A few years ago, Tyler Gilo jumped into a friend's office pool with two brackets and a $10 investment.
Three weeks later, he took the title of top prognosticator for the 60-person NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament bracket challenge in Topeka.
Today he can't even remember which team won the tournament, only that he took home the winnings.
"It took 10 minutes," said Gilo, who works in Lawrence but hasn't decided whether to enter a pool this year. "You just sit down and look at it. I mainly picked whoever I followed through the year, the teams I thought would be the best.
"If you follow basketball at all, you can do it. It doesn't take a rocket scientist."
If only it were so easy.
Bracket Madness
Whether it's on paper or through the Internet, this week people across town are wading into what has become a traditional March Madness competition: filling out an office pool.
And at least one scientist a professor of management sciences at Yale University says he can help you beat the odds and win.
Tonkovich said her office would review any such case forwarded by a law-enforcement agency. She considered one a few years ago, but did not take it to court.
A conviction for illegal gambling is punishable by up to six months in jail and a fine of up to $1,000.
Ed Kaplan joined his deputy dean in creating a mathematics-based system that last year enabled him to beat 99.97 percent of the 95,000 entrants in a tournament pool organized by CBS' SportsLine.com.
In a bracket with 9.22 quintillion that's 9,220,000,000,000,000,000 possible outcomes, Kaplan knew he needed some help.
"I, like many, have specialized in losing these things for years," said Kaplan, who co-wrote a study, "March Madness and the Office Pool," to be published in this month's issue of Management Science. "Then I decided: There has to be a better way to do it."
Picking winners
Kaplan's advice for amateurs:
l Go backward. Start filling in the bracket in the middle with the championship game and Final Four and work back toward the first round. "That way you won't get locked into believing that you're right as you go along," he said.
l Make a difference. Choose different winners, depending on the type of pool. For a pool that gives extra points for upsets, pick more upsets. For traditional pools one point for the first round, two for the second, etc. rely more on favorites, with fewer upsets mixed in.
l Use external ranking systems. Everybody can choose by seeds. Check out Jeff Sagarin's ratings at www.usatoday.com, the Massey Ratings at www.mratings.com, and Las Vegas betting odds at www.vegas.com/gaming. Then use that to help guide your choices.
l Differentiate yourself from your competition. Especially in small pools 15 or 20 entries at the office, for example base some picks on what others won't do. That lessens the chances of having to share your winnings. "You may have a slightly lower chance of winning, but you increase your chances of winning more," he said.
In one pool he entered this week, with bonus points awarded for upsets, Kaplan's computer picked the Kansas Jayhawks to make the Final Four. As a No. 4 seed, each Kansas win would get him four times the points normally awarded for the round.
A Duke win in the first round would be worth one point. A Kansas win would be worth four. And so on.
"They're a good team," Kaplan said. "They're going to the Final Four (in the pool) because of the scoring system. They're a pretty good team, and they may deserve to be a better seed."
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