Warren Buffet is taking March Madness to the next level

WALL STREET JOURNAL — Warren Buffett is running a pretty big March Madness pool this year. Mr. Buffett, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, just announced that his conglomerate plans to award $100,000 to the winner or winners of a companywide “ultimate office bracket contest.”
 And there’s a chance that the winner could take home even more. Waaaay more.
 If an employee manages to correctly pick all the games in first two rounds of this year’s NCAA basketball tournament, they’ll take home $1 million.
 A year.
 For the rest of their lives.
 Mr. Buffett announced the contest on CNBC Monday morning, where he appeared to discuss the economy, stockpicking and more after releasing his widely read annual letter to Berkshire shareholders on Saturday. The announcement of the contest for Berkshire employees came as a bit of an aside, and may have been unplanned; Mr. Buffett said some senior Berkshire managers hadn’t even been told about it yet. He dubbed it the “ultimate office bracket contest.”
 
 Warren Buffet is sure turning up the heat on the whole March Madness office tournament idea. Buffet the 3rd richest man in the world is no stranger to March Madness as he did a 1 billion dollar give away just two years ago for the tournament.
 
 “This is not the first time Buffett has been connected to a bracket contest. Two years ago, Buffett teamed with Quicken Loans to offer $1 billion to anyone who picked a perfect bracket. With odds of 1 in 9.2 quintillion, no one won. [ESPN]”
 
 This year he is increasing the odds of winning by going to a perfect sweet 16 instead of the perfect bracket that he offered two years ago. Doing this increases the chance of a winner but by limiting the contest to only Berkshire Hathaway employees he is limiting his risks. Below are the odds courtesy of ESPN.
 
 “The odds of getting the first 48 games right are better, but it’s unlikely a Buffett employee will be able to pull it off. Over the past six years, 48 million brackets were submitted to ESPN’s Tournament Challenge. Only one bracket got the first round (the first 32 picks) correct.”
 
As tournament season draws near its almost time to start watching college hoops and creating dozens of brackets with little to no hope of getting the whole bracket right. May the odds forever be in your favor.