March Madness Bracket Challenge with a Salary Cap Is as Difficult as it Gets

We’re running a pool here at LBS full of prizes that you can join, and the scoring will be pretty standard. Most March Madness pools work pretty simply — you make your picks and then receive increased amounts of points for each round your teams advance. Some pools have points increase by one each round while others double each round. There are some other more complicated ways of doing the scoring for brackets, but nothing comes close to the challenge of doing a March Madness pool with a salary cap.

My uncle first introduced me to this system last year and it blew my mind. In this system, you get a $25 salary cap and have to pick teams based on a fixed price scale. In order to ensure you can’t load up on favorites, you must spend a specified amount of money in each price range indicated by the red writing below:

This is similar to a confidence pool in that it forces you to choose the teams you think will have the most success, and it forces you to pick upsets you might not ordinarily do. Again, this is a twist on the standard bracket challenges one typically enters, and it was one of the most difficult ones I’ve done. If you think you and your friends are ready to step your game up, try out one of these salary cap systems next time to truly test your skills.