Welcome to the fantasy throw down podcast, bringing you the latest from the world of

sports, DFS and gambling. With over five years of hot takes and millions of downloads later, I guess he's been doing something right.

Now, sit back and listen to one of the sharpest minds in the game.

Here's your host, Duane Calendar.

Hello and welcome to the show folks.

It is the special time of the year that I love diving into because there's so much to prep for but also consider from a game theory standpoint, and that's March

Madness because everyone always has bracket questions as to who's going to win which teams I should look out for

and most importantly how do I come up with the best idea for a bracket and again it's not easy but I love plugging away at this because you know the spirit of competition always

Brings out that even the most casual sports fan to take a look at their bracket to see if their alma mater has what it takes to make a deep run in March.

So without much further ado, let's start talking about the do's and don'ts that I always bring up

year after year that I constantly see folks get wrong. So first of all, the biggest taboo is no your format.

Realistically folks do not pay attention to the format of the structure.

Is it traditional scoring? Is it one point per first round win, two for the round of 32, four for the Sweet 16,

8 for the lead 8, 16 for each win in the semi-finals of 32 for the championship?

Or do you get some combination of upset value. Do you get the seed plus the points per round?

Do you get a multiplier per round? Like these are all real things or is it the seed minus

the seed of the other team if it's an upset.

Like these are all very real scoring formats that most of you do not pay attention to and

it makes the world a difference. I constantly harp on this.

To please, please look at the format of the tournament you are in. You have to because realistically and from an overall balance standpoint of how your bracket should look, there has to be some

contemplation of how the scoring format's going to work. Because if it's traditional, it's going to be more heavily weighted towards getting your elite 8 picks correct and the

final 4 picks as accurate as you can. If you have a scoring sequence that's closer to a

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