Tips for filling out your NCAA bracket

By Jeff Haney

Tuesday, March 17, 2009 | 2 a.m.

The typical NCAA basketball tournament office pool involves a bracket but no point spreads, so participating in one demands a special strategy.

Las Vegas sports betting analyst R.J. Bell of Pregame.com offers some general advice for attacking bracket-style pools, and we’ll chip in with some specific tips related to this year’s tournament.

Because most betting pools ignore the game between Alabama State and Morehead State for the “right” to face No. 1 seed Louisville, for our purposes the tournament tips off Thursday with 16 first-round games.

Here is a sampling of round-by-round office pool tips developed by Bell, who estimates $12 billion will be wagered on the tournament overall (although perhaps 1 percent of that action will take place in Nevada casinos):

First round: Focus on picking seeds ranked No. 12 or better. No. 16 seeds are 0-for-96, and No. 15 seeds 4-for-96, since the tournament was expanded to 64 teams in 1985. No. 12 seeds have exceeded expectations, winning 13 of their past 32 first-round games in their matchups with No. 5 seeds.

As a point of reference, the offshore sports book Pinnacle has a proposition asking if a No. 12 seed will beat a No. 5 seed. The “yes” side is an overwhelming favorite of about minus 550 (risk $5.50 to net $1) with the “no” side an underdog of about 5-1.

Second round: No. 1 seeds win their first two games 87 percent of the time. Nos. 10 and 12 seeds that win in Round 1 also win more than half the time in Round 2.

Sweet 16 round: Optimal strategy entails predicting three — no more, no less — No. 1 seeds will make the Elite Eight. Forget about teams seeded worse than No. 11, as 22 of them have made the Sweet 16 but only one has advanced in the “modern” era, or since 1985.

Elite Eight round: Consider moving one or two, but not more, No. 1 seeds to the Final Four. Last year, when all four No. 1 seeds made the Final Four, was a fluke going by the history of the tournament. Overall, though, quality continues to win out as just two of 96 Final Four teams have been seeded worse than No. 8.

As a point of reference, Pinnacle’s prop asking whether all four No. 1 seeds will make the Final Four this year has the “yes” side as a big underdog of 26-1 (risk $1 to net $26), with “no” listed at minus 3,600 (risk $36 to net $1).

Final Four round: No team worse than a No. 6 seed has made the championship game in the past 23 years.

Championship game: The winner has been seeded No. 4 or better for 20 consecutive years.

In picking individual first-round games in a bracket-style pool without point spreads, the idea is to separate your entry from the “pack,” or the “crowd,” meaning the other people competing in the pool.

Basic strategy (described by, among others, gambler and author King Yao in “Weighing the Odds in Sports Betting”) entails choosing some games that might look like upsets to a casual observer but are not, at least according to the betting line. As far as we are concerned, the point spread acts as the ultimate arbiter as to whether a result is an upset.

This week, for instance, finds No. 12 Arizona favored by 1 point against No. 5 Utah in the Midwest part of the bracket.

Also in the Midwest, No. 10 USC is favored by 2 points against No. 7 Boston College.

In the East, No. 9 Tennessee is a 2 1/2-point favorite against No. 8 Oklahoma State.

The tournament future book can offer some clues into how the subsequent rounds might play out.

In the Midwest, for example, the No. 3 seed attached to Kansas could be misleading. Kansas is listed as an 8-1 shot to win the regional, but No. 4 Wake Forest (6-1) and even No. 6 West Virginia (7-1) are available at shorter prices, according to odds at the Las Vegas Hilton sports book. It’s telling that Kansas and West Virginia would play each other in Round 2 if both teams advance.

Likewise, in the West, the betting marketplace (again, the only one that really matters) likes No. 5 Purdue (6-1 to win the regional) better than No. 4 Washington (10-1).

In the East, No. 6 UCLA is just 6-1 to win the regional, although No. 4 Xavier (12-1 at the Hilton) and No. 5 Florida State (15-1) have longer odds — a function, in part, of the fact that either Xavier or Florida State is likely to run into No. 1 Pitt.

Only the South is projected to play out true to form, with the top four seeds — North Carolina, Oklahoma, Syracuse and Gonzaga — also the four top betting choices to win the regional.