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Picks for this years Women's tournament
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How it works
Our methods area based on the premise the favorites tend to be picked to go farther in the tournament that they should. In order to win a large pool, you need to go against the crowd but still pick teams with good chances of winning. To make our picks we need to sets of inputs: estimated actual winning probabilities for each team and data on who everyone else is picking. Finally, you need to know how big of a pool you are in. In larger pools it is more important to avoid the crowd. In smaller ones, you should be picking the teams that have the best chance of winning.Actual probabilities
These can derived from historical information (e.g. how often has a 1 seed beat a 4 seed, etc.), or from various rating systems (e.g. Massey, Sagarin or my own ratings)Perceived probabilities
Both Yahoo and ESPN publish what percentage of people picked a given team to advance to each round. This gives you a fairly accurate picture of who is picking whom.Discrepencies between actual and percieved probabilities
Note that their are major differences between how people pick teams and how likely they are to make the final 4 or win the title.| Team | Reaching the Final Four | Winning the Tournament | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Estimated Actual Prob | Perceived Prob | Estimated Actual Prob | Perceived Prob | |||||||||
| Historical | Massey | Sagarin | Letscher | Yahoo | ESPN | Historical | Massey | Sagarin | Letscher | Yahoo | ESPN | |
| 1 Kentucky | 42.9% | 50.7% | 41.8% | 45.6% | 70.3% | 67.6% | 13.6% | 18.6% | 17.2% | 17.0% | 37.6% | 34.8% |
| 1 Michigan St. | 42.9% | 39.0% | 29.8% | 36.1% | 36.1% | 35.5% | 13.6% | 15.8% | 9.5% | 12.8% | 7.4% | 7.4% |
| 1 Syracuse | 42.9% | 11.6% | 23.5% | 26.7% | 46.3% | 30.5% | 13.6% | 5.2% | 7.2% | 7.7% | 11.7% | 7.4% |
| 1 North Carolina | 42.9% | 41.2% | 28.2% | 36.3% | 54.3% | 54.8% | 13.6% | 12.2% | 8.0% | 10.8% | 14.5% | 16.0% |
| 2 Duke | 23.6% | 13.0% | 13.6% | 15.4% | 13.3% | 13.3% | 6.4% | 1.8% | 2.8% | 3.1% | 3.8% | 3.8% |
| 2 Missouri | 23.6% | 30.5% | 24.8% | 26.9% | 39.0% | 40.4% | 6.4% | 9.4% | 6.7% | 7.7% | 6.3% | 7.3% |
| 2 Ohio St. | 23.6% | 42.4% | 36.6% | 36.3% | 22.2% | 29.1% | 6.4% | 15.1% | 13.9% | 12.9% | 3.7% | 4.4% |
| 2 Kansas | 23.6% | 29.3% | 31.0% | 28.8% | 31.0% | 31.5% | 6.4% | 7.0% | 9.4% | 7.9% | 5.2% | 6.1% |
Notice, for example, approximately 38% of people are picking Kentuky to win the championship in ESPN's tournament challenge. But using historical seed performance or various ranking systems they have an estimated 14-19% chance of winning the championship. So if you want to do better than the masses, maybe you shouldn't pick Michigan State or, if you like the 2 seeds Ohio State or Duke. These teams have few people picking them but still a good chance of winning.
References
Our article in the 2006 NY Times sports section on picking your pool sheet.My paper with Bryan Clair on "Optimal Strategies for Sports Betting Pools": pdf and our software for making picks.
Results and data from past tournament pools.