We recently held a Calcutta auction of the NCAA basketball teams and I'm curious as to how our bets stack up with Vegas odds.

I have a limited background in math and would love it if someone can give me a formula to figure out the relative value.

For instance, Villanova sold for $1600 and if they win it all, will return $11,130. This is the equivalent of getting 5.956 to 1 ($11,130 less the cost of $1600 makes a profit of $9530).

Vegas shows a line of 8 to 1 so it looks like 5.956 is a bad bet. However, we pay more than one place and that needs to be taken into consideration.

If our team wins 1 game we collect $50.
Win 2 games, collect another $100 ($150 total)
Win 3 games, collect another $300 ($450 total)
Win 4 games, collect another $1424 ($1874 total)
Win 5 games, collect another $2848 ($4722 total)
Win 6 games, collect another $6408 ($11,130 total)

I'm not so concerned with the $50, $100, and $300 bumps, but collecting $4722 for losing in the championship game is a nice consolation prize we would not get if making a "win it all" bet in Vegas.

Is there an easy formula I can use to determine how good (or bad) a bet we made for our various teams?

Another instance, Iowa State sold for $475 and would return the same $11,130 for 1st place. This amounts to a profit of $10,655 or 22.43 to 1.

Vegas shows them at 55 to 1, so I assume this is a much better wager than buying them in our auction, even with the consolation payoffs.

How about it? Can anyone give me a formula that I can plug in our numbers to determine the value of our purchases?

Thanks in advance.

These are the results of the auction for those who are curious:

1-Villanova $1600
1-Kansas $2000
1-UNC $2300
1-Gonzaga $1625

2-Arizona $1700
2-Kentucky $1350
2-Louisville $1650
2-Duke $1700

3-Baylor $550
3-Oregon $675
3-UCLA $1000
3-Florida State $750

4-W. Virginia $725
4-Butler $400
4-Purdue $550
4-Florida $450

5-Virginia $400
5-Iowa State $475
5-Minnesota $400
6-Notre Dame $525

There's not a simple formula. You can eyeball it under the assumption that these teams are going to be in the vicinity of the same chance to lose the championship game as to win it (lower seeds more likely to lose, higher seeds more likely to win) and since those are the biggest payouts, you can see if anything looks way out of whack. Plus you have to see how juiced the futures you're comparing to are.

538 has a chart that shows what you need, although use their numbers at your own risk- but if you're good there and good vs vegas, you're probably good, and if your team is total **** in comparison to both, it's probably ****.