keep in mind that a winning ticket with all favorites will be split tens of thousands of ways. If you throw in a few underdogs your EV should go way up. As long as you don't go overboard. The general principle is this: If you are considering picking an underdog that has about an x percent of winning you should also estimate what percentage of fans will also choose them. Call that percentage y. Confine your underdog picks to those that have the largest value of x/y. In other words better to throw in a 25% shot picked by 5% than a 30% shot picked by 15%.

On the other hand you should NOT take this so far that your ticket is unlikely to be split at all. That actually decreases your EV. Not to mention that 100 million or so ain't bad.

its harder to pick the powerball numbers probably

I wonder what one would have to value their time at to make reading (and learning from) this post +EV .

edit: not to say I didn't find the concept interesting

whats more interesting to me is if someone has it perfect up to the elite 8, would they be able to sell pieces?

thanks D

1 in 9.2 quintillion is something like 50 billion times tougher than the powerball jackpot

If you make it to the championship game, how much do you let him buy out for before tip-off?

Have you ever been in a public place and moved to a spot where someone else was standing and another person standing in that area isn't paying attention and continues a conversation they were having with the person that left without realizing they're not there any more?

That's what I felt like when I read the OP.

The chance of winning is essentially 0. It's not worth the time to fill out the form. Lame marketing gimic that might work a lot better than it should.

Why is this in this forum?

All favorites is about a billion to one.

way to think inside the box, dave.

what the hell is going on here

If you were still alive after 24 games (elite 8), your equity in the $500million NPV prize would be ~$15,000. You may commence hedging.

is there data on what the average favorite price is? or is billion to one a guess?

9 quadrillion is obv fish math

Could someone give a rundown of what this is - I assume like a sportsbetting freeroll?

Promise to spread about 50 million around and you might get it down to about one in ten. Is that better?

24 games doesn't even get you through the playin games and round of 64. To have a perfect bracket going into the elite 8 you will have to be 60 for 60 up to that point.

A sixty five game parlay at about 72% each game is in the ballpark.

Probably not the best idea to play chicken with Warren Buffet, to whom $1b is roughly a buy-in. Let him set the price and then snap him off.

Some sort of all you can eat buffet discussion and EV calculations.

1. Create a computer program that comes up with every possible combination based on the teams.
2. Find out his e-mail address
3. Email him the file or files containing every possible bracket
(You now have e-mail proof that you submitted a winning bracket to him)
4. When he refuses to pay, sue him for 1 billion plus damages
5. Settle out of court for 1 million

(If someone actually uses this idea please paypal me at least 50k, thanks)

Only accepting 10m total entries.

Or read the rules, max brackets is set at 10 million.

Oops, duh. That $15k equity was for sweet 16 (48 games ( 32 +16 =48). Elite 8 would be 56 games, equity maybe $3,900,000.