Its not like this is an angle, the CEO was on TV saying that this is the reason why they are doing the contest.

Not if WB also has a time machine, which seems more likely, as he is the guy putting up $1bn ..... He might already know you won't win ..... (He perhaps sent "Arnold" back to visit you or any other "winner" who makes it to the Final game ..... just before you are ready to post your entry.)

That makes sense, that list would have value for fantasy sports marketing.

hahaha oops, sorry... probably shouldn't have used the word "angle" on a forum full of poker people. I didn't mean it in the sense of an angle shot, as if they Quicken was trying to get away with something. I come from a news/media background, where the word "angle" is more or less synonymous with "the main point."

That said, interesting that the CEO was so forthright about it. I guess most of the 10 million people who take part will figure the tiny, tiny chance they have of winning is worth the pile of junk mail they will almost certainly receive.

What a brilliant way to get 10 million emails and addresses. Even after paying off the top 20 best brackets they are getting a pretty amazing discount on this list.

just take the inverse of that ldo

This is Warren Buffets way of laughing at poor people. Apparently he has investments in March madness ratings. If you want to want to piss him off don't make a bracket or watch the games.

WB is gonna troll us with Heinz spam emails after we all lose

A similar theory was put forward by Keynes. Look up the Keynesian Beauty Contest.

bob voulgariz prolly ships it.

At 47 years old I'd be taking the lump sum for sure. There are other good reasons to take the lump sum. You can diversify over a wide range of countries, currencies, and investment classes.

If you take the payments, you are putting all of your eggs in a single basket that can be dropped in several ways. There is the financial solvency of the company making the annuity payments to worry about. There is inflation risk. You still have to pay taxes on the payments, and there is the possibility of the top bracket rate being raised. It is now fairly low from a historical standpoint.

There is no way buffet is going to do this if someone is perfect up to the championship game. Dudes worth 53 billion. That's like having a 53k poker bankroll and finishing a session down 1k. Big deal.

You'd have to do something like make an agreement with somone where a few million isn't anything to them and they give it to you right now and if your elite 8 ends up making it through then they get the billion.

Lump sum is obviously the way to go. But I don't think diversifying is a reason for that. I mean .... You are done. It's over. You have a billion dollars.

No, you only get 500M with the lump sum, or 25M spread over 40 years. Both are before taxes.

No it's like having a $53k net worth and losing $1k, big difference.

Still don't think your going to have to worry about making a return on 300 mil. Sure, some of your descendants 32 generations into the future may
Be pissed that you didn't diversify when the money runs out in the year 2455.

Buffett has what? 5 more years to live maybe?

My point is, is there is no way he is going to buy anyone out, over a measly few hundred million. The guy has always been frugal but doing that would make him look like a cheap ass and like he needs the money.

Anyone making it to the elite 8 final 4 or championship game unscathed is going to have to make a deal with a 3rd party if they want to have a guaranteed payout

My poker bankroll is > my net worth, so I'm not sure I see the difference.

He's insured something like this before - just over a decade ago with Pepsi:

http://money.cnn.com/2003/04/09/news..._billion_game/

No.

If they declare bankruptcy 5 years later, then they won't have to pay me anymore?

I don't want to think about the math Dave.

I read somewhere else the odds are about 1 in 128 billion in getting them all correct - not sure if that figured each a 50/50 or what.

I realize it is +EV if the entry fee is zero, except for all the time and effort needed to think about it.

If they do this again, maybe 2+2 could put together a 'syndicate' where a few thousand members each agree to a 'chop' in the syndicate and agree to enter the teams given to them by the syndicate leader. I nominate you David Sklansky for next years effort. The syndicate leader could have some sort of program giving unique, highest probability options to all syndicate members after the team draw and position/rankings...

View: David S. is not as smart as he thinks

http://www.slate.com/articles/sports...n_buffett.html

Yahoo and Quicken note in the fine print of their rules page: “odds of winning the Grand Prize are 1:9,223,372,036,854,775,808.” That’s 1 in 9 quintillion and change.

Jeff Bergen, a math professor at DePaul University, derived a more realistic calculation that takes basketball knowledge into account. If you know the sport pretty well, he concludes, your chances of picking perfectly are more like 1 in 128 billion.

Still not so hot. As Bergen explained, that would mean you’d need to fill out about 90 billion brackets before you even had a 50-50 chance to win.

Buffett and Quicken have capped the number of entries at 15 million, so the odds that there’s a winner stay very, very small. If you use Bergen’s calculation, generously assuming the contest fills up with 15 million basketball experts, then Buffett and Quicken would have to pay the billion only 0.012 percent of the time. That means there’s about a 1 in 8,500 chance that anyone wins, period.

1 in 750k to win 100k though