Rules & Regs

Here are the rules, kids, so pay close attention…especially you newbies… every year we have someone whining! There’s no whining in basketball!

Play-in Games

These are the Tuesday/Wednesday games in Dayton. Our tournament pool excludes the four play-in games. This means you do not need to pick a winner for those games. You choose the SEED NUMBER to advance — not the team itself. This applies only to the play-in games. (You don’t earn points from play-in games.)

Pool Names / Aliases

If you use an alias/different name, please put your real name in parentheses next to it. This is for brackets, Venmos, and Google submissions. For the college athletes playing incognito, please privately email/text us your alias and real name.

✱✱✱✱✱✱✱ IN THE FIRST ROUND ONLY ✱✱✱✱✱✱✱

First Round Scoring

If you pick a lower-seeded team to beat a higher-seeded team and that upset actually happens, you earn the difference between the two teams’ seed numbers. For example, when two brave (dumb?) souls picked #16 UMBC (wait…who??) to beat #1 Virginia — and it actually happened! Those two lucky players earned 16 − 1 = 15 points for that game.

This bonus scoring only applies to upsets. If you pick the higher-seeded team to win (for example, a #6 beating a #11), you will earn ONE point for that game.

We do this to reward bold upset picks and add a little extra excitement to the first round!

THIS IS FOR THE FIRST ROUND ONLY!!!! Got it? Good!

Points Per Round

First RoundUpset difference (or 1 pt for correct favorite pick)

Second Round3 points per correct pick

Third Round (Sweet 16)5 points per correct pick

Fourth Round (Elite 8)7 points per correct pick

Final Four9 points per correct pick

Championship12 points for picking the winner

Payouts

1st Place50%

2nd Place25%

3rd Place15%

4th Place10%

ALL OF THIS FUN FOR ONLY $10 an entry!!!

ALL PICKS MUST BE SUBMITTED BY 10:00 a.m. Central on the Thursday the first round starts — NO EXCEPTIONS.