March Madness – Winning Betting Formula – Results – Schedule

Closest Bet to a Sure Thing in Sports Betting:
Before we get into the nuts and bolts of how this little formula works, I would first like to give you a little nugget of information that has never lost.  However, finding the bet is not so easy and it only happens during the first round of the Tournament.  In all the years of the NCAA Division I tournament never has the lowest seeded team beat the highest seeded team.  So, in the four divisions of the tournament, no ranked #1 team has lost to a ranked #16 team, ever.  What this means is, this bet is as close to a sure thing as you are ever going to get when betting one side.  You probably guessed it the line is crazy big and only a few places will even post one.  The last time I made one of these bets the moneyline was around -2100. That’s right, you would need to put up $2100 just to make $100.  However, keep in mind you can risk $20 or $100 if you want, you just won’t make much money, but it is still a lot of fun.

2011 March Madness NCAA Division I Tournament Schedule Dates:

Winning formula for March Madness NCAA Division I Tournament

This formula is about as hectic as the tournament itself.  You will need the following websites:

• Statfox – for quick team point per game stats
• ESPN Men’s Basketball – For Individual player stats
• The Sports Network – For NCAA  injuries

The picture above was for the 2010 stats before the tournament started. To start you will need to make a spread sheet, listing all the teams in the 4 divisions that are going to be in the tournament.  You will need to get to work on this as soon as possible so you can start making all your picks in the numerous bracket tournaments you have signed up for.  So, two days may seem like a lot of time, but by the end you will be exhausted and happy just to get the games started.  Once the games start you will not need to update the charts, well sometimes due to injuries, but usually I am too lazy by then too bother.  After all, this is supposed to be fun, not work.

In the picture above the Top Players Points Per Game represent the top 3 scoring players on the team according to ESPN.  Once you click on the ESPN link you then find the team and select STATS.  This will list the top players and is usually already sorted by points per game.  Next check these top players against injuries according to The Sports Network.  If one of the players is injured or suspended or whatever and most likely will not be playing in the tournament, then deduct 4 points from individual player.  I would then change the name of the team to something like Duke3.  That would let me know that I had an injury reduction for player 3.  You would do this so later in the tournament you can check again to verify the player is still out.  So, in our example, if player 3 was not playing then I would enter 13.3 for his point per game instead of the 17.3 and change the name of the team to Duke3.

Next, follow the Statfox link and you should be at NCAA Basketball Offensive Stats Sorted by Team (All Games).  There you will find the stats for Team Points Per Game and the Free Throw Percentage.  Now to get the Defense number, click view defensive statistics in the left hand corner.  Once that page loads you will now have your Scoring Defense number as it is in the 1st column, PPG.

Now that we have entered the data information we just need to compute the Rating.  Here is the formula to quantify the data:

• =(SUM(B117:D117)*3)+(E117*4)+(F117*3)+((E117-G117)*7)

Now that we have the Rating it is easy to fill out a tournament bracket, since whichever team has the higher rating is the one your choose.  However, for round by round betting we need to interpret the ratings into a scoring system; for every 10 points of Rating it represents 1 point of actual scoring when trying to determine the spread of a game.

For example in the 2010 tournament game #1 Duke vs #3 Baylor:

As you can see Duke has 56.70 more rating points, which would mean about a 6 point favorite.  The final score of that game was Duke 78 and Baylor 71.  The line was Duke -4.5.  There must be at least a 1 point difference between my line and the line offered by the book before I would make a play and in this case the lines were very close, but enough that I bet Duke -4.5; since I had duke winning by at least 5.6 points.

Unit Size

Money Management is always the foundation of any successful system or strategy.  However, it this case, we are going to use a very aggressive style.   Meaning we will put it all on the line in the first round.  When I say first round, I mean the round where all the teams play, not the first round where there are a couple of teams struggling to get in the tournament.  Your unit size will be based on the number of valid plays on the first round of the tournament and all picks will be to win, not to risk, since the first round is broken up over 2 days.

For example:
For simplicity, I will use a $100 bankroll in this example. In 2010 the first round of the tournament was on March 18th & 19th and 32  games were played.  Of those played games 26 qualified as having a spread of one point or more difference from what I predicted.  Next I took that 26 qualified game number and divide it into my bankroll of $100.  $100/26 = $3.84. So each bet was to win $3.84.

Using the example above, the 2010 record was 27 wins and 22 losses.  Which translated to 27 x $3.84 = $103.68 won and 22 x $4.22 = $92.84 loss = $10.84 profit.  So not only did you have a great time, you walked with a 10.84% ROI. Which is great in itself.  However, being March Madness means you mostly likely got at least a 50% free play bonus. If you used How to Effectively Use a Free Play Bonus then turning that into at least 25% cash is extremely easy.  If you add this 25% to your 10.84%, you get 35.84%, which means you probably not only had a great time, but financed your entire March Madness party

How To Make a Winning Betting Formula for March Madness

Well guys there you have it.  A very sound strategy and when you add a bonus to  the mix, your changes of have a winning March Madness Tournament go way up.

Best of Luck and don’t forget to raise your beer high and give thanks to that which is March Madness,

JD