MARCH MADNESS!!!!

[GravyTrain]

Ladies and Gentlemen....I am glad to announce that the 2003 NCAA Championship Tournament is upon us. I am going to assume that there are not a whole lot of huge college basketball fans out there.

However for those of you who are fans of the Big Dance, I am offering a once in a lifetime opportunity (ok, we do it every year). Shatzy, hopefully you don't consider this spam, and if you do....BITE ME!!!

My brother and I have a March Madness pool every year. For those of you interested, you can email me and make sure you put the Subject of "March Madness Walker Pool" in the email, otherwise i will delete it as spam.

I will include a copy of the current rules at the end of this email for those of you interested. Yes, there is a fee if you want to win the pool, however, any entry is accepted, and you never know, it might be interesting to see how well people can guess on something they have no idea what they are doing.

Anyways, email me at [email protected] with the above subject, and I will send you an invite into our SI.com Fantasy bracket so I can get your bracket into the software before it is too late. If you do you want to be eligible for the prize. I think the best way to work this is to open my paypal account to accept entry fees for those of you out of town, and even out of country.

here are the rules....EVERYONE JOIN!!!!!

2003 March Madness Walker Pool

This is the 3rd annual March Madness Walker Pool. The rules will be similar to years passed, and the rules are similar to every other pool out there. Here they are:

Any entry is accepted. If you have friends who would be interested in joining in on the fun, feel free to get their bracket and entry fee.

1. A completed bracket should contain the following information:
a. A prediction for all 63 games of the tournament (the play in game does not count)
b. The entries name and tiebreak point prediction.
c. Email addresses are also requested. Before every game day, an email will be sent out with a listing of current leaders overall (assuming I have access to email) as well, as only those who are eligible for the prize money.
d. Additional information that would be helpful would be address and phone number.

2. To be eligible for the pool money, an entry fee of $5.00 is required. This fee must be received before tip off of the first game on Thursday, March 17, 2003. Other brackets are readily accepted, however if the fee is received after the tipoff, no prize money will be rewarded to the entry.

3. Multiple brackets can be entered per person, however for every bracket entered, the entry fee is required.

4. In the case that an individual enters multiple brackets and does not pay the entry fee for every bracket, the brackets that are to be considered eligible for the prize money must be deteremined before tip off of the first game on Thursday, March 17, 2003.

5. Prize disbursement will be determined as follows:
1st Place receives 60% of the final pool.
2nd Place receives 30% of the final pool.
3rd Place receives 10% of the final pool.

*In the future, as the pool gets larger (as it has done every year), prizes will eventually trickle down to 4th and 5th place.

6. Points will be awarded for winning picks as follows:
By picking the winner of a 1st round game, 1 point is awarded.
By picking the winner of a 2nd round game (correctly placing a team in the Sweet 16), 2 points are awarded.
By picking the winner of a Sweet 16 game (correctly placing a team in the Elite 8), 3 points are awarded.
By picking the winner of an Elite 8 game (correclty placing a team in the Final Four), 4 points are awarded.
By picking the winner of a Final Four game (correclty placing a team in the Championship game), 5 points are awarded.
By picking the winner of the Championship game (correctly predicting the NCAA National Champion), 6 points are awarded.

7. In the case of a tie at the end of the tournament, a tiebreak will be determined by the entry correclty guessing the TOTAL number of points scored by both teams in the Championship game. The winning entry with the closest prediction to the actual total (whether going over or not) will receive the winning prize money. In the case that none of the "Winners" submit a tiebreak predicitons (or if the predictions are the same), the prize money will be split between the winners. For example, if Entry A and B both have 99 points after the championship game, and both failed to submit tiebreak points, they will split the prize money of 1st and 2nd place, each will receive 45% of the final pool.

[TastinGood]

Thursday is the 20th. Today is the 17th.

I will get in on this pool, i suppose.

Let me make my picks!

[SHATOUSHKA]

i'll be honest.

i read about half of that post because it started
to sound like a foreign language. i didn't understand
it. i'm gay.

and no gravy... it ain't no spam [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[TastinGood]

anyone else getting in the pool?

*splashes water on gravy*

[GravyTrain]

I am up for suggestions to generate interest in the pool.

*Does a cannonball into the pool and gets Shatzy wet who is reading a stupid book next to the pool and refuses to get in....then glares...*

[TastinGood]

instead of giving a point to someone if they pick the winning team....how about giving them THAT teams ranking.

example...if i pick a #16 team to beat a #1 team and they do..i get 16 points. If they win the next game they play...16 more points.

That way there is a lot more reason to risk picking upsets instead of just going with the higher ranked teams. picking the #1 seeds may get you consistent points...but a few wildcards could send a risktaker to the top!

[GravyTrain]

This is a very good idea...however, this year, it will not be getting put into practice since the rules have already been set. there are also a few problems with this. for example, by picking a 7 team to win over a 10 as would give you 7 points. but if you were to pick a 1 over a 16, you only get one point. in other words, you would get 6 more points (the same for picking the champion) just by making a correct pick. your idea is noted, and other ideas have been considered, for example, receiving the difference of the two teams ranking as a bonus....for example, picking a 9 over an 8 would give you the 1 point for the round and a 1 point bonus for picking the upset....if one were to pick a 16 over a 1, they would receive 1 point for the win and 15 for the upset.

[SHATOUSHKA]

whoa.... more greek.

i didn't know you two could speak a foreign language

[TastinGood]

i have thought of a new system that would make the pool much more exciting.

if you would like to hear it, i would be glad to explain it.

[GravyTrain]

I can see you don't particular care for Ms. Emily, seeing as how you spelled her name wrong. As for it being a handicap, by no means is it a handicap to not understand a particular sport, or all sports in general. Growing up in a family with 2 younger brothers and a father who watched and kept up with sports, and going to a high school and making friends who's lives revolved around sports, I too began to "live" for sports. although times have changed, and sports to not consume my free time, I still love to follow it and love to make a couple of bucks on it here and there.

As for the concept you call "pooling" in sports, it is simply a group of people who place bets on one particular thing or another. In this case it would be the NCAA championship tournament. What might be confusing you in this situation is the scoring system that Jason and I have been discussing. That is very confusing and different people use different methods of scoring. The main idea, is that at the end of the tournament, after the championship game (or after the end of the sporting event being "pooled"), the winner takes a Percentage (if not all) of the "pooled" money collected from the participants of the bet.

hopefully this will explain a little, and unfortunately, as of now, Jason is the only person besides myself to be a part of this pool.