The Perfect Bracket Simulator: How It Works

Summary

Whether you're like me and spend hours every year trying to get the perfect bracket or just need to get picks for a bracket group you now regret joining, the Perfect Bracket Simulator has you covered. To get started, use the "Bracket" dropdown menu in the top-right corner to select the tournament you want to create picks for. You'll find an empty bracket ready for you to customize. Adjust the weights manually on the left side or choose one of the preset combinations at the top. Just like that, you've created your bracket for this year's tournament!

If you're ready to dig deeper into the stats, there's more to explore. Once you've crafted your ideal combination of weights for this year's tournament, use the "Year" dropdown menu to see how your picks would have performed in past tournaments. This is where you either start second-guessing every choice or declare yourself a genius, depending on the results. Either way, analyzing previous years can help you refine your predictions even further.

Presets

The "Simplify" button lets you specify the team characteristics you believe increase their chances of winning the tournament. The Perfect Bracket Simulator will use your input to generate a set of weights and create a bracket for you automatically.

The "AI Prediction" preset is designed to optimize results based on the average performance of the past four years. When you select this preset, a bracket will be generated for you. However, you may notice that all the weights are deselected, and no scores are displayed next to the teams. This is because the AI Prediction relies on a more complex model beyond the weights shown on the website.

The "Random" preset generates a set of random weights and creates a bracket based on them. By default, these weights range from 0 to 100, but you can customize this range by clicking the dropdown on the "Random" preset button and adjusting the slider to your desired range.

The "Perfect" preset offers several options in its dropdown menu: one for the overall perfect prediction and one for each of the last four years. By default, the overall perfect prediction is selected, this prediction is optimized for the best average result across the past four years. If you switch to a specific year, the preset automatically updates to the perfect prediction for that year. The individual year presets are created after the tournament and show what an ideal weight combination would have been for that year. However, since these are tailored to a single year, they may not perform well for others.

Tips & Tricks

If you're manually adjusting the weights of the stats, here are a few tips to make the process easier. First, you can use the keyboard shortcut Alt + M (or Ctrl + Option + M on Mac) in Google Chrome to run your combination. If you don't want a stat to be included, simply uncheck it. To check or uncheck all stats at once, use the 'Select All / Deselect All' buttons. If your prediction is close but needs fine-tuning, click the 'Optimize Weights' button, and our model will use your weights as a starting point to optimize them for better results over the past four years. If you're happy with your stat combination, click 'Save' to download your weights as a text file. You can then easily reload them using the 'Load Weights' button. If you're ever unsure about a stat, hover over it for a brief description. When viewing previous years, the bracket's score is based on the standard ESPN scoring method.

Winner's Matrix

The Winner's Matrix displays the percentage chance each team has of advancing to each round of the tournament. It was created by running 10,000 simulations using the random setting and calculating the percentage of times each team reached each round. The results are presented in both table and bracket formats. The Matchup Mode of the Winner's Matrix lets you test any matchup between teams from any year, run a specified number of simulations, and the model will show you the percentage of time each team would win.