How March Madness bracket scoring works

What each round is worth

The default nearly everywhere is doubling: 1 point for each correct pick in the first round, then 2, 4, 8, 16, and 32 for the final. About two thirds of pools run exactly this.

It is not arbitrary. There are 32 first round games at 1 point and one final at 32, so every round is worth the same 32 in total. Getting the first weekend right counts as much as getting the champion right, which is why a pool using it rarely produces a winner who only picked one team correctly. A perfect bracket scores 192.

The other systems people use

• 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. The second most common, and a distant second at around 3% of pools. Rounds still get more valuable, but much more slowly, so the 32 first round games dominate. Good if you want the pool decided by breadth rather than by one champion pick.
• Flat, 1 point a game. Every game equal, 63 points available. Simple to explain and it makes the first weekend almost the whole contest. Rare, and worth knowing why: it means the final is worth as much as a Thursday noon game nobody watched.
• Your own numbers. Every product that lets you configure scoring does it the same way, as one typed value per round. None of them offer named presets, so if someone tells you their pool runs “Fibonacci scoring” they mean they typed six numbers in.

Seed bonuses

A seed bonus pays you extra for correctly picking a lower seeded team. It exists because without one, picking every favorite is close to optimal, and a pool where everyone has the same bracket is not a pool.

Both are worth having. Pick one before you start and say which in your rules, because the difference only becomes obvious in the second weekend, which is the worst time to discover people assumed different things.

Upset bonuses, and what they cost

An upset bonus pays the difference between the seeds in a game you got right. Pick a 12 to beat a 5 and you score 7 on top of the round value. Pick the 5 and you score nothing extra, because that is not an upset.

Here is the part almost nobody states plainly. The bonus settles against the team that actually turned up, not the one the bracket said would. Your 12 seed only beats a 5 seed in round two if that 5 seed survived. If a 13 seed got there instead, your 12 beat a worse seed and the bonus is zero. From round two onward you cannot know what a pick is worth until it happens.

That uncertainty has a real consequence, and it is the reason to think twice. A good bracket pool shows you how many points you can still score, which is the number that tells somebody in twelfth place on Saturday whether to keep caring. An upset bonus makes that number impossible to compute, because it depends on games that have not been played. Look at the products: the ones that show you a maximum do not offer an upset bonus, and the ones that offer an upset bonus do not show you a maximum. None of them have both, and that is not laziness.

So it is a genuine trade. More drama for the people who took the 12 seed, less information for everyone else.

The tiebreak

Ask for the combined score of the championship game, entered before the first game tips. Closest to the real total wins, over or under. This is near universal and there is no reason to invent something else.

Decide one thing in advance though: what happens when two people guess the same number. Most software stops there and hands it back to you. Splitting the prize is the usual answer, and saying so in August is much easier than saying it in April.

Do not change scoring mid tournament

Whatever you choose, lock it before the first game. People pick differently under a seed bonus than without one, so changing the rules afterwards rescores brackets that were filled in under the old ones. Most products refuse the change for that reason. If yours does not, refuse it yourself.

What this means when you fill one in

• Standard scoring: get the first weekend right. It is worth as much as everything after it, and it is the part most people rush.
• With a seed bonus: one carefully chosen double digit seed going deep is worth more than several first round shocks, because the bonus repeats every round that team survives.
• With an upset bonus: the value of your upset pick depends on who else gets through. Backing a 12 seed is worth most when the rest of that quarter holds to form.