Poker Words - A Poker Blog

Mostly a recount of my poker exploits along with a bunch of random other stuff just for fun.

Monday, March 12, 2007

Basketball Tax

People say that state lotteries are just a tax on people that can't do math. Well then the NCAA tournament must be a tax on people that don't know anything about basketball. I'm pretty sure that the odds of me winning the Mega Millions are just about the same as me winning an NCAA tournament pool with as few as 8 other participants.

Never the less, every year I pay my taxes and watch in dismay as three of my final four teams are eliminated by the end of the first weekend. I have a bad tendency to let my feelings towards certain schools or conferences affect my judgement in these things. Take this year for instance. I have to pick Illinois to win at least one game. And after that they have SIU. There's no way I can pick the Illini to lose to the lowly Salukis. Who cares if they got a four seed and Illinois barely made the tourney. And then I have to pick them to win the next game because they're playing Kansas and fuck Kansas.

At that point I come to my senses and realize that no matter how much I hate Kansas, and how much Kansas has choked in the Bill Self era, the Illini are still probably no match for the Jayhawks. So I pick Villanova to upset Kansas in round two so the Illini don't have to face them. And that's why I won't ever win a college tourney pool. That and I know almost nothing about college basketball outside of this state. Or in this state for that matter.

If I have time, I think I'm going to do an experiment this year. I'm going to do my normal bracket. Then I'm going to try to do one where I objectively pick the winners. Then I'm going to do one based soley on coin flips, with the exception of the obvious games such as the 16-1, 15-2 match ups. Finally, I'm going to do some other random picker where the odds are weighted based on seeding. Not sure how I'll do that one, but I'll think of something. My guess is that the random weighted bracket will win. You would think that's the one I would choose to put money on, but you would be wrong. Maybe the tournament really is a stupid tax.

I'll try to have my picks done and posted here by the start of the games on Thursday. Feel free to mock them once they are up.


Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

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2 Comments:

At 8:31 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

You forgot to mention your NBA basketball tax... Thanks for the $5!

 
At 11:31 PM, Blogger ZeRat11 said...

Oh yeah. I meant to mention my Cubs fan tax too. Oh well, I think I'm getting a refund this year.

 

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