Berkshire Hathaway and Quicken to payout $1 billion for perfect NCAA bracket

[Stewie]

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and Dan Gilbert's Quicken Loans are partnering to award anyone who fills out a perfect 2014 Men's NCAA Tournament bracket with $1 billion.

The prize will be paid out in 40 annual installments of $25 million. If there's more than one winner they'll have to share. The winner or winners can also take or split up an immediate $500 million lump sum payment.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/warre...#ixzz2r4Mfpu1k

[mr. tegu]

In.

[suzzer99]

Well this should settle once and for all if civilization ever learns how to travel back in time.

[Rasputin]

Why win one billion dollars



When you could win ONE MILLION DOLLARS

[mlyonsd]

The funny thing is I work for a BH company and we aren't allowed to have any office pools, March Madness, SB, World Series, nothing. It's considered gambling.

This isn't the same thing but I find it ironic anyway, so does everyone that found out about this today in the office.

[CrazyPhuD]

Originally Posted by Third Eye

Can't for the life of me figure out why it's 2^65 and not 2^67. Obviously, before the play in era the odds were 2^63. Isn't there 16(2^4) ways the play in games can go though?

You are absolutely correct. It's actually 2^67 not 2^65, I wrote down the left column correctly for each but wrote down 2 bits instead of 4 bits for the four play in games like I should have. Number of games played should equal number of bits of possibility....silly careless errors!

[alnorth]

These contests never ask you to pick the play-in game winners. The reason is simple, the time between selection sunday and the playin games is too short, they want to give people as much time as possible to enter their contest, so they just give you the option to pick the winner of the play-in game, whoever that is.

So, you start out at 2^63. If you want to throw out the possibility of a 15 or 16 seed winning, then its 2^55, which is 1 in 36 quadrillion.

[alnorth]

Originally Posted by AustinChief

In 1993 I almost accomplished this. I had EVERY single game correct until the two semis and I managed to get BOTH of those wrong. Our bracket scoring was so heavily weighted to the semis and final game that I ended up coming in 2nd in points.

The odds of this happening is so small that no one (including me) is going to believe you unless you have registered your bracket with ESPN or a similar contest. (They would then publicize the hell out of it, making you famous even if you fail at the semis). If its not registered, it did not happen. Unfortunately, these big internet tournament games didn't exist back then.

Not saying you are lying, I just think you mis-remembered it or are mistaken.

[cosmo20002]

Originally Posted by alnorth

The odds of this happening is so small that no one (including me) is going to believe you unless you have registered your bracket with ESPN or a similar contest. (They would then publicize the hell out of it, making you famous even if you fail at the semis). If its not registered, it did not happen. Unfortunately, these big internet tournament games didn't exist back then.

Not saying you are lying, I just think you mis-remembered it or are mistaken.

Having read many, many of Austin's posts and assertions on a whole variety of topics, I have come to learn that the dude is never wrong. The only surprising thing about his story is that he missed those two games in the semis.

[AustinChief]

Originally Posted by alnorth

The odds of this happening is so small that no one (including me) is going to believe you unless you have registered your bracket with ESPN or a similar contest. (They would then publicize the hell out of it, making you famous even if you fail at the semis). If its not registered, it did not happen. Unfortunately, these big internet tournament games didn't exist back then.

Not saying you are lying, I just think you mis-remembered it or are mistaken.

Don't really care if anyone believes me. I'm not "misremembering" and I know it's astronomically low odds which is why it was a pretty big deal amongst the guys in my dorm (the whole thing consisted of a few dozen guys from Alice Lloyd Hall at U-M) but like I said only about half my picks were based on anything resembling basketball knowledge.

[AustinChief]

Originally Posted by cosmo20002

Having read many, many of Austin's posts and assertions on a whole variety of topics, I have come to learn that the dude is never wrong. The only surprising thing about his story is that he missed those two games in the semis.

Very funny, but it was pure dumb luck as I admitted. College bball is not really a huge thing for me.. more so than pros but still not something I have ever bothered to keep up with fanatically.

[Stewie]

Originally Posted by mlyonsd

The funny thing is I work for a BH company and we aren't allowed to have any office pools, March Madness, SB, World Series, nothing. It's considered gambling.

This isn't the same thing but I find it ironic anyway, so does everyone that found out about this today in the office.

I'm not sure it matters, but Quicken is running the game, BH is just the insurer.

[RippedmyFlesh]

Best bracket I did was 87 went 29-3 in 1st round. Finished 2nd cause I picked SU (my team) instead of Indiana. 2nd place bought a nice dinner with the wife. First would have bought a trip to hawaii. Not too agonizing watching my team and 1000's of dollars gone with a Keith Smart jumper. That was the worst I had ever hurt from sports. Until the Chief's last game and I had no financial interest in the Chief's game.

[chefsos]

Submissions will be limited to a total of one per household.

Originally Posted by Rain Man

Is there a limit on the number of entries? I may have to rent a supercomputer a lot of houses, but I can win this.

.

[Fat Elvis]

Originally Posted by alnorth

These contests never ask you to pick the play-in game winners. The reason is simple, the time between selection sunday and the playin games is too short, they want to give people as much time as possible to enter their contest, so they just give you the option to pick the winner of the play-in game, whoever that is.

So, you start out at 2^63. If you want to throw out the possibility of a 15 or 16 seed winning, then its 2^55, which is 1 in 36 quadrillion.

[cosmo20002]

Originally Posted by AustinChief

Don't really care if anyone believes me. I'm not "misremembering" and I know it's astronomically low odds which is why it was a pretty big deal amongst the guys in my dorm (the whole thing consisted of a few dozen guys from Alice Lloyd Hall at U-M) but like I said only about half my picks were based on anything resembling basketball knowledge.

We want names and last known phone #/address.