What Are the Odds of a Perfect March Madness NCAA Tournament Bracket?

American investor Warren Buffett offered one billion dollars to anyone who picked a perfect bracket in the 2014 Men's College Basketball Tournament. Easy money? The opposite. Every entry failed miserably.

What are the odds of a perfect bracket?

We calculated it, and also offer tips to gain an edge over everyone else in your bracket groups.

What Are the Odds of a Perfect Bracket?

The odds of a perfect bracket are … not likely.

Nobody who entered Buffett's challenge even made it through the first round of the tournament unscathed. Buffett was virtually guaranteed from the get-go that he wouldn't be paying anyone that life-changing sum.

Just how improbable is a perfect bracket?

It depends a lot on the method used to pick winners. This tournament attracts the attention of hardcore college basketball fans and casuals alike, with methods for filling out brackets ranging from deep statistical analysis to coin flips to which logo is cooler to "oh, my son's friend went there for freshman year."

If flipping a coin or using a pure 50/50 randomizer, the odds of a perfect bracket are 1 in 9.2 quintillion.

What is a quintillion, you're wondering? It goes thousand, million, billion, quadrillion, quintillion. So, yeah, the odds are astronomically low that the quarter in your pocket leads you to the perfect bracket.

Why Tournament Favorites Are Better Picks Than Underdogs

Two simple methods can drastically increase your odds of a perfect bracket.

The first requires no basketball knowledge and will take your odds from 1 in 9.2 quintillion down to roughly 1 in 76 billion. Despite still being impossibly unlikely, this is an insane improvement.

Here's a basic statistical fact: the most likely outcome of the tournament is the favorite winning every single game. No upsets.

This is true. The favorites winning every game is not likely to happen, but it is the most likely outcome. Think about it. It's certainly more likely to happen than the underdogs winning every game.

The huge upsets and the Cinderella runs are what make March Madness memorable, but going completely chalk is the optimal strategy if your aim is perfection. Below is a quick snapshot of first-round win rates by seed since the Men's NCAA Tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985:

For years, we were able to say that the 1-16 game was a lock for the 1 seed. That changed in 2018 when the UMBC Retrievers upset the tournament favorite Virginia. Betting on the 1 seed to win is still as close to a lock as exists in modern sports, and coin flipping a 1-16 game puts your bracket at risk of siding with a 1.2% underdog instead of the 98.8% favorite.

Doing the math using these historical win rates for the favorite taking every contest would give roughly a 1-in-33,333 chance of a perfect first round. Improbable? Sure, but considering the odds of a perfect first round using coin flips are 1 in 4.3 billion, it's clear the "all favorites" method is superior.

So, it's 1 in 33,333 that your bracket will survive to the second round intact. Then what? Using historical seed-versus-seed win rates for the rest of the tournament, we arrive at a 1-in-76-billion chance of a perfect bracket using the "all favorites" method. Again, still pretty unlikely, but insanely more probable than randomizing everything.

FanDuel Sportsbook Odds Will Help Identify More Favorites

We mentioned we had an additional method for boosting the likelihood of a perfect bracket even higher. This one does require a smidge of work on the part of the bracketeer, but it's incredibly easy.

Using historical win rates to estimate the odds a given team has to advance in their particular matchup is not always accurate. Take a 5-12 game in the first round. We'd expect the 5 seed to always be more talented and thus favored substantially over the 12 seed, but it doesn't always work out that way.

Sometimes the committee will make head-scratching decisions with their seeding. Sometimes an untimely injury weakens the roster of a top seed. Maybe the underdog on paper just got a key player back from injury or suspension and is playing at a level higher than their record would indicate.

There are many instances in which the worst seed on paper is actually favored by the sportsbook to win when the game tips off. The 5-12 game is a good example, because 12-seed Colorado State was actually favored last year in their first-round game against 5-seed Memphis.

Memphis had some injuries to a couple of their leaders in the backcourt, while the Rams of Colorado State were on a 10-game winning streak and playing their best basketball of the year. It was a situation where those who blindly penciled in the better seed (Memphis) without checking FanDuel's March Madness odds thought they were backing a historical 64.4% favorite but were actually taking the underdog in the matchup.

While a 12 being favored over a 5 is rare, there are typically a few of these occurrences each year in the 7-10 and 8-9 games in which margins are more narrow between rosters. You may have noted above that the 9 seeds have a winning record against the 8s since 1985. Does this mean blindly betting the 9 seeds in the first round is optimal? No, just look at the FanDuel odds. If the 8 seed is favored, pick them. Does the book have the 9 seed as the better team? Even better, pencil them in.

Why "Sneaky Favorites" Are the Most Valuable Picks in the Tournament

An added benefit of finding these seed imbalances (we'll call them sneaky favorites) is that you'll advance past a disproportionately large percentage of the field in your bracket group with a win. What does this mean? Think about the following example: correctly picking a 1 seed to beat a 16 will hardly gain you any points on the rest of the field because nearly everyone picked that 1 seed to win.

Taking 12-seed Colorado State to win over 5-seed Memphis will jump you over the majority of brackets, however, because most people didn't notice Memphis was actually the dog and picked them as if they were favored. Not only are you backing the team that is more likely to win, but you're doing so when most folks are on the underdog. That's a large edge over most of the field.

While a perfect bracket is always the goal, the real contest every March is to try to get closer to perfection than the others. This is where bragging rights are earned, and the prize money is won. Just because a perfect bracket is improbable doesn't mean it is impossible. Those with the math on their side are always more likely than others to catch lightning in a bottle.

Learn more about this year's March Madness sleepers and March Madness upset picks at FanDuel Research.

Which March Madness odds stand out to you this year? Check out FanDuel Sportsbook's latest college basketball betting odds to see the full menu of options.

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The above author is a FanDuel employee and is not eligible to compete in public daily fantasy contests or place sports betting wagers on FanDuel. The advice provided by the author does not necessarily represent the views of FanDuel. Taking the author's advice will not guarantee a successful outcome. You should use your own judgment when participating in daily fantasy contests or placing sports wagers.