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How to Run a March Madness Pool




What is a March Madness Office Pool?

The March Madness Tournament Bracket Office Pool is by far the most popular pool there is. This pool is ran during the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship. The steps below explain how to run this pool. If you're looking for another office pool to run during the tournament view our complete list of Office Pools for College Basketball Tourney, we highly recommend trying our College Basketball Block Pool which is similar to the Super Bowl Squares, except you use the final score from every game of the tournament.


Before filling out your bracket be sure to checkout NCAA Tournament wins by Seed, and Final Four Appearances by Seed, where we have calculated the odds of each seed winning the tournament and making it to the final four based on all of the past tournaments.


Printing the Bracket

Print out this March Madness Bracket, estimate the total number of people you think will be interested in entering the pool and print/copy that many brackets.


Distribute the Bracket

Pass the printed brackets out to friends, family, and co-workers. Each person is to completely fill in the bracket with the team they think will win each game. For a tie breaker have each person write down what they think the total number of points scored in the championship game will be. View our Tiebreaker Rules for March Madness Pool.


Collect the Brackets

Be sure to have each participant turn in their completed bracket before the tournament begins. If you want to to do a little extra for the participants, print every person in the pool a copy of every other person's bracket. This is a lot of printing, but ensures to all people that the pool is being run fairly, and also allows them to see how well they are doing in the pool.


Scoring the Bracket

Each round is worth a set number of points, you can determine this on your own, but be sure to let all of the entries know before the tournament begins what the scoring system will be(you should write the point values under each round at the top of the bracket). We have set up a Fillable March Madness Bracket that allows you to type in the points per round, that way there are no handwritten instructions on the bracket. There is no standard for the point's system, everyone does it differently. View our NCAA Bracket Scoring Systems article for an overview of possible scoring systems. We have also wrote an article about whether or not you should Count the Play-In Games when Scoring your Bracket.


We prefer doing it as follows:

First Round= 1 point

Second Round= 2 Points

Third Round= 3 Points

Fourth Round=4 Points

Fifth Round= 6 Points

Sixth Round=10 Points


Declaring a Winner

Multiply the total number of correctly picked games in each round by the points assigned to that particular round. Tally all rounds together and the person with the highest point total wins!