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Barack Obama’s Barackets Still Doing Well After Round 3 Because Most People’s Brackets Are Also Busted

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Barack Obama / Sarah Palin Spoof (show this to your friends!)

Please click here for how Obama’s Barackets has fallen mightily after Round 4.

Despite having his 2010 NCAA Barackets busted open with teams picked to go far knocked off in Rounds 1 and 2, President Barack Obama’s Barackets is still hanging in there ahead of 88% of about 5 million brackets submitted on ESPN’s website. Obama’s Barackets is ranked 570,093 after three rounds. It’s a drop from 341,292nd place and 92.9th percentile after Round 2, but 88% is still an A.

Obama’s Barackets is still doing relatively well because most people have also had their brackets busted open with all the upsets happening so far. However, on this last day of Round 3, the Cinderellas pretty much all went home. For this, Obama and others who had picked favourite teams that have been booted from March Madness will really start to feel that impact. There are now fewer games from which to get points, or compensate for those lost, and the games from now on continue to double in value from those of the previous rounds. Obama only has a potential 360 points remaining when each round remaining, including picking the overall winner, is worth 320 points each.

My ESPN brackets are also rather busted, but I have done well to this past round to jump from 846,668th place after Round 2, to 63,616th place or better than 98.6% of the brackets on ESPN. I’m beating da Prez now, 610 points to 550, but he has Kentucky and Kansas State remaining for elite teams potentially moving to the Final Four. I have West Virginia, Kansas State and Baylor, with the first losing an excellent player due to injury earlier this week so they’ll be in tough against Kentucky… and I have them in the Finals as well so that would be a devastating loss to my brackets.

Oh, well. At this point, I’m just enjoying March Madness as it’s been one of the better tournament in a long time. That Kansas State and Xavier game was definitely something else!

Let’s see what will happen this weekend!

p.s. Congratulations to Obama and the Democrats for passing that health care bill. It’s a good thing they passed it cause his Barackets might need some serious health care soon! 🙂

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Reading Level: 8.0
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Are Your Brackets Hurting as Much as President Barack Obama’s Barackets After Round Two?

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President Barack Obama

Please click here for the update after Round 3 of 2010 March Madness.

After a great Round 2 of major upsets in the 2010 NCAA March Madness Tournament, there’s not a lot of point asking most people how well their brackets are doing. The more appropriate question would be how hurting it is? And the popular standard is that of President Barack Obama’s Barackets.

Obama’s Barackets is scored on the ESPN scoring system. That rewards 10 points per correct game in the first round, 20 points in the second round, with 40, 80, 160 and 320 in the following respective rounds). President Obama is sitting at 430 points after two rounds. That is good for place number 341,292 of the over 4.5 million brackets on ESPN, or better than 92.8% of them so he’s still getting an A+.

However, the President only has 520 potential points remaining (PPR) with his overall champion Kansas gone, Villanova to the Final Four and Georgetown Elite Eight.

Personally, I trailed da Prez by 40 points after Round 1, but only trail him by 20 points now. Yet, the 20 point gain has allowed me to make tremendous gains. My ESPN brackets sat at place 2,978,307 or ahead of a very lousy 37.6 percent of the entries after Round 1. However, I now have 410 points, good enough for 846,668th place, and ahead of 82.2% of the brackets at ESPN or an A-.

But I do have a potential 640 points remaining compared to Obama’s 520, though I had also picked Kansas to win.

The leaders are well ahead of Obama and I, but this isn’t about winning as comparing yourself to da Prez! Still, I am amazed at their ability and luck to be doing so well.

How much are your brackets hurting?

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Flesch-Kincaid Grade Reading Level: 6.5

Obama’s Barackets Beating 96.5% of over 4.5 Million Brackets on ESPN 2010 March Madness Challenge After Round 1

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President Barack Obama

Please click here to see President Obama’s 2010 Barackets, and get analysis after Round 2

After Round 1 of the 2010 NCAA March Madness Tournament, President Barack Obama’s ESPN Barackets is beating 96.5% of over 4.5 million entries!

See Obama’s 2010 March Madness Brackets here.

See Obama’s rationale in his picks via the ESPN video here.

Obama got 25 of 32 games correct for 250 points since each game in this round was worth 10 points. Three top entries were tied at a remarkable 310 points or 31 of 32 correct! There is no rewards for upsets in the ESPN system so these brackets encouraged going with the favourites rather than picking upsets. That left the President at a rank of 160,151 or sitting in the 96.6th percentile. That means he is ahead of 96.5% of the entries of over 4.5 million entries!

An analogy for that statistic would be the Prez is beating 29 out of every 30 entrants, sitting in 2nd place in such a sample. With over 4.5 million entries, that’s far more than a big enough sample to safely declare the President ahead of 96.5% of all bracket entries out there. He knew his basketball in Round 1, unlike last year when he admitted he got killed in the early rounds.

However, Obama could be in a lot of trouble for the next rounds, each of which is also worth 320 points.

That’s because Obama has already lost one of his Elite Eight teams in Georgetown. That’s 40 points he won’t be getting in that round for sure. I wonder if that were a political pick because Georgetown is, of course, in Washington DC. There weren’t too many Chicago or Illinois teams that stood much of a chance this year to go far.

Obama has also already lost two of his Sweet Sixteen teams with Georgetown and Marquette. That’s another 40 points he won’t be getting in that round.

ESPN lists Obama’s potential points remaining (PPR) at 1,520 after Round 1.

Of course, other people will have likely lost some of those teams already as well. The fact most of them lost more teams this first round only suggest they have a greater chance of losing more teams in the later rounds already than Obama. However, that’s not necessarily true.

My ESPN brackets are sitting at 210 points, or 2,978,307 or ahead of a very lousy 37.6 percent of the entries. Basically, I’m in 6th place out of every 8 people! OUCH! Yet, because I haven’t lost any Elite Eight teams, and the same Georgetown pick as Obama for the Sweet Sixteen, my potential points remaining is 1,580. That could make up the 40 points different the President has on me after Round 1. So despite being over 2.8 million spots back of da Prez right now, I could still end up putting the slamma jamma on Obama!

All that said, the President is doing relatively well among ESPN’s featured brackets.

President Obama LeBron James
Dick Vitale Joe Lunardi
Bill Simmons Matthew Berry
Mike Greenberg Mike Golic
Colin Cowherd Michelle Beadle
Scott Van Pelt Tony Reali

Obama is first among them after Round 1. In fact, he’s cleaning house… including dunking on LeBron James!

I guess in America, it’s da Prez that rules, not the King. They got rid of him a long time ago! 🙂

You can look at each featured bracket’s potential points remaining if you’d like by clicking on the links above.

How are you doing after the first round if you played? How many games did you get right?

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Flesch-Kincaid Grade Reading Level: 5.8

President Obama LeBron James
Dick Vitale Joe Lunardi
Bill Simmons Matthew Berry
Mike Greenberg Mike Golic
Colin Cowherd Michelle Beadle
Scott Van Pelt Tony Reali

Are Your 2010 NCAA March Madness Brackets Better Than President Obama’s Barackets?

Digital Citizen 2 Comments

Please click here to see President Obama’s 2010 Barackets, and get analysis after Round 3

President Barack Obama has finally revealed his 2010 NCAA Brackets today in a much anticipated event. I know how anticipated it was. My posts on his similar actions last year has been getting lots of hits since Sunday from people searching for Obama’s picks this year.

Please click here for the printable 2010 NCAA March Madness Tournament Brackets PDF

Obama’s picks deserves to be highly anticipated, though! The Prez has had a great track record when it comes to picking winners of big American sporting events. He picked the Steelers to win the 2009 Super Bowl, North Carolina Tar Heels to win 2009 March Madness, and New Orleans Saints to win the 2010 Super Bowl. Obama did reasonably well in last year’s tournament, despite picking poorly in the first rounds and picking mostly favourites otherwise, since March Madness is traditionally a tournament of upsets. His track record suggests that you don’t bet against da Prez when all the money is on the line, though!

Looking at the Barackets this year, Obama has generally played it safe again. Where he has upsets, I can see reasons why like Sienna over Purdue with the Boilermakers not playing well right now. Obama has picked all the #1 seeds to go to the final four except Duke, despite the general opinion out there that Duke has the easiest road to the Final Four. I suspect that Duke elimination pick has something to do with Obama’s fondness for North Carolina, who he had rightly picked to win it all last year, and had played some hoops with them. Of course, Duke will be seeing Villanova for a third time if it comes to that, when the Prez has the Wildcats beating the Blue Devils this time around, so it’s not just some pick out of the blue. Still, not a lot of experts are picking Duke to lose to ‘Nova. Obama has also picked #1 overall Kansas Jayhawks to win, despite having played hoops with Kentucky on Jan 27 2010.  Keep one thing in mind, though, playing it safe with the rankings in March Madness is a risky move because it’s not called March Sanity for a reason!

So, looking at Obama’s Barackets, I want to know if you think your brackets are better than his, or if you’ll be taking some advice from him? I’m going to assume that if you’ll take some advice from him, you’ll be intending to make your brackets better than his so don’t claim it as being better if you used some advice from his picks… unless you’ve already submitted and are now having second thoughts, hehehe.

Now, last year, I kept track of Obama’s performance through several popular point systems, each of which would cause you to pick very differently. I’m going to do the same after each round again so please do come back and see how you fared against da Prez, pending which scoring system you will be playing (if you play one of the systems below)!

We’ll see what you’ll be saying then!

Oh, btw, I’ll be making my picks soon and coming back to share. I’ll compare them to Obama’s Barackets to see if I’ll change anything.

Just keep in mind, I beat da Prez last year! 😉

Scoring System 1

(32 points per round like CBS Bracket Challenge, or 320 points per round like ESPN)

If you are in a betting pool with your NCAA brackets, chances are you are using this scoring system. This system rewards 1 point for a win in the first round, 2 in the second, 4 in the third, 8 in the fourth, 16 in the fifth and 32 to the ultimate winner. Upsets gives nothing extra. ESPN uses 10 points instead of 1 per game. I don’t know why. Maybe they think their audience is better at math or something???

The maximum points is 192 for CBS, and obviously 1920 for ESPN.

Scoring System 1 + 1

(scoring system 1 + 1 point for each upset)

Some pools reward upsets in a minimal sort of way with one point for each upset. It’s not much but it could make the difference between similar results of correct games picked.

Scoring System 1 or D

(scoring system 1 or ranking difference for upsets)

This system is used by the Canadian channel The Score in its pool. It allows you to get some separation in the first few rounds by picking the upsets because it’s not worth it to risk the upsets in the latter rounds, where the high seed teams tend to go through so their ranking difference is minimal, meaning you’d get the same points if you pick the higher or lower team.

Scoring System 2

(1 point per game)

This European style scoring system values the overall judgment and minimize fluke results of someone selecting the correct ultimate winner despite performing not so great otherwise.

The maximum points for the first four rounds is 63.

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President Barack Obama Picked Good March Madness Brackets and Winner in North Carolina Tar Heels

Digital Citizen 1 Comment

Please click here to see President Obama’s 2010 Barackets, and get analysis after Round 3

Get your free North Carolina showboatin’ coupons here to give to non-UNC believers, especially Duke ones!

If President Obama’s economic stimulus plan turns out as well as his 2009 NCAA March Madness Brackets, aka the Barackets, then Americans and the rest of the world doesn’t have a lot to worry about.

President Barack Obama's March Madness 2009 Brackets (click to enlarge)

President Barack Obama's March Madness 2009 Brackets (click to enlarge)

He did relatively well overall, as shown from the scoring system analysis below. Such a score would have placed him in about the top 10% from what I have seen in some large polls like the one on Facebook and CBS Sports. But more importantly, especially, he correctly picked the University of North Carolina to win it all after the Tar Heels dismantled the Michigan Spartans 89-72.

Here’s a recap and final analysis of the President’s performance and journey through the bracket developments this year.

On March 19, President Barack Obama shared his bracket picks, as well as reasoning, worldwide in an ESPN video. Now, for any of you not familiar with ill-advised actions for a politician, picking winners and losers is something politicians do not like to do! That’s because they lose votes any time they have to pick winners cause someone loses. For someone like a President of the United States to be playing favourites, especially with the risk of getting things very wrong as is very easy to do in March Madness, was a huge public relations risk. However, all that did was showed the President’s confidence and as the final result showed tonight, with UNC winning as picked by the Prez, that confidence was not false… even if he generally had a pretty safe set of picks. But that’s a risk on its own as they don’t call it March Madness for nothing, you know! That, America, you should take note as you look to him for more leadership in uncertain times upcoming.

The road the President took to get here started out great. He had 14 of 16 teams correctly picked for the Sweet Sixteen Round and was doing great on any of the popular scoring systems used to track NCAA brackets.

Unfortunately, the middle of the road was bumpy, leaving the President with only North Carolina among the Final Four teams. That might well be a sign Americans need to heed as they go through this economic downturn and recovery. Some things might go wrong, not turn out well, seem like a bad choice. However, the big and most important one will be on track and you should hang on hope for that.

President Barack Obama

President Barack Obama

That’s because North Carolina ended up winning it all, which, as typical of the American winner-take-all mentality, should be all that matters to you. And not only did they win it all, they won it convincingly. If the President’s performance was an indicator of how he will get through this economic downturn, or maybe for his term, he’s going to do quite all right!

So way to go, Mr President! You’ve got a great reason to smile!

And congratulations to the University of North Carolina Tar Heels, especially Tyler Hansbrough on a fairy tale college career!

I picked you, too!

Finally, here, for you nerds keeping score, is the final tally from the scoring systems in which I have used to analyze the President’s performance throughout the past few weeks.

Scoring System 1

(32 points per round like CBS Bracket Challenge)

If you are in a betting pool with your NCAA brackets, chances are you are using this scoring system. This system rewards 1 point for a win in the first round, 2 in the second, 4 in the third, 8 in the fourth, 16 in the fifth and 32 to the ultimate winner. Upsets gives nothing extra.

The maximum points is 192.

In this system, President Barack Obama has 122 points after four rounds. But don’t forget, it’s not like very many scored 192 or that much higher. Anybody not picking North Carolina would have lost 32 points and sat at 160 automatically, never mind any other potential losses!

Scoring System 1 + 1

(scoring system 1 + 1 point for each upset)

Some pools reward upsets in a minimal sort of way with one point for each upset. It’s not much but it could make the difference between similar results of correct games picked.

In this system, President Barack Obama has 124 points. There weren’t that many upsets this year relative to other years so the overall total was not much higher than 192. But because the President had a relatively safe set of picks, he didn’t not have many upsets on which to capitalize, and he did pick a few of them correctly.

Scoring System 1 + D

(scoring system 1 +ranking difference for upsets)

This system is used by the Canadian channel The Score in its pool, which I am in, though I didn’t read the D rule because I would have picked very differently for some underdog teams.

In this system, President Barack Obama has 124 points . It wouldn’t be fair to put this one on the President because it has a very different strategy I described in the original scoring system post. Picking safe is not the way to go to do super well in this tournament. That said, 124 points is a pretty respectable score. I know. I did only a little better and placed quite respectably.

Scoring System 2

(1 point per game)

This European style scoring system values the overall judgment and minimize fluke results of someone selecting the correct ultimate winner despite performing not so great otherwise.

The maximum points for the first four rounds is 60, out of 63 eventually.

In this system, President Barack Obama has 40 points after four rounds. Forty points is quite respectable among all the brackets.

SO HOW DID YOU DO COMPARED TO DA PREZ?

Final 2009 March Madness Brackets (click to enlarge)

Final 2009 March Madness Brackets (click to enlarge)