Build Up to March Madness 2013 - Another Crazy Pool Format

Looking for 2014 brackets? Check here.

I thought I'd continue to stoke the excitement fire for March Madness 2013! Many of you know that besides college football bowl season, March Madness is the biggest event for ExcelGeek.com each year.

To reiterate from my last post, this year the ExcelGeek.com March Madness bracket situation will work like year's past. Once Selection Sunday is over, I'll post this year's bracket files -- both the "Master" file that pool organizers use and the "Picks" file that individual participants in pools use to track how they're doing and to send to the organizers to make it easier for them to input picks into the "Master".

I'll also be using the same online file registration process as last year. That really worked well. If you don't remember it, how it works is that you FIRST download the Master bracket file (the one pool organizers use to manage the pool) and open it (with macros enabled). It provides a Lock Code. Then you click the PayPal button link to submit payment of $2.00. It's at that time that you provide the Lock Code. Once your payment is confirmed, you'll be provided with a Key Code. With that key code you'll unlock all the wonder that is the ExcelGeek.com March Madness Master bracket file.

Awesome, right?

So...what are you supposed to do between now and this coming Sunday night?

Here's another interesting March Madness pool sheet I just did for a client. This one involves randomly assigning participants to each of the 68 teams in the tournament. Then, the winners of each game are determined by the final score vs. the official betting line on the game. Example: If you've got Missouri in a match-up vs. Duke, and Duke's favored by 5, you win so long as Missouri beats the spread. In the event your team actually wins the game and beats (or matches -- a "push") the spread, you advance with your team to the next round. If your team loses, but beats the spread, you advance to the next round AND (here's the fun part) you steal the loser's team (since they won the game). Fun, right? Anyway, you can do different payouts for wins at each round of the tournament, and this client wanted to actually do pay-outs for the Championship loser and Semifinal losers, too, so I built that in. All in all, it was another example of a pool where your ability to pick teams is not really a factor. It's about your luck.

I believe this client is still rounding up participants for the pool. If you're interested, let me know and I'll pass along his email address.

Excel_Geek Insiders Subscribers, I'll send along a copy of that file.

Later,

Excel_Geek