The 2023 NCAA Tournament Block Pool

 

When you haven’t written anything substantial for a while, it sometimes is difficult to remember basic things like how to start, what the structure should look like, or how to spell. All of these afflictions will haunt me over the next few weeks as I get back into this concept of writing things down for other people.

With that, happy NCAA Tournament 2023!

For the next three weeks, this space will be used to communicate administration of the NCAA Tournament Block Pool.

The rules are pretty simple for this. Now that the final grid has been distributed and everyone has their numbers, a few things from your commissioner:

1. Each entry will keep its numbers for the entirety of the tournament. We will not re-draw numbers.
2. A winning block is one that has a two number combination that matches the last digits of the final score for each team in the game. As an example, if the Home team wins a game 78-63, then the box corresponding to Home 8; Away 3 is the winner. This applies to the final score, not the score at the end of regulation.
3. For game tracking, “Home” is defined as the team with the lower number seed and “Away” as the team with the higher number seed. As an example, if a 4-seed is playing a 13-seed then the 4-seed is the Home team and the 13-seed is the Away team. 
4. As we get later in the tournament, there is the possibility of teams with the same tournament seed playing each other. In these circumstances, the higher ranked team as established at the start of the tournament will be designated the Home team. We will be using the overall seeding as published at CBS sports.
5. I will post an updated “leaderboard” shortly after each day of play that links to the official game scores and lists winners in this pool.

6.     All winnings will be paid out at the end of the tournament.

The pool will pay out winners for all 63 games played starting West Virginia (Away) – Maryland (Home) and finishing in Houston with the Championship Game. The payouts per round will be:

• 1^st Round Games - $25 each
• 2^nd Round Games - $50 each
• Sweet 16 Games - $100 each
• Elite 8 Games - $200 each
• Final 4 Games - $400 each
• Championship Game - $1000

Good luck everyone! I am looking forward to an exciting tournament.

Your commissioner

Sinickal