NCAA Tourney: Calcutta Auction

[RMarsh83]

Is anyone experienced in running a Calcutta Auction for the NCAA basketball tourney? I am starting a Calcutta Auction for my office pool this year, and want to make sure that I structure it correctly. If you need a primer, go to Wiki and type in Calcutta (Gambling). So far, I have found the following to be the most classic rules:

1) Bidding is conducted on a Free Market basis. There is neither a pot limit, nor a limit on the bidding for any one team
2) Payment are due at the end of the auction.
3) Minimum bid is $1 and the bid increment is $1.
4) Teams will be up for bids in random order.
5) Payoffs will be 1/64 of the pot for a second round exit, 2/64 in the Sweet 16, 3/64 in the Elite Eight, 4/64 in the Final Four, 5/64 in the Championship game and 7/64 for the Champion.

Are there any additional rules or considerations that I am missing? Any comments in general on this type of bracket?

 

[RMarsh83]

I guess there is a distinct lack of basketball fans in this forum. It's too bad that the ESPN forums are blocked at the office...

 

[mikeyj92]

I have never been in one of these type of pools, but it seems you got it covered.

I would give thought to the random team order for bidding. Maybe do it random within each region (or alternate a high/low within each region), that way might be more conducive to creating higher bids overall. You'd hate to have most of the better/higher seeded teams auctioned off early on only to be left with lower seeds and a bunch of people done bidding because they got a high seed already.

How many people are in the pool?

 

[RMarsh83]

I'm picturing about a dozen people in the pool, that way everyone can have about 5 teams to follow so that they won't be eliminated right away... if they bid intelligently.