I need some help. Some have asked for a DU NCAA Basketball pool.

[Skinner]

I'm not a sports fan at all. I've never participated in an NCAA Tournament pool. I never even heard of the Final Four until I was in college. So I am totally unprepared to run a DU pool for the NCAA tournament.

Some have asked for us to do an official pool, and give away a DU T-shirt as the prize. I'm perfectly happy to do that. But I have no clue how it should be run, how people should submit their guesses, how a winner should be determined, or anything.

I'm totally clueless on this. If anyone has a vision, please let me know how this should work. And keep in mind: I am a complete sports moron. The more you can dumb this down, the better.

Thanks for your help.

[GOPisEvil]

1. JCMach1 started one on Yahoo...

...there's a thread running here in the lounge. Perhaps the winner of that could get an award? I wonder if enrollment is unlimited?

[PVnRT]

2. JCMach1 has started one

The thread is around here somewhere....hold on....

EDIT: here it is:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x890621

[eyesroll]

3. The one at my work operates thusly:

We all submit our predictions. (We ignore the "buy-in" game that happens early, since it's just two throwaway teams competing for the right to lose big against the No. 1 seed in the first round.)

(We submit predictions in "bracket" form, which would probably not be doable here, so somebody would need to type all of the match-ups into a workable list. We could then respond in a really long reply message.)

We get 2 points for each correct prediction in the first round, 4 for each correct in the second, etc., 6 for the third, through the title game. Winner is the person with the most points. If there's a tie, the winnings are split.

Since this isn't a cash pool, you'd need a tie-breaker.

[chimpymustgo]

4. Kick.

nt

[holeinboatoutatsea]

5. I don't know much about it either, but

to make it fair, there should be two pools. One for the men's tournament, and one for the women's.

[holeinboatoutatsea]

10. anyone paying attention?

the women's tournament may not get so much interest, but to some, it is even more interesting. Kind of like the difference between pro and college football. One is more precise, and one has more chances for upset.

again. Is this invisible?

[Piltdown13]

6. Lots of folks set up their office/group pools online

Yahoo and ESPN, among others, run giant pools (hundreds of thousands of entries); within those pools, you can create public or private "mini-pools" to compete among your friends/office. I've never set this up myself, but I think all that needs to happen is for one person to visit, say, ESPN (I liked their format MUCH better than Yahoo's last year) and set up a private group, and then give out the sign-in info (group name, password) to the potential group members. The nice part is that the website takes care of the scoring for you. I think Yahoo and ESPN score it similarly, with the rounds weighted, though the point totals go a lot higher on ESPN.

On edit: At least last year, ESPN capped its groups at 50 members (don't remember about Yahoo). Of course, it would be easy to have several groups if necessary (DU1, DU2, etc.) and compare each group's winners to get an overall winner.

[bigwillq]

7. Here's my suggestion:

It might be hard to set one up b/c it's easier when there's a bracket form already printed out but I'm really interested in doing this so here's what I think we should do. Similiar to Oscar pool where people just listed their winners.
Since the posts are going to be long since they're so many games I think people should post winners like this:

First Round
St. Louis Bracket
Kentucky
UAB
Pacific
and so on for those games
and we can do the same for the other regions.

When we get to the second round we do the same thing
Second round
St. Louis Bracket
Kentucky
Kansas
blah blah
This will save space and will be easier to count up winners in my opinion.

[chimpymustgo]

8. More ideas, please, from you smart folks. This would be fun.

Time's awasting.

[bigwillq]

9. I posted my request to Skinner

on ask the admins. Still waiting to hear back. What do you think about my suggestion in the post above?

[chimpymustgo]

11. Thanks for stepping up to the plate. I'm clueless

about how to set up a pool, but I love playing along.

Personally, I like the game by game format - but if it would prove unwieldy, your idea sounds fine.

I just hope we DU something!

[bigwillq]

12. Or we could set it up like this:

St. Louis Region

Kentucky
Kentucky
Play In


Washington
Washington
UAB


Something like that. But that could geet confusing and we may run out of space.

[proud patriot]

13. basketball?

I'm clueless about basketball

[Redneck Socialist]

14. Easiest thing to do is probably rip off ESPN's set up.

If you can get some techno person to set up a bracket for us it would make everyones life a lot easier.