Updates

big sad.

I'm taking a long walk.

Now working with small numbers and high variance, if UCONN wins I'm probably cooked. Maybe Duke has their first good first half this game?

Despite Arizona's significantly higher rating, Purdue vs. Arizona leaves 15 brackets either way. My first perfect 50:50 matchup. This will leave me with 47% of the possible bracket combinations after this round (15/32).

Iowa leading 12-2. Oh boy.

This email was sent out tonight.

Duke loves almost losing.

Just 129 will remain if St. Johns wins.

In 2019 Gregg Nigl's bracket was eliminated on game 50 by Purdues win. It seems fitting that Purdue was also the game to break that record. (insert discussion of if this site even counts for "best bracket ever")

Wow, good stuff Iowa. Fun first 2 games of the Sweet 16. 50 games down, 13 to go. I think Arizona/Arkansas will be another thriller.

My boys lost :( and I did too. Good game, Iowa. 18,220 remain.

I added this note on the home page but I had a ton of duplicates. I have removed them from the "Remaining" count and only list unique brackets.

NEBRASKETBALL!!!!!!

Chase Johnston got me sweating bullets.

Put Robbie Avila in the history books. Dude's sensational and I am sad to see him go. I would not, however, have sacrificed 90% of my brackets to keep him. 18,086,445 remain.

Betting odds have MSU as a 70/30 favorite; I dont even have them at 60/40. Thought that was interesting.

A day of more chalk, and more chalk. Sorry, fans of March, but I am glowing.

With 44 million brackets remaining, and 3/4 of the remaining games having very heavy favorites, I'm projecting to end round 1 with at least 16,475,263 brackets. This is a 71% retention rate, well above the necessary 64.6% to get a perfect one from one trillion brackets. (Caveat as always: yes, the first round is by far the easiest).

And now the Gators are on. A Gainesville native, I must ask each of you to put it on. Haugh is goated, Chinyelu is the best defender in the league, Xaivian scores 11.5 ppg, Klavzar is SEC 6th man of the year, Condon is electric, Boogie is named Boogie Fland. TURN THE GAME ON!

6 games have finished today and only 75% of the brackets have been eliminated since yesterday. Virginia tried to lose for a while and Alabama let is stay close for a full half, but it's finished as chalk all day. Anybody else finding Fast Break coverage obnoxious?

Kentucky pulls through to stop another 60/40 loss. Virginia, if they don't get it together, could eliminate almost 94% of my remaining brackets with a loss.

I have added two pages: one shows the disparity between sportsbetting odds and kenpom for round 1, and the other lets you explore brackets that are still perfect.

I am having trouble getting approved for production emails access with the AWS email client (oops), so may send out an email later from onetrillionbrackets@gmail.com .

Pray for chalk.

I have 923,207,183 brackets remaining. ESPN reports ~13,000 remaining in their set. I should note that my website reported ~1.1 billion at the end of the day, but I had a subtle error in computing remaining brackets. This has since been fixed and won't happen again. I'll go back and fix my bracket graveyard eventually but it's still roughly accurate.

It may seem daunting that only 3 billion brackets remain, and 997 billion have been slaughtered in cold blood, but this is actually perfectly on track. On a per game basis right now I have a 64.9% retention rate; if I maintain a 64.6% retention rate, one will be perfect.

Now obviously the first round should be the easiest. It has the most strength disparity between teams. But 3 of the next 4 games should be a 90+% retention rate, and maybe there won't be an 80/20 upset tomorrow.

All in all, I am optimistic. Thanks for sticking around!

High Point is still the craziest upset yet, but there were just a few in a row mild upsets, taking out ~60% of the brackets multiple times in succession. I'm down to less than 3 billion. 3 of the next 4 games should be easier on my remaining brackets, but Georgia/St. Louis is a toss up. I'll almost certainly finish with more than 1 billion remaining

Michigan allows it stay close in the first half, then a cake walk in the second. 0.6978% of my remaining brackets, or 93801082, have been added to the graveyard. More than ten billion still remain.

4.5 minutes of overtime with a total of 4 points scored. lol. VCU makes it work and takes out 60 percent of my remaining brackets.

Half of Thursdays games have concluded and I have 3.3% of my brackets remaining. ESPN saw a record 26.6 million brackets made and there are only ~780,000 left, or approx 2.9%. This means my brackets have thus far performed slightly better than the average.

Vanderbilt pulls through with a convincing finish. High Point eliminated 80% of my brackets, but everything else is going smoothly. 40 billion remain.

I must've been the only spectator in the country rooting for Duke. Awesome game by Siena. I won't forget you, Folefac and Doty, but thank god duke pulled it out. 99.3% of brackets preserved.

High Point eliminates 81.2% of brackets in nail biting finish! Consider me bummed. But that was fun. We are below 100 billion after just 3 games, and thats not accounting for Duke being down by 11 at half. It's March!

Duke has the chance to absolutely devastate my week

Sandfort is electric! Go corn.

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