Anybody interested in a shot at $5,000,000 (NCAA Bracket)

mreuter

I don't know if this is considered spam or not, I'm not selling anything and I get nothing out of this, just giving a heads up for anybody interested, on the Yahoo website they are giving away $5,000,000 to anybody who picks every game right in the NCAA tournament, doesn't cost anything to get in, just have to sign up on Yahoo. You can fill out as many as five brackets, they are giving out $10,000 for the highest scoring bracket and in the remote chance somebody here would get them all right, don't forget where you heard about it. (but I don't take Paypal, LOL)

stevek

I've won the 5 million ten years in a row. I'm not going to play it this year and give somebody else a chance.

mreuter

Thanks for being so considerate, I only need 57 more games correct and the money is mine.

stevek

We need CU's iamthegreatcornholio (Brian) to calculate the approximate odds of winning this bet. I guess one parameter could be say that every favorite was played, but if Brian was interested in doing it, it would be fun to know what are the approximate odds of winning this bet?

mreuter

I was thinking the same thing, how many possible combinations would there be? Also, thanks to USC for screwing me on my four perfect sheets, there goes my 5 million.

stevek

<< <i>I was thinking the same thing, how many possible combinations would there be? >>



I'm gonna make a safe guess that the odds of winning this bet are a lot higher than 5 million to one. LOL

TheMcgwireMuseum

18,446,744,073,709,551,616

WarHoundR69

Are you saying that the odds are 18 Quintillion, 446 Quadrillion, 744 Trillion, 73 Billion, 709 Million, 551 Thousand & 616 to one? Or is that number equal to 64 FACTORIAL?

TomGshotput

<< <i>We need CU's iamthegreatcornholio (Brian) to calculate the approximate odds of winning this bet. I guess one parameter could be say that every favorite was played, but if Brian was interested in doing it, it would be fun to know what are the approximate odds of winning this bet? >>



Possible combinations is equal to 2^63 or over 1 in 9 quintillion if every team has a 50% chance of winning every game. But going with favories will help some, as UNC might be projected to win their first game 99% of the time. But then again even a reasonably strong team like Vanderbilt has a 25% chance of losing their first game, and less than 50% chance of winning two games. You would have to plot 64 lines on a graph, with probability (either based on past results or gambling odds) on the x-axis, and each round on the y-axis and see where all the lines interesect. My brain is beyond being able to handle it beyond that, but the people who are smart enough to figure it out know the $5 million is safe; my guess is you would need to fill out over 100 trillion just to have a 50% chance of a perfect one

TomGshotput

<< <i>18,446,744,073,709,551,616 >>



We already know what happened in the Mount St Marys-Coppin State game, so you can cut that number in half

stevek

<< <i>

<< <i>We need CU's iamthegreatcornholio (Brian) to calculate the approximate odds of winning this bet. I guess one parameter could be say that every favorite was played, but if Brian was interested in doing it, it would be fun to know what are the approximate odds of winning this bet? >>



Possible combinations is equal to 2^63 or over 1 in 9 quintillion if every team has a 50% chance of winning every game. But going with favories will help some, as UNC might be projected to win their first game 99% of the time. But then again even a reasonably strong team like Vanderbilt has a 25% chance of losing their first game, and less than 50% chance of winning two games. You would have to plot 64 lines on a graph, with probability (either based on past results or gambling odds) on the x-axis, and each round on the y-axis and see where all the lines interesect. My brain is beyond being able to handle it beyond that, but the people who are smart enough to figure it out know the $5 million is safe; my guess is you would need to fill out over 100 trillion just to have a 50% chance of a perfect one >>




I'm gonna get started on setting up 100 trillion e-mail accounts to enable me to have a 50% chance to win it next year. But I'm gonna be p*ssed if I do all that work and lose the coin flip.



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DaBeef

I just want to know whats after Quintillion

mreuter

<< <i>

<< <i>We need CU's iamthegreatcornholio (Brian) to calculate the approximate odds of winning this bet. I guess one parameter could be say that every favorite was played, but if Brian was interested in doing it, it would be fun to know what are the approximate odds of winning this bet? >>



Possible combinations is equal to 2^63 or over 1 in 9 quintillion if every team has a 50% chance of winning every game. But going with favories will help some, as UNC might be projected to win their first game 99% of the time. But then again even a reasonably strong team like Vanderbilt has a 25% chance of losing their first game, and less than 50% chance of winning two games. You would have to plot 64 lines on a graph, with probability (either based on past results or gambling odds) on the x-axis, and each round on the y-axis and see where all the lines interesect. My brain is beyond being able to handle it beyond that, but the people who are smart enough to figure it out know the $5 million is safe; my guess is you would need to fill out over 100 trillion just to have a 50% chance of a perfect one >>


I think my head just exploded!

stevek

If it is won, it will not be from any handicapper, it will be from some little old lady who knows nothing about sports, and picked the teams at random.

WarHoundR69

After Quintillion you have Sextillion, Septillion, Octillion, Nonillion and Decaillion. There are names for bigger numbers - a Google is 1 followed by 100 zeros and a googleplex is a google raised to the google power.

TheMcgwireMuseum

<< <i>Possible combinations is equal to 2^63 or over 1 in 9 quintillion if every team has a 50% chance of winning every game. >>



You forgot the play-in game, bringing the total number of games to 64, thus equaling 18.5 quintillion

iamthegreatcornholio

<< <i>

<< <i>

<< <i>We need CU's iamthegreatcornholio (Brian) to calculate the approximate odds of winning this bet. I guess one parameter could be say that every favorite was played, but if Brian was interested in doing it, it would be fun to know what are the approximate odds of winning this bet? >>



Possible combinations is equal to 2^63 or over 1 in 9 quintillion if every team has a 50% chance of winning every game. But going with favories will help some, as UNC might be projected to win their first game 99% of the time. But then again even a reasonably strong team like Vanderbilt has a 25% chance of losing their first game, and less than 50% chance of winning two games. You would have to plot 64 lines on a graph, with probability (either based on past results or gambling odds) on the x-axis, and each round on the y-axis and see where all the lines interesect. My brain is beyond being able to handle it beyond that, but the people who are smart enough to figure it out know the $5 million is safe; my guess is you would need to fill out over 100 trillion just to have a 50% chance of a perfect one >>




I'm gonna get started on setting up 100 trillion e-mail accounts to enable me to have a 50% chance to win it next year. But I'm gonna be p*ssed if I do all that work and lose the coin flip.

- >>



The most likely scenario would be that all favorites win. Obviously the chances of that happening are virtually nil, but I'd argue it's still more likely than any one other scenario.

Quick math would yield the odds of the most likely scenario to happen:

Shoe-in (80%)

I'm estimating these below, which are loosely based off ML's. In some games the higher # seed is favored (e.g., Davidson over Gonzaga, Davidson was favored by 2 which cashed by the way )

1st Round:

1 seeds (99% each)
2 seeds (95% each)
3 seeds (92% each)
4 seeds (80% each)
5 seeds (67% each)
6 seeds (60% each)
7 seeds (55% each)
8 seeds (50% each)

After the first round let's assume the average game, the favorite wins 67% of the time.

The odds of all this happening are:

0.8 * [0.99*0.95*0.92*0.80*0.67*0.60*0.55*0.50]^4 * 0.67^31 ~ 1 in 8.983 billion

stevek

Thanks for that Brian - an enjoyable read from you, and from Tom.

Tom's comment, Yahoo's "$5 million is safe" is certainly accurate based on the odds, and of course if someone would hit it, Yahoo could afford it anyway - LOL

stevek

<<< Davidson over Gonzaga, Davidson was favored by 2 which cashed by the way ) >>>

Good! I'd love to see a newspaper headline, "Bettor breaks Bodog"

LWMM

<< <i>

<< <i>We need CU's iamthegreatcornholio (Brian) to calculate the approximate odds of winning this bet. I guess one parameter could be say that every favorite was played, but if Brian was interested in doing it, it would be fun to know what are the approximate odds of winning this bet? >>



Possible combinations is equal to 2^63 or over 1 in 9 quintillion if every team has a 50% chance of winning every game. But going with favories will help some, as UNC might be projected to win their first game 99% of the time. But then again even a reasonably strong team like Vanderbilt has a 25% chance of losing their first game, and less than 50% chance of winning two games. You would have to plot 64 lines on a graph, with probability (either based on past results or gambling odds) on the x-axis, and each round on the y-axis and see where all the lines interesect. My brain is beyond being able to handle it beyond that, but the people who are smart enough to figure it out know the $5 million is safe; my guess is you would need to fill out over 100 trillion just to have a 50% chance of a perfect one >>



That is if one wanted to take into account every single scenario (including all four 16 seeds in the final 4)---because chance is much less of a factor (relatively speaking), the odds are much better. Even when George Mason got to the final four, ESPN has (if I remember correctly) four perfect brackets to that point; I'm not sure what happened after that, but I'm pretty sure that at least one of them ended up choosing all 65 games correctly.

bigfische

There are no perect on yahoo anymore.

Im proud to say I am in the 95th percentile with 25 correct now.

mreuter

They opened a second chance bracket, you can go in a pick the games from here on out, perfect bracket gets $1,000,000. You still fill out up to five brackets.

augustaman

"That is if one wanted to take into account every single scenario (including all four 16 seeds in the final 4)---because chance is much less of a factor (relatively speaking), the odds are much better. Even when George Mason got to the final four, ESPN has (if I remember correctly) four perfect brackets to that point; I'm not sure what happened after that, but I'm pretty sure that at least one of them ended up choosing all 65 games correctly. "

I challenge this statement. I find it hard to believe that anyone has ever gotten anywhere near picking 65 out of 65. Just read this...........

Odds of picking a perfect bracket? 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 1. That’s nine quintillion to one! How big is that number? It is a billion times as big as 9 billion! Think of it this way: if every man, woman, and child on the planet randomly filled out 10 million brackets each, the odds would be LESS than 1% that even one would have a perfect bracket. How tall would every possible bracket be, on paper of normal thickness? That stack would reach from the earth’s surface to THE SUN over six thousand times! That stack would be 19.5 MILLION times the height of Mount Everest!

stevek

<< <i>That is if one wanted to take into account every single scenario (including all four 16 seeds in the final 4)---because chance is much less of a factor (relatively speaking), the odds are much better. Even when George Mason got to the final four, ESPN has (if I remember correctly) four perfect brackets to that point; I'm not sure what happened after that, but I'm pretty sure that at least one of them ended up choosing all 65 games correctly.

I challenge this statement. I find it hard to believe that anyone has ever gotten anywhere near picking 65 out of 65. >>



Yea, like ESPN never told a BS hyped up story before. Almost anything is possible but I don't believe ESPN on this that someone picked all the games correctly - I'd have to see this documented in some way to believe it. I mean look at the Yahoo contest - everybody and their mother took a free shot to win 5 million bucks, and they're all already eliminated - must have been many, MANY tens of millions of entries worldwide...and they're all gone.

Maybe somebody hits the million bucks though? We'll see. In any event, a great advertising ploy for Yahoo - certainly worth a million dollars in publicity for them even if someone hits it.


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AlanAllen

<< <i>They opened a second chance bracket, you can go in a pick the games from here on out, perfect bracket gets $1,000,000. You still fill out up to five brackets. >>



I can't access it at work to see the details, but with 15 games left there are only 2^15 (or 32,768) possible outcomes. Are they doing a drawing amongst all those who get it right, or splitting the million, or what?

Joe

stevek

<< <i>

<< <i>They opened a second chance bracket, you can go in a pick the games from here on out, perfect bracket gets $1,000,000. You still fill out up to five brackets. >>



I can't access it at work to see the details, but with 15 games left there are only 2^15 (or 32,768) possible outcomes. Are they doing a drawing amongst all those who get it right, or splitting the million, or what?

Joe >>




Good question. I would have to guess that a computer drawing for the one million with one winner would be likely.

mreuter

You have to put in the half time score and the final score of the championship game to be used as a tie breaker.