All you need to do is to get the perfect March Madness bracket and Warren Buffett will fork over the dosh
Every year in the United States, once the aftermath of the Superbowl dies down, the excitement of March Madness and college basketball grips the nation, as everyone tries to put together the perfect bracket to predict who will win, who will lose, and what the final four will be.
This year, there’s even more of an impetus to do so as Warren Buffett along with multinational company Berkshire Hathaway and Quicken Loans, owned by one of his billionaire best buds Dan Gilbert is offering the ‘Quicken Loans Billion Dollar Bracket.’ All you need to do is get the perfect bracket, predicting the outcome of every game from start to finish of the men’s NCAA championship. Doesn’t sound too difficult, does it? Well you’re wrong, of course.
Your odds of winning are not good, as some maths people have done the calculations and figured that you have a one in a quintillion (which is a real number, apparently) chance of getting it right, or one in 4,294,967,296 to be exact. We’ve never seen that many numbers in a row before, except on our credit card bill.
Buffett is estimated to be worth about $53 billion, according to the lads at Forbes, so we reckon he’s good for the money if you somehow manage to pull it off, but that’s not the only prize on offer. There’s $100,000 for the top 20 “imperfect” brackets, on the proviso that you use it for buying or remodeling your home.
Anyway, just in case we happen to be idiot savants when it comes to college basketball, we’re going to throw our hat in the ring, as you’ve got to be in it to win it. Perhaps knowing almost nothing about the sport will help us, like how Beethoven’s deafness helped him to compose his amazing Ninth Symphony, right?
Hat-tip to Forbes for the figures
