March Madness Betting

The NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament, popularly known as March Madness, is a single-elimination competition held every spring in the United States. It features 68 college basketball teams from the Division I level of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The last school standing is crowned the national championship. Ohio State coach Harold Olsen came up with the idea for the tournament and the National Association of Basketball Coaches made it official in 1939. Contested mostly during March, it has become one of the most-watched sports events in the United States. The tournament comprises champions from the 32 Division I conferences and 36 other teams that receive at-large berths.

These at-large bids are awarded by the NCAA selection committee and then announced in a nation-wide televised event the Sunday prior to the First Four play-in games. This event takes place in Dayton, Ohio, and is called Selection Sunday. All 68 colleges are distributed among four regions and into a single-elimination bracket. This bracket establishes which team it will play in the next round. Each team is seeded from 1 to 16 in its specific region. After the First Four, the competition unfolds over a period of three weekends, at pre-determined neutral sites across the US.

Teams, which are seeded by rank, play through a single-game elimination bracket beginning with a “first four” that includes eight low-seeded teams. These teams play in four games for a place in the first round. The Tuesday and Wednesday prior to the first round, the first round of 64 teams playing in 32 games during the course of a week. The Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight rounds the following week and weekend. And during the last weekend of the tournament, the Final Four round. The Final Four is usually played over the first weekend of April. These four teams, one from each region (East, South, Midwest, and West), play in a preselected site for the national championship.

Keep your bankroll in mind

With many, many games during March Madness doesn’t mean you should bet on all of them. If you did that, you would end up a loser, since the odds would be against you. When you pick games for a bracket challenge, you only pick the winner of the game; i.e., a Moneyline bet. Whenever a favorite loses you take a bigger hit; therefore, betting on too many games can cost you dearly even if you win more than you lose. As is the case with any form of betting, you should make sure that you March Madness with a bankroll that is within your budget and work in units, not dollars.

Do your homework

If you go into bet the March Madness without researching the teams, you may be wasting your money. As mentioned above, a committee comes up with the teams and seedings, and the results previous to the event only have a minor impact on the brackets. For instance, a team with a lower seed may be entering the tournament on a hot streak, and thus could be a good bet to pull off an upset in the first round. Additionally, some higher seeds are given that ranking for what they have done the entire season, even if they lost early in their conference tournament. Gathering intel heading into the tournament is essential to discovering the value in every game.

Take the points

The gap between great and not-so-great teams keeps getting narrower every year, meaning that the spreads found on early-round games could turn out to be valuable. The 4-13 and 5-12 games aren’t seen as upsets anymore. Thus, you should take the points in those games. We have observed a surge in talent across the spectrum, so while powerhouses such as Duke and Kansas continue recruiting the best prospects, there are many other programs attracting talent. In any case, you would do well to take the points if you feel a game is going to be close.

Pick top seeds

In recent NCAA tournaments, barring early upsets, the finals have featured the best teams in the country. If you want to place future bets, taking the favorites is a good idea. You won’t get great odds, but as long as you win, it doesn’t matter, does it! Don’t even have to bet on a team to win the entire tournament; you can bet on them winning their region which limits your exposure as well. Making future bets at the start of the tournament is a fun way to follow some teams without having to bet on them in each round, which frees up capital to bet on some of the more intriguing matchups.