This is a guest post from PoolGenius, a site that provides data-driven NCAA bracket picks, projections, and tools.
As anticipation for the 2024 NCAA tournament reaches a fever pitch, it’s easy to feel like you’re drowning in a sea of bracket strategy tips.
There’s no shortage of people who think they know the secrets to winning a March Madness pool, and are more than happy to share their advice.
Unfortunately, most conventional bracket wisdom is grounded in opinions, not facts. Following it can actually reduce your chances of winning a pool.
In this article, we review five proven strategies—all backed by objective math and real-world results—that can double or even triple your odds to win your 2024 NCAA bracket contest.
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PoolGenius provides ready-to-play brackets customized for your pool’s size and scoring system, along with the most comprehensive suite of 2024 bracket projections, analysis tools, and data.
NCAA Bracket Picks from PoolGenius »
(We also have tools for NCAA survivor pools and Calcutta auctions.)
5 Proven Tips To Pick The Best 2024 Bracket
Identifying the bracket that gives you the best chance to win your March Madness pool requires a lot of data and analysis, but these five principles provide a solid foundation:
- Use Trustworthy Bracket Predictions
- Understand Your Pool’s Scoring System
- Consider How Your Opponents Will Pick
- Let Pool Size Guide Your Overall Risk
- Ignore Bracket Picking “Golden Rules”
We’ll explain these principles in detail, after a quick review of our credentials.
Why Should You Trust Our Bracket Advice?
For over a decade, the team at PoolGenius has been conducting research and developing tools to help people win more sports pools. We started out with NCAA bracket pools, and have since expanded to football and golf pools too.
Over the years, our subscribers have entered the customized, data-driven bracket picks generated by our NCAA Bracket Picks product into tens of thousands of real-world March Madness pools, and reported the results back to us. Here’s how they’ve done:
- Since 2015, PoolGenius subscribers have reported winning bracket pools over 3.1x as often as expected, based on the size of their pools.
- Over that same time frame, on average, 51% of our subscribers have won a prize in at least one March Madness pool every year.
- Over the last six NCAA tournaments, the picks we recommended to subscribers have outperformed the public in 31 out of 36 tournament rounds.
The unique and sophisticated technology we’ve built to optimize bracket picks has even been featured in WIRED magazine.
Bracket Pool Expectations And Why Strategy Matters
Keep in mind that crushing expectations in March Madness pools doesn’t mean that our subscribers win a prize every year, or even in most years. When you’re competing against dozens, hundreds, or thousands of other entries, you’re not going to be expected to win, even with our help. So it’s important to have realistic expectations.
It’s no secret that fortune plays a big role in the outcome of bracket pools. In some years, as we all know, that random person who doesn’t know anything about college basketball just gets really lucky and wins the pool.
Still, the role of luck doesn’t invalidate the benefits of sound strategy. Applying an intelligent, mathematical approach to bracket picking will generate a big edge that eventually pays off, even if it doesn’t this year. You can’t predict when the pool wins will come, but having the patience and confidence to apply the advice outlined in this article over the long term will yield results.
As we like to say, the smarter your strategy, the less luck you need to win.
Tip 1: Use Trustworthy Bracket Predictions
Most NCAA bracket advice comes from humans. As it turns out, most humans aren’t good at either (a) predicting the future or (b) understanding math and probability, both of which are critical skills for optimizing bracket picks.
In humans’ defense, acquiring a deep understanding of college basketball isn’t easy. Over 5,000 games are played in a single college basketball season, so it’s pretty much impossible for an earthling’s brain to absorb and process everything that happens. Even just the 68 teams that make the NCAA tournament have played a few thousand games combined.
This abundance of games often leads to selection bias among college basketball analysts and fans. A well-known pundit may think Tennessee is overrated, but as it turns out, he just so happened to watch several games they lost, and missed a few of their most impressive wins.
The fact that humans often rely on subjective opinions to inform inaccurate predictions of the future has been demonstrated time and time again. For example, in the world of finance, it’s well documented that the majority of stock fund managers fail to beat the returns of the S&P 500.
In the world of sports, advanced computer models and betting market odds consistently outperform human prognosticators in terms of accuracy, so trusting these sources provides a more reliable path to bracket picking success.
(Keep in mind that the selection criteria for college basketball “experts” who appear on TV most likely include good looks and charisma, and not proven bracket picking prowess.)
Where To Find More Accurate Predictions
Fortunately, there are numerous reputable computer power ratings freely available for college basketball, such as those published by TeamRankings (a sister site of PoolGenius), Ken Pomeroy, Jeff Sagarin, Bart Torvik, ESPN, and others.
These systems only incorporate objective data on teams, they process the entire universe of season results in intelligent ways, and their resulting team ratings can often be used to predict future matchups and calculate round-by-round NCAA tournament advancement odds.
However, even the most accurate computer ratings systems have their blind spots. For instance, some systems give a lot of weight to a team’s pace of play, and end up giving outlier-level ratings to teams that play either extremely slowly or quickly. Other systems don’t discount huge blowouts of weak opponents, and can give a team too much credit for beating a cupcake opponent by 50. Consequently, considering multiple systems is wise.
(Furthermore, few, if any of the top ratings systems attempt to make adjustments for one-off scenarios like player injuries over the course of a season, since that process often requires more art than science. If you want to reach that level of sophistication, you’ll have to study each team’s game logs and make informed judgment calls yourself—or outsource that work to us.)
The betting market is also a valuable source of more accurate predictions.
Sportsbooks typically release odds for all First Round games, as well as futures odds for the NCAA tournament champion, starting Selection Sunday night. Those odds will often shift as the sharpest and most informed bettors put large amounts of money to work, so that the odds soon reflect the collective wisdom of many smart people.
You can find free odds calculators and conversion tools online to translate betting odds into implied probabilities, and use those probabilities to inform your bracket picks.
By taking the time to gather data-driven and market-based predictions, and ignoring most everything else you hear about teams, you will increase your chance to win your bracket pool. Having more reliable predictions is not the sole determinant of bracket pool success, but it’s a crucial part of maximizing your edge.
Tip 2: Understand Your Pool’s Scoring System
A common blunder among inexperienced bracket pickers is overlooking how the scoring system for a pool should influence your pick strategy.
Before you dive into filling out your bracket sheet, it’s imperative to understand what types of outcomes are more likely to determine your pool’s eventual winner, and conversely, the types of things that are not worth a lot of time worrying about.
Even though we’re now over two decades into the sports analytics revolution, it’s surprising how much bracket advice in the public domain completely ignores this concept, which simply boils down to understanding math.
In short, you can’t make a blanket statement like “Team X is a great Final Four pick in your 2024 bracket!” without any context about a particular pool’s scoring system.
Comparing Bracket Pool Scoring Systems
Consider the most common bracket pool system, 1-2-4-8-16-32. In this system, the points you earn for making a correct pick in your bracket double each round. You earn one point for each correct pick in the First Round (or 10 points, on some sites like ESPN), up to 32 (or 320) points for correctly picking the NCAA champion.
In this system, the scoring emphasis lies heavily on your late-round picks. As an example, imagine these two entries in a 1-2-4-8-16-32 pool:
- Entry A does a terrible job picking the First Round. It gets 50% of picks wrong, scoring only 16 of 32 possible points. However, it gets its NCAA champion pick right (which is unlikely but far from impossible).
- Entry B picks an absolutely perfect First Round, 32 of 32 possible points (which is nearly impossible to do). However, its NCAA champion pick loses in the Final Four.
Entry B accomplished something much more difficult to do. However, all else being equal, Entry A will finish with 16 more points than Entry B, a fairly dominating win.
In the classic 1-2-4-8-16-32 scoring system, you should spend the vast majority of your research time working to optimize your Final Four picks and beyond. Agonizing over First Round upset picks instead is a waste of time, because those picks are far less likely to be the difference maker.
On the other hand, in a flatter scoring system (such as 1-2-3-4-5-6 points per round), the goalposts change. The First Round games are much more important, because your NCAA champion pick is only worth six times the value of a First Round winner, not 32 times as much. In this type of scoring system, a relatively good First Round can win you the pool.
The Impact Of Upset Bonuses
If your bracket pool features upset bonuses as part of its scoring system, pick strategy takes yet another turn.
We’ve run millions of computer simulations of bracket pools with upset bonuses, and gathered pick performance data from thousands of upset pools that our subscribers have entered. One conclusion we’ve realized is that your typical bracket picker really doesn’t understand the math behind these pools.
In pools with upset bonuses, optimal strategy often demands making multiple audacious calls that appear outlandish to players who just don’t get it. A typical response to an optimized bracket for an upset pool is disbelief: “Seven double-digit seeds in the Sweet 16? Preposterous! It will never happen!”
Granted, it’s not likely that more than a few double-digit seeds make the Sweet 16. However, what eludes the average Joe or Jane is that bracket strategy is rarely about trying to predict exactly what will happen. When the dust settles, no entry in a pool is going to end up with a perfect bracket. You just need to figure out the smartest calculated risks to take, and hope that enough of them pan out.
When upset bonuses come into play, a well designed “spray and pray” type of approach in the early going can make a lot of sense. For example, if just three of those seven risky Sweet 16 gambles end up making it, the many bonus points you rack up for going 3-of-7 in those picks could be enough to propel you to eventual victory.
You’re not expecting all seven to hit; you’re simply exploiting the scoring system.
Tip 3: Consider How Your Opponents Will Pick
The goal in bracket pools isn’t to score a certain number of points, to get at least three Final Four picks right, or anything specific like that. There’s no threshold of pick performance that will guarantee you a pool win. As we pointed out earlier, even a perfect 32-for-32 First Round can easily be beaten.
To win a bracket pool, the only thing you need to do is score at least one more point than every other bracket in the pool. Success is determined on a relative basis, not an absolute basis.
And by definition, the only way to outscore an opponent’s bracket is to get at least one pick right that they get wrong. It’s not good enough just to be right; you need to be both different (at least to some degree) and right.
Two Different Pool Winning Scenarios
Picture a traditional 1-2-4-8-16-32 bracket pool with 500 entries. The Elite Eight round has just concluded, and three No. 1 seeds and one No. 3 seed have made the Final Four.
With a chalky Final Four like that, in a 500-entry pool, you’re probably going to need to get at least three Final Four picks right, plus get your NCAA champion pick correct, to have any shot at winning the pool. Lots of people pick No. 1 seeds to make the Final Four, so something like 50 or 75 brackets in that pool might have at least three Final Four picks right.
However, in a scenario like last year’s tournament, in which all of the No. 1 seeds were knocked out before the Elite Eight, simply having No. 4 Connecticut as your champion pick, with no other Final Four teams correct, may have been enough to win or at least finish in the money.
In some years, a “bad” looking performance like getting only one Final Four pick right can still have you in contention to win a sizable March Madness pool, especially when the top favorites go down early. It literally just happened!
Additionally, the majority of bracket pickers don’t realize that in any given year, the strategy that gives you the best chance to win a March Madness pool depends on which teams the rest of the pool favors. Again, you have to be both different and right in order to win.
So in 2024, should you pack your Final Four with top seeds, or make a big bet on a No. 3 or No. 4 seed as tournament champion?
Trick question. It will all depend on how you expect the opponents in your pool to pick their brackets, and the level of contrarianism that makes the most sense for your pool.
A Tale Of Two NCAA Champion Picks
Let’s say you’re evaluating your NCAA champion pick, and choosing between two teams.
- Team A is one of the top favorites to win it all, did very well in last year’s tournament, and is likely to be a very popular champion pick in your pool.
- Team B has a smaller (but still reasonable) shot to win the tournament, but also lost early last year, which everybody remembers. For both reasons, it is likely to be a much less popular champion pick.
(In 2024, Connecticut may end up being like a Team A, and a team like Arizona more like a Team B.)
In this scenario, you may be better off picking Team B as your champion, depending on other characteristics of your pool. In the long run, your expected winnings from playing in bracket pools often go up by making some relatively unpopular key picks, especially when those picks are only slightly less likely to be correct than picks the public favors.
Since they are riskier, you will get these picks right less often than your opponents get theirs right. But in years when things do break your way, you’ll have a much better shot to get the top score in your pool.
Expected Value And Game Theory
This general concept is often referred to as maximizing Expected Value (EV) or return on investment (ROI). If you’re entering bracket pools with the goal of winning money, it’s critical to understand.
Because most bracket pools only award prizes to a very small percentage of top finishers, they are boom-or-bust propositions. You should expect to lose far more often than you win, but the occasional win more than makes up for many years of entry fees.
In addition, many bracket pool players interpret a decent finish in a bracket pool as a positive outcome, when that may not be the case. Winning a pool once a decade, and finishing terribly in the other nine years, is a far better outcome than finishing in the top 25% of the standings every year but never winning.
By factoring expected pick popularity into your decision making, you can strategically craft brackets that give you very attractive EV over the long term. The hard part is that game theory-based decision making—i.e. exploiting the best opportunities to zig when the masses zag—is often psychologically difficult.
It requires trusting the process year after year, and sometimes making picks that your friends ridicule. And if your contrarian gambits don’t work out, your friends laugh at you even more after you finish in the middle of the pack (or worse) that year.
Having the courage to play the long game is what separates the Pros from the Joes in March Madness pools. The only two outcomes that matter are “win a prize” and “don’t win a prize,” and nothing in between matters.
Where To Find Pick Popularity Data
Bracket contest hosting sites like ESPN and Yahoo! publish aggregated, round-by-round pick popularity data that you can use to get a sense of which teams are the most popular picks. Just remember that those are national averages, which may or may not reflect the tendencies of opponents in your specific pool.
If your pool includes a bunch of Purdue grads, for example, you’ll probably want to bump up Purdue’s expected pick popularity numbers for your pool, and lower the expected pick popularity of some other top contenders as a result.
The hardest part about factoring pick popularity into bracket strategy is determining just how contrarian your picks need to be to give you the best chance to win. For instance, does one unpopular Final Four pick provide the ideal amount of pick differentiation in your 250-entry bracket pool? Or should you make two? Or maybe take just a bit more risk by adding one more Elite Eight upset?
We wish we had a quick and simple answer, but we don’t. The total amount of calculated risk you should take with your picks, and how you should distribute that risk across a given year’s bracket, is an incredibly complicated optimization problem.
If you’re filling out your own bracket, simply understanding the need to be at least somewhat contrarian definitely helps. Howwever, we had to build a lot of technology to help us identify the best answers, because they depend on multiple factors—including this next one.
Tip 4: Let Pool Size Guide Your Overall Risk
Like your pool’s scoring system, the size of your bracket pool is a critical element of bracket strategy. The reason why boils down to luck.
In smaller bracket pools, it’s highly unlikely that someone is going to turn in an outlier-level performance, like getting three Final Four picks right in a year when several top favorites lose early, or correctly predicting the No. 5 seed to win the East and the No. 6 seed to win the West.
However, probability is a numbers game. In very large bracket pools, there’s a much more realistic chance that one or more entrants (for reasons logical or not) end up achieving that sort of a fantastic result. And you still need to beat those people to win.
In general, the greater the number of entries in you bracket pool, the more calculated risks you’ll need to take to maximize your chance to win a prize.
Strategy For Very Large Pools
Let’s begin with a harsh reality. If you only enter one bracket in a 500-entry pool each year, you’re not expected to win that pool in your lifetime. In addition, your baseline odds to win a huge prize in a big public bracket contest may be something like 1-in-50,000 or worse, which is not even realistic.
Against such long odds, playing it safe in the standard 1-2-4-16-32 scoring system is the kiss of death. However, making contrarian picks (and potentially some very contrarian ones) in the pivotal later rounds give you the best shot of turning a hopeless situation into a more realistic chance to cash in a big pool.
Examples of smart pick strategy for large pools might include making a somewhat unpopular but still reasonable championship pick, like No. 4 Connecticut last year. You could also pair a more likely champion with a deep tourney run by a relatively strong team outside the top seed lines, like No. 8 North Carolina two years ago.
You’re effectively making two bets with this strategy: that the tournament won’t play out as expected, and that you’ll predict at least one of the biggest surprises.
The problem with picking the safest and most popular teams in a bigger pool is that even if you’re lucky enough to be right, you’ll still find yourself neck-and-neck with many opponents who made the same or similar choices. You may end up with a solid finish, but it’s a largely an illusion, because you didn’t have a high chance to actually win.
Keep in mind that getting a 97 on a math test in grade school is reason to celebrate, but finishing in the 97th percentile of a 1,000-person pool lands you in 31st place. That outcome will likely earn the same prize (nothing) as the worst score in the pool.
In contrast, taking a calculated risk to be the only entry in the pool (or one of only a few entries) to have a certain NCAA champion pick, or specific combination of Final Four teams, gives you the differentiation necessary to achieve an outlier-level performance.
It’s a high-risk, high-reward strategy that often results in a bottom-half finish in the final standings. And in the biggest pools, it still probably won’t pay off in your lifetime. But this approach gives you the best chance of claiming a potentially life-changing victory.
More Brackets = More Shots At The Target
It’s worth noting that if you’re serious about winning a big pool, the simplest way to increase your odds of experiencing a win is to enter more brackets. Every shot matters, and with multiple entries you can adopt a portfolio strategy that makes different key bets in each bracket, thus diversifying your risk.
Playing multiple brackets is often the only way to give yourself a realistic chance of winning a huge pool in your lifetime, as long as you have the means. We have plenty of subscribers that play 25-50 or more brackets each year, across one or multiple pools.
Creating an optimal multi-bracket portfolio for a particular pool involves a whole new set of tricky math, but a simplified approach for the traditional scoring system would be to play a collection of different undervalued and unpopular NCAA champion picks.
Stay Conservative In Smaller Pools
As you may have guessed, smaller bracket pools call for more conservative strategy. Unlike in a 1,000-entry pool, beating 97% or 98% of your opponents in a 50-entry pool and taking second or third place as a result is typically good enough to win a prize.
In fact, under the standard 1-2-4-8-16-32 scoring system, you can usually get an edge in smaller March Madness pools simply by assuming that most of your opponents will take too much risk, and playing it safe as a result. Your average bracket picker loves to pick upsets, and picking too many upsets is a classic blunder in small pools.
It’s still wise to identify undervalued teams, of course. For instance, sometimes the public doesn’t even realize that a lower-seeded team actually has the best chance to make a particular round, and you can pick against the masses with the odds in your favor. Those types of contrarian opportunities are often key plays small pools.
However, you can often maximize your odds to win a small pool by picking mostly chalk (the favorites) throughout most of the bracket, coupled with a well reasoned strategy for your final three picks (i.e. the two finalists and NCAA champion).
Then, you hopefully sit back and watch your competitors shoot themselves in the foot by picking some random No. 6 seed to upset one of the tournament favorites, or an unlikely sleeper pick to win it all.
Tip 5: Ignore Bracket-Picking “Golden Rules”
This final bracket strategy tip is a corollary to Tip No. 1 (Use Trustworthy Bracket Predictions), but warrants additional focus.
Even with free access to smart and objective information, bracket pickers are often duped into making suboptimal picks by seductive sounding statistics or historical trends. There’s so much data out there that it’s difficult to separate wise advice from dangerous advice.
Here’s a simple guideline. When you see an analyst on TV prefacing their bracket advice with the classic line, “Listen to this incredible stat I came across yesterday,” you’ll almost certainly do well to reach for a pair of earplugs.
We dub these annual sound bites of dubious bracket wisdom the “Not So Golden Rules” of bracket picking, and they come in various forms. Though the examples below are fictional, here are some examples:
- The cherry-picked random stat: “Over the last ten years, no NCAA tournament champion has ever allowed an opponent to score more than 90 points during the regular season!”
- The seed-based historical trend: “A No. 12 seed almost always upsets a No. 5 seed, so you have to pick at least one 12-over-5 upset in your bracket!”
- The narrative-driven hot take: “This team has the veteran leadership, poise, and killer instinct to win a championship. They’re built for the tournament!”
- The oversimplified angle: “Great guard play wins championships, and this team boasts the most dynamic backcourt in all the land!”
These Not So Golden Rules come with a host of problems. Many are simply not true. Others are too vague to quantify and research (how do you define “guard play” exactly?), or at the very least, not enough supporting data exists to confidently assert their predictiveness.
Most of them also fail to consider the dynamics of a particular year’s NCAA tournament, and make the classic mistake of assuming that past performance is some sort of guarantee of future results.
Hunt long enough for a tantalizing trend, and you’ll likely uncover one—but it’s often just the whims of randomness at work.
Every NCAA Tournament Is Different
In some years, the No. 1 seeds are significantly better than all the other teams in the tournament, and one or two of them might also be undervalued by the public. In 2019, for example, the public was underrating the odds for No. 1 Gonzaga and No. 1 Virginia, both to reach the Final Four and to win the title.
In years like those, picking all four No. 1 seeds in your Final Four might be the best play, especially in smaller pools. That strategy could offer the best of both worlds—the highest number of expected points from the Final Four round, while also not being the most popular combination of Final Four picks. (This approach worked like a charm for us in 2008.)
In other years, one or two No. 1 seeds may be no better than the best No. 2 seeds, or a particular No. 3 seed may have huge upside after suffering bad luck in a few close games during the regular season. In these situations, having a No. 1 seed lose early in your bracket could be a very smart risk to take.
Similarly, the No. 12 seeds are occasionally very strong, and picking a 12-over-5 upset makes sense. (Sometimes a No. 12 seed is actually favored to win its First Round game in the betting market.) In other years, picking all the No. 5 seeds to win is the smartest play. Based on cumulative probability, it’s almost never a shock if only three of the No. 5 seeds end up winning—but incorrectly guessing which one loses can really hurt you.
To maximize your edge in bracket pools, you need to consider these types of tournament-specific dynamics. That’s why universal rules for picking brackets are extremely dangerous. In addition, factors such as your pool’s size, its scoring system, and the teams that other entries are favoring exert a big influence on optimal pick strategy.
So if someone offers you simple, unconditional advice for picking your 2024 bracket, run for the hills.
Winning Bracket Picks Are The Most Fun
March Madness pools are a lot of fun to play, and millions of people look forward to filling out their bracket sheets each March. Nothing feels better than beating your friends and loved ones in a bracket contest and earning a full year’s worth of bragging rights.
At the same time, there is a science behind winning more bracket pools, as we’ve outlined above. The challenge is that optimal bracket strategy requires a level of information, analytical skill, and time that most players don’t have.
That’s why we developed our NCAA Bracket Picks product. Using all of the data and strategy concepts covered in this article, it provides optimized brackets and a comprehensive suite of data-focused pick research tools, including:
- Ready-to-play brackets customized for your pool
- 5 optimized brackets for playing multiple entries
- Round-by-round survival odds for all 68 teams
- Predictions and stats for any possible matchup
- Pick popularity data and value picks by round
- Bracket Builder feature to pick your own bracket
- Comprehensive 2024 bracket strategy writeup
- Tournament power ratings and team notes
The PoolGenius Process
Bracket pick optimization is a big part of our business, and we’ve made extensive investments in research, analytics, and technology. Starting several weeks before Selection Sunday, we spend 50+ hours poring over season data to uncover insights like injury impacts and lineup changes that even the most sophisticated computer ratings don’t consider.
We complement this hands-on research with a full review of top power ratings systems and tournament betting odds from the sharpest, market-making sportbooks. We also aggregate national bracket pick popularity data from not one, but all of the leading bracket pool hosting sites.
Finally, after all this data is collected and analyzed, we spin up a small army of Amazon servers to run millions of tournament and bracket pool simulations, crunching the numbers nonstop until our proprietary algorithms have identified the brackets that have the best chance to win various types of pools.
Starting the day after Selection Sunday, our subscribers have the world’s most thoroughly researched brackets at their fingertips. Even though winning a pool in 2024 will still require luck and is far from guaranteed, they have the confidence that they’ve stacked the odds in their favor as best as they can.
Thanks for reading, and best of luck in your 2024 March Madness pools! If you found this post enlightening, we encourage you to check out the product:
NCAA Bracket Picks from PoolGenius »
(We also have tools for NCAA survivor pools and Calcutta auctions.)
