KANSAS CITY, Mo. — No one in recorded history has filled out a perfect bracket, but the alluring possibility makes March Madness addicting to many. While most think it’s a long shot — they really don’t know exactly how long.
Experts say you have a better chance at winning the Powerball than filling out a whole bracket correctly. But that`s better than no chance at all, right?
“One in a million or something like that? Not good by any means,” said Brian King, a graduate student at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
“It`s about one in probably 200 billion I’m sure,” said Mason Wedel, a junior at UMKC.
Good guess, but not even close. The probability of a perfect bracket for 67 games is way beyond that.
“It ends up being well over – probably in the trillions,” said Bill Kalahurka, an assistant professor of mathematics at UMKC.
While there isn’t a mathematical algorithm for brackets, mathematicians have been saying for years that the chance of you picking a perfect NCAA tournament bracket are one in 9.2 quintillion.
“To get every one correct, the probability of that is extremely low – much less than your chances of winning the Powerball,” added Kalahurka.
“We just do it for fun just to make it more entertaining to watch the games,” said Wedel, who plays basketball for UMKC.
Wedel says he has his own way of filling out his bracket.
“I try and pick the best teams, I pick some upsets every once in a while,” Wedel explained.
He says people will try anything to beat the extremely low odds.
“I’ve heard like people flipping a coin every time, or picking based off the mascot… like which one is better,” Wedel added.
“I know it`s going to get busted at some point,” King said, who also likes to participate for fun, despite the odds.
“People just kind of want to see if like they do actually have that one in a million chance to actually win,” said King, “I mean it would be kind of cool, honestly, if you won.”
You do have a good chance of beating others in your own, smaller pool, and of course, your chances increase the more brackets you submit. But a perfect bracket? Good luck with that…
“There are all sorts of little subtleties that change the final calculation somewhat, but in the end, because there are so many games, and because probability is multiplicative, you multiply one half by one half a bunch of times… it`s just almost impossible to pick it correctly,” said Kalahurka.
Last year the person who came the closest to a perfect bracket — winning the 2014 ESPN bracket challenge — had five incorrect selections.
