Final Four Update and Pick Form

221 to start and 25 remain.  The pick form and leaderboard are below.  Thanks to things going pretty chalky since the Sweet 16, everyone remaining has a pick for Saturday at least.  For those who have only one team left, I have already filled in their picks on the leaderboard.  The rest of us lucky souls will get to fill out the final pick form.  Good luck everyone!

Leaderboard
Final Four Pick Form

Sunday Picks are Live

17 Michigan St.
12 Louisville
8 Duke
2 Gonzaga

We're gonna thin this shit out today, aren't we?

Saturday Picks & Sunday Pick Form

Here are your Saturday picks.  Will anyone still have Arizona alive if they win today?!

Also, another leaderboard link and Sunday Pick Form also below.  Games are early tomorrow, so deadline is 2:20 PM EDT.  Plan accordingly...

Leaderboard
Sunday Pick Form

Saturday Elite 8 Pick

Wisconsin	24	42.9%
Arizona	14	25%
Kentucky	17	30.4%
Notre Dame	1	1.8%

Saturday Pick Form

For those who have advanced...

Saturday Elite 8 Pick

Friday Picks Up

Friday picks are up, and it looks like a handful of you are still getting a little cute with your picks.  Leaderboard and summary are below...

Leaderboard

Friday Sweet 16 Pick

Gonzaga	27	37%
UCLA	2	2.7%
Louisville	13	17.8%
North Carolina St.	5	6.8%
Duke	6	8.2%
Utah	0	0%
Oklahoma	6	8.2%
Michigan St.	14	19.2%

Sweet 16 Day 1 Recap

We're starting to thin out the pack a bit, tonight's games seem like they could be the toughest thus far. The choices are starting to get harder every day. Last night we mostly lost people who thought the second best team from the Missouri Valley Conference could beat the second best team from the ACC. That turned out to be....unwise.

Last night was also the final time Matt Stainbrook played a college basketball team since those asshats from Arizona had to send him and his Xavier team back to Cincinnati. One of my biggest regrets in life is that I didn't spend more time watching Xavier basketball and appreciating Stainbrook. The Stain Train has left the station for the last time folks, he was beautiful:

But, we can't spend our lives looking back. If you're still alive today you face all sorts of tough choices. Do you take Gonzaga and just expect them to beat UCLA? If you do that, are you burning a Gonzaga team that could definitely beat Duke or Utah next? Do you really want to burn any team from the South right now considering how big of favorite the South winner will be versus the winner of the East in the Final Four? So, do you take a team from the East? But, which team from the East? Louisville has already lost to NC State. NC State kind of blows, but they get those 9 beautiful tie breaker points. Michigan State lost to Texas Southern this season...but, Izzo. Oklahoma is from the Big 12...THE BIG 12! The Big 12 has had about as much success in this post-season as Tim Meadows has had post Saturday Night Live.

Yes, the real complexity has now begun. Finding that delicate balance between picking winners and saving the right teams to use later. Personally, I think the Sweet 16 is the most complicated round of the entire tournament for this pool. You're down to a point where there are few enough teams left that you really have to pay close attention to the path you want to take for the rest of the tournament. But, there's still enough games left that there's a lot of games left that could alter your strategy. Once we get to the Elite 8 and Final 4 the choices you have to make often become obvious based on what teams you've already used, there isn't a great deal of thought required when you only have one or two teams left as options. It's the decisions made in the Sweet 16 that leave you with good options all the way to the Finals. Or, those Sweet 16 decisions can leave you with no options for the last few rounds.

The good news is we're down to 66 entries out of the original 221. If you've made it this far you're better at this than 145 suckers, so you've got that going for...which is nice.

I would say good luck, but I wouldn't mean it. May your picks be different than mine, and may they be awful choices. 

Thursday Pick Summary and Friday Pick Form

Hey everyone,

First off, Friday Pick Form for if you win tonight:

http://goo.gl/forms/ld6r965FdB

So I am out tonight and I don't trust David to update the scoreboard. David can create funny recaps, but give him a Google Sheet and watch him go pale.  So I'm scheduling this post to go out around tip of the first game.  I'll try to update the scoreboard if possible, but I'm fairly certain it will be a near impossibility, unless anyone has a great idea of how to move information from one google sheet to another on a smartphone.  I haven't found a decent app for it yet, and I'm sure I'll screw something up, so better safe than sorry.

Hey, but I forgot my pick!
Seriously?!  First place is 2 G's and you can't even remember what team you picked out of eight?!  Get your priorities straight!

So, with that, here's a summary of the picks as of when I left for the night (slightly skewed due to people submitting multiple times, but I don't believe any team is more than 2 picks too high).  If you're wondering who everyone atop the leaderboard went with, it was pretty chalky.  Nick Kahl, Michael Crone, and I all took Arizona.  Steve Fiscus and Blake Hooper went Wisconsin.  Feel free to root against them, unless you picked them yourself.  Good luck tonight, especially you crazy bastards that picked that ND/Wichita game.  You're braver than me.

Thursday Sweet 16 Pick

Notre Dame	18	18.9%
Wichita St.	21	22.1%
Wisconsin	13	13.7%
North Carolina	4	4.2%
Kentucky	4	4.2%
West Virginia	0	0%
Arizona	35	36.8%
Xavier	0	0%

Sweet 16 Thursday Pick

How's everyone handling the lack of basketball?  Personally, I don't know what to do with myself.  I'm just kind of wandering around my house like a zombie looking for basketball.  It's not going well. 

Anyway, time for the REAL game to begin.  Any vets of this contest know this is when the gamesmanship begins.  Since it's too easy to base picks off your opponent at this point, all picks MUST be submitted before the tip of the first game.  Hey jerk!  You still have three entries!  How do we know YOU'RE not going to look?!  You know what?  You don't.  You're just gonna have to trust me.  Given my track record in this contest, I can say assuredly that I keep trying to cheat and it just doesn't work I will not look at your picks.

Thursday Pick Form

Sunday Picks Live!

Sunday picks are now live.  Graph is below.  I'm expecting a bloodbath today.  Good luck all!

(Dayton doesn't actually have that many picks.  One entrant changed their pick between Dayton and someone else like 6 times.)

Sunday Round 2 Pick

Virginia	3	2.9%
Michigan St.	2	2%
Duke	16	15.7%
San Diego St.	0	0%
Kansas	2	2%
Wichita St.	9	8.8%
Oklahoma	27	26.5%
Dayton	7	6.9%
Gonzaga	9	8.8%
Iowa	1	1%
Wisconsin	11	10.8%
Oregon	0	0%
Maryland	7	6.9%
West Virginia	1	1%
Louisville	0	0%
Northern Iowa	7	6.9%

Day 3 Recap

Day 3 of the tournament is now a thing of the past, and with it so are the hopes and dreams of 12 of our lovely combatants. Of the 12 horrible losers that are terrible at this game, nine of them were silly enough to fall into the Jay Wright honeypot. I get it guys, the man can wear a freaking suit, he looks at you with those big eyes and you just think to yourself, "Of course I can trust him...he wouldn't hurt me again" But then, like all men, he rips your heart out, throws it on the ground, and does a riverdance all over it. And, for another March we're all left looking at Jay Wright and saying something along these lines....

Some people lost on choices that ended up being just as bad as taking Villanova, but at least they were way ballsier. Philip Crone 3 went back to the well on Georgia State figuring, "Hey this worked Thursday, maybe it will work again." But, just because a stupid thing works once doesn't mean it will work again, and it didn't work again. It's like buying the Baha Men's second album because you really loved Who Let The Dogs Out. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it ended up just being a miserable album full of far worse Bahamian rhythms. Ryan Sandlin and Samantha Buente fell for the Ron Hunter trap as well, and Aaron Moore deserves mention for picking UAB over UCLA. I guess we can all respect the chances you guys took, but, in the end you're all just losers, no better than those suckers that fell for Villanova.

Xavier and UCLA winning moved on the majority of our entrants and we still have 129 entries alive heading into Day 4. Things look tougher today though, the strategy really starts coming into play now as decisions have to be made on using "safe" teams to try to advance versus saving the teams you think you'll want to use later. I think we can all agree that shit is about to get real.

Oh, if you need a link to the leaderboard, just scroll down you lazy bastard. Seriously? You still need that link in every damn post? Tell you what, go learn how to bookmark a webpage. In fact, let me help you with that.

Sunday Pick Form

Sunday pick form is now available.  Good luck tomorrow - no UCLA gimmes like today.  Also, the leaderboard has been relinked:


Sunday Pick Form
Leaderboard

Saturday Picks and Payouts

First off, no fancy graph today for picks; clearing out UCLA as a selection also removed them from the analytics summary.  I think most of you have figured out that the vast majority of people picked UCLA or Xavier. 

Next, payouts.  Below is the summary of responses.  Basically, half of the entries wanted to stay top 5 while the other half wanted to expand to 6, 7, 8, or 10.  A weighted average of responses gives us a payout total around 6.6.  Rounding that, we get to Top 7 get paid.  Seems fair to me.

Referral pool was pretty adamant about Top 3 only, so we'll stick with that.

And with that, here are the payouts:

Main Pool

1st: 2,000
2nd: 900
3rd: 400
4th: 200
5th: 100
6th: 75
7th: 50

Referral Pool

1st: 450
2nd: 155
3rd: 84.44 (blame the five people who couldn't figure out how to not pay PayPal commissions)

Good luck everyone!

Should we pay more spots?

No - Leave it Top 5	72	49%
Yes - Top 6	7	4.8%
Yes - Top 7	20	13.6%
Yes - Top 8	21	14.3%
Yes - Top 9	0	0%
Yes - Top 10	27	18.4%

What about the referral pool?

No - Leave it Top 3	106	72.1%
Yes - Top 4	23	15.6%
Yes - Top 5	18	12.2%

Day 2 Recap

Well, basically, Day 1 kind of went something like THIS. It was wall to wall awesome, it kept us riveted, we were on the edge of our collective seats. If you're like me, you didn't eat, you didn't even move. There was no need to, the basketball would provide all the sustenance you needed, and the suicide pool entrants were dropping quicker than the price of Halloween candy in November. It was on pace to be the most ridiculously exciting first round ever....until Day 2.

And then Day 2 hit us and went kind of like THIS. Sure, it was trying to be cool, but, it just.....wasn't.

So, yeah, all in all a fairly boring day. Pretty much the only person that had a bad day was me, David Crone, FYI I'm playing under the pseudonym Tom Crean to troll my IU fan friends. Yesterday, as I watched two of my entries go up in flames while EVERYONE else moved on, I shared this common Tom Crean expression.

As we move on to Day 3 we still have 144 entries alive. Which, oddly enough, is what you get when you multiply 12 by 12. I don't think that's probably relevant here, but, it's still true. And, you can't take that away from me. My brother, Philip Crone, sits at the top along with Nick Kahl, Andy Lonnon, and Chris Moline. Nick Kahl always seems to be near the top of the leaderboard in this thing and not only has an entry tied for the lead, but also is sitting right behind the leaders with a second entry at 18 points.

Thanks for payout structure feedback on the form for today's entries. Philip or I will try to post the results of that today. But, spoiler alert, most of you greedy bastards think you're smarter than you probably actually are and favor paying out fewer spots. We'll try to post the payout structure later today.

Finally, once again here is a link to the leaderboard. We'll be back later with the entry form for Sunday.

Peace! I'm outta here!

Saturday Pick Form

Welp, looks like the vast majority of us are going to the Round of 32.  Saturday pick form attached.  There are also a couple questions regarding payouts.

http://goo.gl/forms/ZTYvlNfGgw

Friday Picks are up

Friday picks are now posted.

Quick note that was good feedback: The "About Me" Section to the right will now contain links to the leaderboard and latest pick form.  

Finally, here's a distribution of the picks.  Again, this is not complete and there were a couple duplicate entries that cannot be removed.

Friday Round 1 Pick

Kansas	22	16.3%
New Mexico St.	0	0%
Michigan St.	17	12.6%
Georgia	0	0%
Northern Iowa	11	8.1%
Wyoming	1	0.7%
West Virginia	0	0%
Buffalo	3	2.2%
Wichita St.	7	5.2%
Indiana	0	0%
Virginia	6	4.4%
Belmont	0	0%
Louisville	21	15.6%
UC Irvine	0	0%
Maryland	9	6.7%
Valparaiso	0	0%
Oregon	4	3%
Oklahoma St.	2	1.5%
Duke	0	0%
Robert Morris	0	0%
Iowa	1	0.7%
Davidson	3	2.2%
Oklahoma	12	8.9%
Albany	0	0%
Wisconsin	0	0%
Coastal Carolina	1	0.7%
San Diego St.	5	3.7%
St. John's	0	0%
Gonzaga	6	4.4%
North Dakota St.	0	0%
Providence	3	2.2%
Dayton	1	0.7%

Day 1 Recap

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The best of times because the basketball today was freaking amazing. Unfortunately, it was also the worst of times, because I sat through 438 promo's for Impractical Jokers. I get it, some strange white guys touch each other inappropriately in an attempt to make people laugh. I literally see that every time I hang out with my friends TruTV, I don't need it from you.

Before I get to the recap, a quick shout-out to the best NCAA Tournament commercial ever: O-B-J Oberto Beef Jerky! Personally, I think Dick Vitale played Dick Vitale really well in this spot. Brilliant!

Here's a quick statistical rundown on how the day went:

Total Entries: 222
Successful Entries: 155
Lousy Failures: 67
Percentage of Horrible Losers: 30%

So, to sum this up, you had one job to do on day one: Out of 16 games you simply needed to pick one winner. ONE WINNER. And, for 67 of you (should really say us, since I am among you) that was too hard. Things almost became way crazier too as UNC and Arkansas, the two most popular teams today, both pulled late game escapes.

Most of our losers have the Big 12 to blame. Oh Big 12, you certainly had most of us fooled this year. We wanted to believe in you, hell, some of us needed to believe in you. We needed something to believe in after all. Something that could make us feel better about our place on this crazy blue marble we call earth. So, we looked to the Midwest. The Midwest, where people are honest. Where people wake up early and work long hours. Where people help each other. Well, once again our trust was misplaced. Once again I feel lost, I feel hopeless, and I blame you Big 12. I think we all blame you for everything awful that's ever happened to any of us.

Oh, and twelve people got knocked out by this ridiculous goaltending call at the end of the SMU v UCLA game. I'm sure the 12 of you had reactions similar to THIS. Meanwhile, the five people that won on that call should probably continue to wear the same clothing tomorrow. Same everything. One of you has something on you that's incredibly lucky, so don't go and do something stupid like change, or shower, or shave, or any other insane thing you might be considering. Hell, don't brush your teeth, comb your hair, or anything else either. Luck is a fickle mistress and by angering her you could ruin everything. Do you want to ruin everything? Do you?

Some....I don't know the right word here.....credit? has to go to my brother Philip and my aunt Joni who picked 14 seeds that advanced on day 1. The good news is that they now sit firmly atop the leaderboard. The bad news is that submitting picks while you're drunk is a dangerous thing to do, and, while it worked this time, in the future it may not end so successfully. It's like juggling knives, sure, you look freaking awesome when you do it, but it's really easy to cut your hand off. You're not lizards guys. Hands don't grow back.....or do they?

For the 155 of you that are moving on, check the post below for the pick form for tomorrow. Also, keep in mind the leaderboard is HERE. Things are just getting started and regardless of what the Neon Trees tell you, it didn't start with a whisper. It started with something louder than that, like a normal voice, or something. Whatever. I'm going to bed.

Pool is Closed/Friday Form

Mercifully for some of you, the pool is now close with 222 entries.  Yes, 222.  As in 100 more than last year.  You people are maniacs, and I love each and every one of you for it.  David will be back sometime before the first Friday tip with his usual comedic stylings.  In the meantime, here's the form again for tomorrow's pick.  The deadline tomorrow prior to the tip of the first late game, which is Coastal Carolina/Wisconsin.  If you haven't picked by then, you will be defaulted to Wisconsin, who is the biggest favorite in the late games.  Thanks everyone!


Friday pick form:
http://goo.gl/forms/kVYSyYpW7i

5:30 Post UCLA Update

So, it's been a little bit crazy so far.

If you haven't been paying attention here's a look at how most people's picks are going:





There were 69 picks on the games that are now finished. Out of those 69 picks only 22 people have succeeded in picking a winner....meanwhile 47 of us are deciding how many more entries we should buy, and who we like in the 7:00 games.

Good luck everyone.....you're going to need it.

The First Sixteen Fall

This is why they call it March Madness! I know, hilarious pun, I'm laughing like crazy over here, as I'm sure you are too. Let me give you a second to catch your breath.....

We had sixteen of our lovely entrants pick Iowa State in here, and just ONE person smart (crazy?) enough to align themselves with the Blazers out of Birmingham. So Joni, feel free to send a thank you card to Georges Niang for going from All-American to complete garbage today.

Also, best quote of the day belongs to my mom right now after her Iowa State pick went down in flames:

"This suicide pool is bullcrap, I lost $20 faster than I do at the casino."

Great point mom, great point.

Remember, entries are open until the last game of the day tips! Feel free to grab another entry or two losers.

Friday Pick Form

For those who have won today already, Friday pick form is below....

http://goo.gl/forms/kVYSyYpW7i

Suicide Pool Leaderboard is LIVE!!

Alright everyone, here are the day one picks.

Leaderboard

 The pool is STILL OPEN through the end of the day.  Even if you lose in the morning, you can enter again so long as there is a game that still needs to tip.  We already have 169 entries, which is... absolutely absurd, but also absolutely awesome.

The pick form for Friday will be posted soon.  When posting there, please enter your name as it appears on the leaderboard!  It will make life much easier for us over here.

Finally, here's a quick summary of the picks received.  There are a couple duplicates on here, but it's a good representation of what we ended up with through the tip of the first game.  Could Notre Dame pull an Ohio St. and knock 15 people out in the first game of the day?!

Thursday Round 1 Pick

Kentucky	1	0.6%
Hampton	0	0%
Cincinnati	1	0.6%
Purdue	7	4%
Butler	1	0.6%
Texas	7	4%
Notre Dame	15	8.6%
Northeastern	0	0%
Villanova	4	2.3%
Lafayette	0	0%
North Carolina St.	2	1.1%
LSU	0	0%
Arkansas	21	12%
Wofford	0	0%
North Carolina	28	16%
Harvard	0	0%
Xavier	5	2.9%
Mississippi	2	1.1%
Baylor	11	6.3%
Georgia St.	1	0.6%
VCU	2	1.1%
Ohio St.	13	7.4%
Arizona	1	0.6%
Texas Southern	0	0%
Utah	5	2.9%
Stephen F. Austin	4	2.3%
Georgetown	8	4.6%
Eastern Washington	2	1.1%
SMU	11	6.3%
UCLA	4	2.3%
Iowa St.	17	9.7%
UAB	2	1.1%

2015 NCAA Tournament Suicide Pool

March Madness 2015 Suicide Pool

The game that separates the men/women from the boys/girls.  Last year the pot got up to $2,500 or so, and the winner took home $1,250.  Let’s push it over $3k this year.

First, remind me of all the links and stuff I need.  I’m going to ask about it, so just put it up here.

Good call.  Here’s a quick reference for all the links you should need:

Entry Fee: $20/person (multiple entries allowed still)

• Website: tourneypools.blogspot.com – the leaderboard and all updates will be posted here.  If you have a question where ANYTHING is, go here before asking, b/c odds are it’s here.
• Entry Form: http://goo.gl/forms/18ONvSyuus
• Email: tourneypools@gmail.com – I’m constantly monitoring this and can get back to you fairly quickly.
• Paypal ID: tourneypools@gmail.com – yep, finally linked ‘em all up.  BRANDING!

Wait wait wait, before you start into your convoluted rules, did you change anything?  I played this stupid game last year, so just give me the changes so I can get on with my day!

Ok ok no need to yell here.  If you participated in the NFL Playoff Suicide Pool, you might remember the Google Forms I started using.  It worked so well that I’m bringing it here too.  Here’s how it works:

• Every day, I will create a Google form that will be used by participants to choose their team for that day.  The first day will ask for a handful of information.  Subsequent days will not ask for as much info.  Trust me when I say all info is necessary.
• Subsequent days will only ask for your entry name, email address, and your pick.  Please enter your entry name as I have entered it on the Leaderboard.  If you know anything about excel, you know how finicky computers are with matching things up if you don’t spell things the same way. 
• If you want to change your pick for a day, just use the same form and pick again.  I can see timestamps on my end, and I’ll just take the latest one.

I enjoy running this pool, but it takes up a lot of time if I have to correct entries for people.  I’d prefer to keep doing it this way as opposed to running things through a website that takes 5% off the backend, so with a little help from you all, I can keep running this thing for free.

Finally, do not email, text, call, direct message, or facebook message me picks.  I will ignore them.

And with that, now to the rules proper…

Rules

• Choose one team each day that you think will win for that particular day.
• If your team wins, congrats, you move on to the next day of picks (assuming you can still pick a team.  If not, see next rule).  If not, you are out.  If you forget to pick one day, you will receive the “best” team available to you in the last set of games.  The “best” team will be determined by whatever spread I find first, probably Bovada.
• Once you have a chosen a team, you cannot choose that team again for the rest of the contest.  If you use Kentucky to beat Manhattan in round one, Kentucky will not be an available option if they are still alive in the Elite 8.  If you ever get to a point where you cannot pick a team b/c you have used all the teams playing that day, then your entry will be treated like an entry who could pick that day and lost.
• This comes up every year as a point of contention, but just to reiterate – even if someone does not have a pick, you still have to pick correctly for that day to finish ahead of them.  Picking to the point where you run out of teams is an acceptable strategy.
• Multiple entries are allowed – buy early, buy often

Deadlines

• Day One purchase and pick deadline is prior to tip for the last set of games of the evening, which usually occurs around 9:00 PM EDT.  If you lose at noon, go ahead and rebuy on day one – 10 people did that last year when Aaron Craft blew the last game of his 17 year Ohio St career.
• Daily pick deadlines for rounds 1 and 2 are prior to tip for the last set of games for that day.  For the Sweet 16 and later, the deadline is prior to tip of the first game of the day.  Each form will have the deadline on there.

Winner/Tiebreaker 

The order of finish is first determined by the total number of winning picks made.  In the event of a tie, the tie will be broken in the following manner…

• Highest combined total of all seeds selected
• Ex: You and I get knocked out on Day 6.  Because I’m awesome, I had that 12 seed that won in round one.  My combined seed picking total is 28, and yours is 26.  I win.
• Highest individual seed selected, and then second highest individual seed, etc.
• Ex. You and I get knocked out Day 6, but both of our combined seed totals are 28.  I had my 12 seed, but your highest seed you picked was a 10 seed.  I win again.  (This was the tie-breaker we had to get to in 2012, so make sure you UNDERSTAND THIS RULE.)
• Highest individual seed selected by round, and then second highest individual seed by round, etc.
• Ex. You and I get knocked out Day 6, both of our combined seed totals are 28, and we have happened to have every seed we’ve chosen be the exact same.  However, you picked a 10 seed to win in round 1 (which they did), but I had my 10 seed to win in round 2 (which they did).  Once again you lose.  You’re really bad at this.  (If you don’t understand this rule, that’s fine.  Odds are it will not come in to play.)
• If this does not result in a tie being broken, the pot will be split evenly.

Referral Pool

As usual, we will be running the referral pool this year.  Anyone who referred another person (or “referred themselves” by buying multiple entries) will have one entry in the referral sidepot.  The total of this sidepot will equal 25% of the referred entries.  For those buying multiple entries, your “1” entry is your referral pool entry.  Please be aware of that when picking.  Only the top 2 will be paid in the referral pool.

Payment

• Entry cost: $20
• Money must be in my grubby hands in some form before you make your pick.  The pool was big enough last year that I feel like I can big-time you all like this.  You can do this one of two ways:
• PayPal – Probably the easiest to track and you don’t have to track me down.  The paypal ID is above.  In addition, when paying on PayPal, CHOOSE THAT IT IS A PERSONAL PAYMENT!  Otherwise, PayPal will take a commission.  If you do not have a PayPal account, sign up now so it can check your bank account.  Again, this is the preferred method of payment.  Not only does it guarantee I get the money, it also GETS YOU PAID FASTER IF YOU WIN!!!
• Find my and physically hand me cash or a check.  I literally have to have the payment in my hand.  Do not call me and say “I’ll get you Sunday.”  Not happening.  Unless that Sunday is the Sunday before the tournament starts.
• Payouts will be determined at the end based on number of entries.  We will not pay out beyond 5 spots.