No Perfect Brackets Left in the Billion Dollar Bracket Challenge
Berkshire Hathaway's billion dollars is officially safe for another year.
The Quicken Loans / Yahoo! Billion Dollar Bracket Challenge offered people the chance to win a billion dollars if they correctly picked every single game of the NCAA March Madness tournament. The turnout for the Challenge was predictably large, as a total of 8.7 million people submitted entries, hoping for a chance to become a billionaire overnight.
The Billion Dollar Bracket Challenge was insured by Warren Buffett's company, Berkshire Hathaway. Berkshire Hathaway received a premium to insure the contest and guaranteed that the winner (if there was one) would receive $1 billion if they picked every game correctly. If there was more than one winner, they would share the billion dollars.
The odds of picking perfectly were very long indeed - one mathematician put the odds at 1:128,000,000,000. There was virtually no chance of anybody picking a perfect bracket (it's thought that nobody has ever picked a perfect bracket in the history of the March Madness tournament).
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After a number of first round upsets, the number of perfect brackets dwindled to just a handful. Duke's loss to the Mercer Bears was the dagger in the hearts of many, as 97.6% picked the Blue Devils to win. As the day went on, more brackets fell until there were just three left. George Washington's upset win over Memphis took out the remaining three brackets, and now there are no perfect brackets remaining.
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In the end, 8.7 million brackets were wiped out over the course of just 25 games, and Warren Buffett's billion dollars is safe for another year.
Filed under: General Knowledge