You want to win your March Madness pool. The money is nice, but the bragging rights are even better.
However, it seems so difficult to win your pool. You don’t have the time to do the hours of research required to study all teams.
I have a better way for you.
To win your pool, you must combines analytics and strategy. Analytics gives you an edge over others in predicting winners. Strategy lets you exploit the biases of others in picking the best bracket.
These methods, which originated in my book How to win your NCAA tournament pool, are for:
- People who don’t think March Madness can be predicted. You’ll be surprised how often analytics can predict the winner of tourney games, even before it starts. See the Introduction Chapter.
- People who think you should just pick the team with the highest win probability as champion. You need think contrarian. See Chapter 3.
- People who don’t have 10 hours to research their bracket. A simple 3 step process helps you make the most important decision for your bracket.
You need to fill out your bracket based on pool size. This is the only genuine way to maximize your odds of winning.
Here’s the experience of a few people who have used my approach.
I used Ed’s methods and won a pool with 102 entrants. As a woman, it was particularly gratifying to win as the pool consisted of mostly men who consider themselves knowledgeable. Thanks, The Power Rank!
— L.S. Stindt, Ann Arbor, MI, 2019.
Over the years, I had tried all of the different tricks like finding the trendy 12 over 5 pick, going with Kenpom’s ratings or the lines set by Vegas. Once in a while, I’d get close to winning a pool, but I needed something to push me over the top, and your book was fantastic for that.
In 2015, I won two pools, one of them had 100 entries, and the other had 20 entries. In 2017, I won two pools and finished second in another.
— Ryan Peters, Omaha, NE.
To use this combination of analytics and strategy to win your pool, click here.
From graduate school to predicting March Madness
Hi, my name is Ed Feng. As a college basketball junkie in grad school, I wrote code to use Ken Pomeroy’s numbers to fill out my bracket. After that, people stopped inviting me into their pools.
Years later, I developed a ranking algorithm for sports teams based on my Ph.D. from Stanford in applied mathematics. This led to The Power Rank, my site devoted to better predictions through analytics.
March Madness has played a huge role in my sports analytics journey from the beginning. In 2012, SB Nation made a gorgeous video on my tourney analytics and data visualizations.
In addition, here’s an unsolicited email about my rankings and predictions.
You’ll be glad to know that I have been and continue to be in first place in my family bracket, and yesterday the message board was abuzz with talk of my first 8 picks being perfect. My police officer cousin threatened to subpoena my IP address to make sure I had picked before the games started. I explained my picks and posted a link to The Power Rank website, which prompted my uncle to cry foul about my research methods!
— Tom Kellogg, Madison, WI.
A study by FiveThirtyEight.com found my 2015 tournament predictions to be the most accurate. My content has also appeared on Sports Illustrated, Deadspin, and Grantland.
The secret behind winning your pool
My research reveals the following lessons on filling out your bracket.
- Can tournament games be predicted at all? You might be surprised how often one particular team wins, and why this matters in small pools. See Chapter 1.
- How to pick the right pool. You might as well light your entry fee on fire if you enter the wrong pool. See Chapter 2.
- The contrarian approach to winning a medium sized pool that will make sense to no one but you. This is the key to avoiding the luck of others in your pool. See Chapter 3.
- Your true odds of winning a pool based on its size. My Monte Carlo simulations give you the best possible estimates.
Here’s the experience of a few members of The Power Rank.
In 2018, I won my pool with 58 brackets. I used the member numbers and analysis that Ed provides and contrasted them with the public information from ESPN. Love all the content he provides during March.
— Brian Z, New York City, NY, 2018.
I won a 100 person pool ($10 entry) which paid $600 for first. In another 34 person pool, I won 3rd with North Carolina which paid $90. In my last pool with $50 entry, I had Gonzaga as champion and took second, which paid $300.
— Garrett Tobel, 2017.
There is no guarantee that you’ll win your pool. Even with the best strategy, luck can slap you in the face. Grandma, who doesn’t know the difference between John Calipari and Nick Saban, picks every sleeper team that makes the Sweet 16 and wins the pool.
However, analytics can greatly reduce the role of luck in your pool results.
How to win your pool
There are multiple ways to apply my March Madness research to help you win your pool.
Become a member of The Power Rank
Members of The Power Rank get access to all of my analytics and bracket advice, which includes:
- Member predictions for the spread in every college basketball game the day before they happen.
- Bets and analysis on college basketball games, props and the NFL draft.
- A 22 minute audio course on the contrarian strategies for winning your pool. This is the meat of my book How to Win Your NCAA Tournament Pool.
- A pdf copy of How to Win Your NCAA Tournament Pool.
- My full bracket advice for the 2023 tournament. In essence, I apply the ideas in the book for you based on more accurate member predictions not available to the public.
From February 16 through March 9, the member college basketball predictions have gone 53.2% against the opening spread (389-342 with 13 pushes). I uses data on the opening market from KO STATS.
The root mean squared error of the college basketball predictions to the game results has been 10.87 points. The rms error for the opening markets as tracked by KO STATS has been 10.89 points. The model has been 0.21% better than the opening markets. Please note that this is one of the two models that I post.
Members also get access to all of my NFL and college football predictions and analytics.
For the 2020 through 2022 seasons, the NFL predictions are 54.1% against the closing spread (275-233 with 8 pushes in games in which the prediction differs from the market by a point or more). This is for games after week 3 in which my schedule adjustment algorithms kick in.
In addition, the rms error of the predictions to actual game results has been 12.87 points. The rms error for the closing spread has been 12.75 points, so the predictions have been within 0.9% of the closing markets.
To become a member of The Power Rank for $99 per year and get instant access to the book, click on the orange “Add To Cart” button.
You can also pay with PayPal, JCB and Diner’s Club. The membership renews every year.
The Power Rank 2023 Bracket Advice and Course
The audio course, book and bracket advice are available as a separate product for $44. This product also contains some bonus football analytics audio content.
To purchase The Power Rank 2023 Bracket Advice and Course as a separate product on Gumroad (super easy checkout with only an email address and credit card), click here.
Paperback and ebook
How to Win Your NCAA Tournament Pool, the professionally edited book, is available from Amazon in both paperback and for Kindle.
The paperback version of the book was updated in February of 2020 with a new design and crisp images.
Don’t have a Kindle? You can download the free Kindle reading app for your smartphone, tablet, PC, or Mac, iPad.