Bracket Strategy: To Win Your 2024 NCAA Pool, Don't Try To Make Perfect Picks

A lot of people strive for perfection with their NCAA bracket picks. Every March, some unexpected teams make runs in the NCAA tournament, and bracket pool players often hope to achieve fame and fortune by predicting all those improbable outcomes.

How has that strategy worked in practice? Over the years, multiple online bracket contests have offered millions of dollars in prize money for picking a perfect bracket. Yet so far, not one person has retired and bought a private island as a result of correctly predicting every unlikely event in an NCAA Tournament.

The NCAA also has tracked “perfect brackets” for years. Across tens of millions of March Madness brackets submitted each year, the farthest an undefeated bracket has ever made it was 49 wins in 2019 (perfect through two rounds).

That bracket, we should note, swiftly proceeded to crash and burn. It got only six more picks right over the final 14 games, and didn't pick either team that made the NCAA tournament championship game.

In the end, in the typical 1-2-4-8-16-32 scoring system, what looked like a historically amazing bracket through two rounds probably wouldn’t even have ended up winning a prize in a relatively small pool among a group of friends.

The Picks That Actually Win Bracket Pools

At PoolGenius, we’ve studied bracket contests for more than 20 years. We’ve built technology to simulate the NCAA tournament millions of times, and we’ve tested the performance of billions of different combinations of bracket picks in hypothetical pools.

All this research has led to a precise understanding of what it takes to win bracket pools. And the strategy that wins March Madness pools most often does not match the perception of how the majority of people think they should pick a bracket.

The reality is that you don't need to correctly forecast each year's biggest Cinderella runs to win a pool—even a bigger pool. In some years, just picking the national champion correctly, and maybe another Final Four team or two, is enough to do it.

In a year with a highly unexpected dark horse NCAA champion, you may not even need to pick the champion right.

Examples Of Pool Winning Brackets Before 2024

Last year's NCAA Tournament was noteworthy for the number of top seeds that fell early:

• None of the No. 1 seeds reached the Elite Eight, the first time that had ever happened.
• The Final Four consisted of a No. 4 seed, two No. 5 seeds, and No. 9 seed.
• That represented the largest seed number total for a Final Four since 2011, when No. 11 VCU and No. 8 Butler played in the Final Four.

Against that backdrop, what did winning bracket contest entries look like in a reasonably large pool (300+ entries) that one of our PoolGenius team members entered?

• All of the top 10 finishers correctly picked No. 4 Connecticut to win the title.

• None of the winning entries had San Diego State or Miami in the Final Four.
• Only two entries had Florida Atlantic making a deep run.

These entries placed at the top of the pool standings mostly by getting their national championship pick right, in a year when a relatively unpopular team won it all.

(Despite being a No. 4 seed, the Huskies were rated highly and had around the 6th-highest to 8th-highest odds to win the tournament, depending on what source you used.)

The year before, in the same pool:

• All of the top ten finishers had No. 1 Kansas winning the title.
• None of the top finishers had No. 8 North Carolina, who went on a great run to the title game, even getting past the Sweet Sixteen.
• All of them had either No. 2 Villanova or No. 2 Duke reaching the Final Four, but no bracket had both of those teams making it.

Even in a year like 2022, with a No. 1 seed winning the title and two No. 2 seeds in the Final Four, the winning entries in a pool of over 300 entries all picked the NCAA champion and just one other highly seeded Final Four pick correctly.

Completely whiffing on UNC's Cinderella run didn't matter in the end.

We could go on and on, back through March Madness history. Under the most common 1-2-4-8-16-32 scoring system, in most years you usually had to have your NCAA champion pick right to win a pool of that size. But you didn’t have to predict the unexpected runs made by teams like No. 11 UCLA in 2021, No. 11 Loyola-Chicago in 2018, or No. 7 South Carolina in 2017.

Generally, you had to combine a correct champion pick with solid (but not necessarily exceptional) results in the opening rounds, while getting some key picks right in the Sweet 16 and Elite 8. You certainly didn't need to be anywhere close to perfect.

The Risks Of Making Too Many Upset Picks

In chasing a perfect bracket, many bracket pool players attempt to mold their picks to reflect past tournament history. In doing so, they end up taking too much risk and lowering their chance to win their pool.

The problem is that even though upsets always happen in the NCAA tournament, predicting the specific upsets that do happen is very difficult. In addition, the upside of getting an upset pick right often pales in comparison to the downside of getting it wrong.

For instance, consider the famous Loyola-Chicago run in 2018. In our bracket strategy article for subscribers that year, we noted that Loyola was a compelling value pick to upset Miami in the First Round. Still, no reputable projection source, including betting odds or objective computer ratings, favored Loyola to make any sort of a deep run.

This year, if you make a bracket bet on a particular double-digit seed to become 2024's version of Loyola-Chicago, you're taking a very big gamble. If you're right, it will help you, but that decision alone probably isn't going to be enough to win your pool. If you get it wrong (which is far more likely), you can torpedo your odds to win a prize.

Brackets rife with upset picks can score bragging rights for hitting on a few bold calls, but they usually just bleed points in other areas of the bracket to more conservative pick strategies that steadily outpace them in the standings as the rounds go on. In the worst case, one the following two outcomes happens:

• You have the good fortune of getting your NCAA champion pick right, but your earlier rounds were so upset-heavy that you still lose out to entries with the same champion pick, but a more conservative bracket.
• Your decision to have a low seed upset a top seed early in the tournament causes you to miss a lot of potential points, and effectively puts you out of contention, especially in non-upset heavy years.

The Professors Agree

Don't just take our word for it. Back in 2009, the Journal of Applied Social Psychology published a research paper about NCAA tournament predictions.

The professors who authored it came to a similar conclusion after analyzing entries in ESPN's popular Tournament Challenge bracket contest:

“Furthermore, it appears that individuals would have been better served, on average, by using a more conservative strategy. The average performance of participants in the Tournament Challenge in 2004 was 75.2% correct (72.9% in 2005). A strategy of always picking the [better] seed would have resulted in 87.5% correct in 2004 (75.0% in 2005). Thus, on average, individuals predicted too many upsets and would have done better by always picking the [better] seeds.”

Of course, picking all the better seeds to win also isn't typically the best bracket strategy. But the evidence is clear that most bracket pickers tend to err on the side of picking too many upsets, and that approach works against them.

Achieving Optimal Bracket Pick Differentiation

In the traditional 1-2-4-8-16-32 scoring system, the points for making a correct bracket pick double each round. In this system, later-round picks (and especially your national champion pick) carry extreme importance. Getting your champion pick right is worth the same as getting all 32 First Round games right, which is a lot harder to do.

Here are some stats on NCAA champion picks in bracket pools over the last six tournaments:

• The most popular champion pick every year was a No. 1 seed.
• On average, 25% of brackets picked the most popular team to win it all.
• On average, 10% of brackets ended up correctly picking the champion.

(For reference, the last six NCAA champions included five No. 1 seeds and No. 4 Connecticut last year.)

Balancing Risk And Reward: 500-Entry Pool Example

Now, let's dive into some bracket strategy. Imagine that as your finalist picks in a bracket, you choose two of the top five or six most likely champions, each of which is being picked by around 10% of brackets nationwide to reach the title game.

Some bracket pool pundits would immediately advise against this approach, based on the argument that picking two relatively popular tournament favorites as your finalists is too chalky. "Everyone else will be doing that," they say. But are they right?

The math says no. You would expect only about 1 out of every 100 entries in your pool (10% multiplied by 10%) to have your exact same combination of finalist picks. Even in a pool as large as 500 entries, with a huge prize likely available to win, only four or five other entries may have the exact same title game matchup as you do.

If you get both of those picks right, you're going to be in a fantastic position to win that pool. Even if you only get one of them right, in years when the other finalist is unexpected—e.g. when No. 8 North Carolina made a run to the championship game and no one picked them to do so—you'll still be in a solid spot.

(Effectively, you'll be competing in a mini-pool with around 10% of the total entries in the pool, and only some of those entries will have your same champion pick.)

As this example demonstrates, it's possible to achieve sufficient pick differentiation from the public without resorting to picking a bunch of improbable upsets. You need to be strategic about it, since not all high seeds are created equally, and some of them can be significantly overrated.

At the same time, you can't just dismiss a Final Four made up of all No. 1 or No. 2 seeds is a bad strategy. Often, far fewer people will have picked your exact same combination of highly seeded teams than you may assume.

Strategy For Smaller & Larger Bracket Pools

The smaller your bracket pool, the more strongly this logic applies. If your pool only has 15 or 20 total entries, for instance, you can absolutely consider picking almost all the favorites in the early rounds, and then layer on a thoughtfully chosen (but still conservative) Final Four and beyond.

That strategy can provide the level of differentiation you need to maximize your odds to win. In the meantime, a chunk of your opponents will hopefully commit the cardinal sin of small pools, and shoot themselves in the foot by crafting a bracket that's far too risky for a small contest.

Huge pools, on the other hand (e.g. a thousand entries or more), do require a strategy that emphasizes more calculated risks on long shot bets. In these pools, the odds go way up that one or a few entries get extremely lucky. For instance, a few lucky dogs may correctly predict the NCAA champion plus a deep run by a dark horse pick.

You still need to beat these lucky entries to win, and the only way to do so is to take some significant risks of your own. Examples may include picking an extremely unpopular NCAA champion that has very small but not unrealistic chance to win (e.g. the strongest No. 5 or No. 6 seed), or combining a solid yet second-tier champion pick (like No. 4 Connecticut last year) with a few other significant contrarian bets.

Get The Best Bracket In 2024

The bracket advice we share in this article assumes the popular 1-2-4-8-16-32 scoring system for some basic pool size ranges. But many permutations of bracket pool sizes, scoring systems, and prize structures exist, and those factors all influence pick strategy.

If you're in a pool with upset bonuses, for example, your decision making process should change considerably—especially in 2024 when several teams in the No. 10 and No. 11 seed range may actually be favored to win in the First Round.

In addition, every NCAA tournament is unique, from each team's odds to win the championship to the teams the general public likes the most.

In some years, all the No. 1 seeds are overvalued by the public (to some degree, at least), but that may not be the case in 2024. In other years, a particular No. 3 or No. 4 seed may be criminally underseeded due to some bad luck in close games during the regular season, and makes for fantastic calculated gamble.

Crafting a bracket strategy that takes into account these kinds of year-specific dynamics is critical for maximizing your edge in a pool. The problem is, most bracket pool players don't have the data, math chops, or time to figure it out on their own.

Technology To The Rescue

That's why we built the PoolGenius NCAA Bracket Picks product, the world's first bracket optimizer.

You tell it a few details about your bracket contest, and in seconds, it generates customized picks that give you the best chance to win. It's also packed with a comprehensive collection of pick research tools and data:

• Ready-to-play brackets customized for your pool
• Up to 5 optimized brackets for playing multiple entries
• Round-by-round survival odds for all 68 teams
• Predictions and stats for any possible matchup
• Data Grid with pick popularity and value picks by round
• Bracket Builder feature to pick your own bracket
• Comprehensive 2024 bracket strategy writeup
• Tournament power ratings and team notes

More importantly, it works, and we can prove it. Since 2015, PoolGenius subscribers have reported winning bracket pools over three times as often as expected, across tens of thousands of real-world pools. Every year, an average of 51% of our subscribers reports winning a bracket pool prize.

(The sophistication of our bracket pick optimization technology even led to a feature article in WIRED magazine.)

Good luck in your 2024 March Madness pools, and if you want to maximize your edge, we invite you to check it out!

NCAA Bracket Picks from PoolGenius »

(We also have premium tools for NCAA Survivor pools and Calcutta auctions.)