Monday, March 29, 2004 :::
In my NCAA tournament contest, Kate Malcolm now has 89 points, and mad props and high kudos to her for the Xavier pick, which is currently the second most valuable team in the field, and finishes no worse than fourth — better than that unless UConn beats Georgia Tech in the championship. I'm running second with 79, and my brother has 70. Aside from me, the only team anyone has in the final four is Georgia Tech, and we all have Georgia Tech, so my brother has clinched last place. Thanks for playing.I also have Connecticut and Oklahoma State. If either wins the championship, I win the contest; if either ACC team wins, so does Kate.
This could change with trading, which is allowed, but I suppose would require that I put one or both of my teams on the block; I'll get back to y'all shortly about that.
Update: I might ought to offer up one of my teams for 25. If my brother decided he wanted me, rather than Kate, to win the contest, he could bid on the team. For Kate to have any chance, she would have to outbid my brother and hope that team won the championship.
The reason the trading rules are as complicated as they are is to try to prevent this sort of thing; if there were hundreds of entrants, others could also offer these teams, but at lower prices, and throw the wheels off conspiracies of this sort.
I don't think my brother would do something like that, but I also don't think anyone wants to buy the teams at a price at which I'm interested in selling. (Indeed, 25 would not be out of line with the price at which I offered them last week, especially Oklahoma State, which has since beat St. Joseph's.) So in the interest of appearances as much as simplicity, I'm not offering either team for sale. If we do a contest like this next year, the trading provision is contingent on a certain number of entries in the contest.
(I don't know whether I explained this here, but the reason I'd like to have trading, with an efficient market, is to give a better idea as to who is really "ahead" at any given point. As with traditional brackets, a contestant with a lower score after two rounds may have more teams left in the contest; a market price for each of the teams would give a more accurate measure of how well anyone is doing at a given time.)
::: posted by dWj at 9:21 AM
