March Madness is weeks’ worth of organized chaos. There are Cinderella stories, early top-seed washouts, and team-centric storylines that make the event one of the highlights on the sports calendar.
To truly enjoy March Madness, however, many Atlanta residents feel they must participate in a group pool – and sometimes that means taking it upon themselves to run it.
Never run a March Madness bracket before? No worries – PlayGeorgia has got you covered with steps to get started, along with a few additional tweaks to add even more intrigue.
Currently, March Madness 2023 group pools are the best betting options for Georgians. With the likely failure of legalizing online sports betting in Georgia in this year’s legislative session, Georgians will have to wait until at least next year to see any possible betting expansion.
Move the soldiers
Successful group pools require strong participation, so before heading to your platform of choice to create your pool, make sure you have enough interested players.
Reach out to potential participants to see if they’re interested in joining your pool – team chats, workplace email listservs, and Twitter followers make good pools to recruit from. Some motivational persuasion might serve you well in this case to convince any of your friends who are on the fence.
Once you have your desired number of players, confirm and let the group know that they will receive an email notification to start filling out their March Madness bracket.
Select your system
There’ h a bunch of 03 Madness group platforms, with various features plus interfaces. Select the one you are feeling suits your own group greatest – or even one you’ re preferred with. Right after setting up your, create the particular pool team. ESPN, CBS TELEVISION STUDIOS, Yahoo plus Fox Sports activities are the very popular options.
You may also go the particular old-fashioned and much more time-consuming path of having your pals print their very own bracket, fill up it out, have a picture plus send this to you inside a text. In case you’ lso are comfortable dissecting the unavoidable chicken scrape you will get, you can get close to creating another website sign in you’ lso are bound to neglect in a 30 days. This approach will most likely annoy a few of your tech-savvy friends yet please the particular older gamers who nevertheless write down all of their email balances on a lawful pad.
Choose an access fee
This is purely optional, but many March Madness pools involve entry fees and payouts to the winner. Discuss appropriate entry fees with the group of players and set a deadline to collect them. Be clear on the payment method, whether it’s cash in person or electronic. Ensure that your entry fee makes sense based on the number of players you have in the bracket pool. If you have a small group, a higher entry fee would ensure the winner gets a substantial payout.
However, it’s important to discuss and agree on these details upfront and in advance of the NCAA tournament starting. The last thing you want is for players to bail due to an entry fee dispute.
Additionally, be prepared for less tech-savvy individuals to struggle with electronic cash transfer apps, and be ready to make a few phone calls to help them set up accounts.
Decide on scoring
The conventional scoring technique increases points per game as the rounds advance. For example:
In the opening round of 64 teams, one point would be awarded for each correct game selected. For the second round of games, players who select the winning team would receive two points – and so on, and so forth.
Some brackets award the same point value throughout, but this is a mistake as it doesn’t reflect the difficulty of picking successive correct winners.
The national title game should be the deciding game for your pool, so allocate it the appropriate point value. Using the double-points-by-round scoring method, the national championship would be worth sixteen points.
Some bracket pools inflate the national championship game value, making it necessary to select the national champion in order to win the contest. This should be avoided.
Get the bracket within before the 1st tip
Regarding online bracket pools, participants must submit their final entry before the tip-off of the first game on Thursday.
Some bracket pool organizers now award points for the First Four games. This can create a time crunch for participants who receive brackets on Sunday and have only two days to complete them.
Bracketology doesn’t reward the slackers and forgetful. Make sure you have your completed bracket in before the official start of March Madness, whether that’s the First Four round or the first round.
Added interest
Along with any potential earnings, adding some creative props and buy-ins to your bracket pool can make the experience even more enjoyable. Here’s a list of a few to consider:
- Enhanced points for biggest upset: Reward risk-taking pool players by adding higher point values for correctly selecting upsets.
- Penalty payout for lowest score: Add higher monetary stakes for the player with the lowest overall score at the end of the competition.
- Cinderella Final Four: If a player successfully predicts a 12-seed or lower team making it to the Final Four, award bonus points for that round.
- Home cookin’: This is PlayGeorgia, after all, and with only one team from the state in the tournament, give players an extra point on picks for Kennesaw State.
The First Four games of the NCAA tournament begin on Thursday, with play-ins for the final four spots in the official March Madness bracket. You still have time to reach out to interested parties to participate in a pool. It’s the only way to fully enjoy the beautiful chaos that is March Madness.