches between No. 16 and No. 1 seeded teams. The record is 124-0 for the better-seeded teams.
More and more bettors believe that the streak will end one day
This very first round where the best-seeded teams face the lowest-seeded teams is like a dream come true for those who want to place their bets at the best online sportsbook. They already start with a great advantage of being able to predict the outcomes of at least those games. However, the number of bettors wagering against number 1 seeded teams keeps increasing year after year.
There could be 2 explanations for that: the first one, and we want to believe that this is not the case, is that bettors are simply not aware of historical facts. The second, and more likely reason is that there are more and more March Madness bettors every year, they can even bet online. These players must know that all streaks must come to an end eventually, and they want to be the ones who predict the biggest upsets in March Madness history.
Maybe you should play the lottery instead…
Jeff Berger, a professor at DePaul University, has said in a statement last year that the odds for perfect March Madness bracket are so high that it is easier to win the Mega Millions lottery game twice in a row with the same numbers than hitting a perfect March Madness bracket only once. Maybe if you want to bet on March Madness, you might also also want to play the best lottery providers.
The professor added another example of what’s easier than betting on the faultless bracket on March Madness: he said that the odds for predicting the winning party in every single US presidential elections from this year until 2264 are the same as the odds for perfect March Madness bracket. Knowing all that, we hope to see you betting on March Madness. We want you to become the one and only person in history, to bet on a faultless bracket for March Madness!