Favorite Tournament Pool Scoring Method?

[digamma]

I've been deemed the "administrator of our NCAA office pool.

I'm trying to decide how to score our office pool. (I moved from a 200 person office of our firm to a 20 person office--if number of people is relevant to any scoring methods.)

Ideas for scoring methods include:

• Standard point per round, with the point value increasing incrementally each successive round (1-2-3-4-5-6 or 1-2-4-8-16-32, for example).
• Placing more value on picking the champion or final four participants and weighting that scoring round more heavily (I guess doubling the point value per round does this as well).
• Adding in an upset factor and multiplying the point per round by the seed number.
• Keeping an upset factor by reducing it by only giving extra points for actual seed value upsets (for example, if a 13 beats a 4 you would get 9 bonus points--I have seen some multiply this difference by the round value).

Anybody have a favorite of these methods or one that I haven't considered at all?

[John Galt]

I've done 1-2-3-5-8-13 the most. Overall, I don't like to make it so picking the champion is the only way to victory (although it should happen most of the time). Upset factors are neat, but I've never seen one that I really liked. I'm not running a pool anymore, but I think I would probably go back to 1-2-3-5-8-13 if I did.

[MJ4H]

The tournament pool I usually enter with my friends is pick 10 teams and every time they win you get the number of points equal to their seed. Also you get something like 5 points for each final four team in your list of 10 and 20 points for the national champion if they are in your list. I like doing this because it is totally different than most pools and emphasizes picking upsets.

[QuikSand]

1-2-3-4-5-6 is pretty easy for everyone to understand, builds in more points for later games, but keeps the early ones worthwhile.

I'm sure that there are ways to incrementally improve - but that's a very sound system, and its simplicity sells me.

[sooner333]

Here's the way I run mine. You get the seed as your points in the first round. Pick Duke to win, get one point. Pick UT-San Antonio get 16 points. This puts an emphasis on picking the right upsets. Each subsequent round is the seed+5 points (5 for second, 10 for third, etc.). This puts emphasis still on getting teams deep. You are better off picking Duke to the final four because you'll get the extra points at the end. I like it because its different and makes all first round games exciting because someone always has a different upset that you can either gain on them on or get burned on.

[digamma]

Thanks all.

I ended up going with John Galt's scoring method. I wanted to place more of a premium on the championship game and final four without sacrificing the value of the early round games. I think it does that pretty well.

[sterlingice]

When I ran pools, I was partial to the 1-1-2-3-6-12. It gave room to pick some upsets, but you need to get some of the later ones right to make up for it. I also love the mathematical harmony of it as a perfect bracket is worth 100.

SI