​Cover Photo: Getty Images


March Madness is ​wildly unpredictable, ​no matter how dominant a team may have been during the regular season. When you fill out an ​NCAA Tournament bracket, you can be so certain that your Final Four teams will be the last four standing that you're ​willing to risk almost any amount of money on it.


Just remember, there are lots of different ​ways to win your March Madness bracket pool. There are always those one or two ​Cinderellas, also known as bracket busters, that throw things completely out of whack, but what might be your best move is locking in more than a couple of No. 1 seeds.

If recent history is any indication, picking a top-three seed is still the right way to go, when it comes to picking your Final Four. Out of the 136 Final Four participants since the 1984-85 college basketball season, a whopping 41.2 percent were No. 1 seeds, 19.9 percent were No. 2 seeds and 12.5 percent were No. 3 seeds. That's a whopping 73.6 percent of the final Four participants during that time span.


Conversely, No. 9 and No. 10 seeds have each only accounted for a minuscule 0.7 percent of Final Four participants apiece.

While stats like this are hard to ignore, as this is March, it's good to know that they never guarantee anything. Every team has flaws that can lead to an early exit. Even overall No. 1-seed Duke, which has +220 odds to win the tournament, according to FanDuel Sportsbook, ​could get knocked out during the first weekend.


There's a reason it's called March Madness.

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Mike Esposito is not a FanDuel employee. In addition to providing DFS gameplay advice, Mike Esposito also participates in DFS contests on FanDuel using his personal account, username espo6891. While the strategies and player selections recommended in his articles are his personal views, he may deploy different strategies and player selections when entering contests with his personal account. The views expressed in their articles are the author's alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of FanDuel.