Scoring System, by Round
Each round of the tournament is worth progressively more points. Early round wins lay the foundation; later wins separate the champions from the pretenders. See the official scoring table for the per-round breakdown.
NCAA Tourney Pool Rules
You must be 18 years or older, be a legal resident of the United States of America (or Switzerland) and have a valid driver's license. Persons with known heart defects or pregnant women are advised against participating in this type of activity for safety concerns associated with prolonged stressful behavior.
Send your $20 payment, drawn from a reputable bank to our accountant. For information on where to send payment go here:
How to Pay for Your Pool » (Important: see email for Password)
Otherwise, sit back and enjoy the action!
Scoring
Points will be awarded each round for each correct prediction, or pick, made on a game by game basis. Points vary per round depending on the proximity of the contests to the actual crowning of the NCAA champion. Picks for each round are based on the teams you picked to win in the previous round (ie once you pick a team to lose you cannot pick them again in a later round, isn't that right Foist)!
Points will also be awarded for correctly picking upsets during the tournament. The points awarded will be based on the difference between the seeded values of the two teams. For instance correctly predicting a #15 seed beating a #2 seed in the 1st round is worth 13 points in addition to the normal points awarded for that round (which in this case is 5 points, for a total of 18 points).
Pool Details
Main Pool Payouts
Points for each round will be accumulated and the winners will be paid according to the number of entries in the pool. In general, the top 10% of entrants will win a cash prize, with exact payouts scaled to the final pot size.
Winning (Duh!)
On top of the main payouts, there's a special prize reserved for 69th place. Why 69th? Unclear, but somewhere along the way it became tradition—so we kept it.
QuikPiks
Per usual, everyone gets 5 Quik Piks with their entry. These are randomly generated brackets that live in a separate pool with a separate stack of cash to be won. Good clean fun. We'll send you your Quik Piks shortly so you know who to root for, and we'll pay out the Top 3 winners.
Sweet 16 Pool
By popular demand we've also included a Sweet 16 pool starting in the second week of the tourney. There will be a separate entry form, and you simply pick from the teams who successfully made the Sweet 16. This is a winner-takes-all side pool, with a $10 entry fee for extra goodness and extra fun.
The Last Word...
In all the years this pool has been run, very seldom have the most knowledgeable basketball fans walked away with the top prize money. Usually it's a first-time entrant who doesn't know John Wooden from a Hoosier or Phi-Slamma-Jamma, picks based on team colors or mascots, and absolutely crushes the so-called experts.
So if you're worried that you don't belong, don't be—just play. Odds are you'll surprise yourself. OK, ready to make your picks? Let's head to the entry form and get this thing tipped off.
