The traditional March Madness bracket pool has a few problems:
- Even in a pool of 20 friends, usually people only pick the same few teams to win the title.
- Because of this, the winner is usually decided before the final weekend.
- There's little reward for correctly picking a huge upset.
- And when a 13-seed makes a surprise run to the elite eight, chances are no one benefits from that
Calcutta fixes all of that.
Each team can only be owned by one person. And odds are that when you get down to the final four teams, you have four different owners each with one horse in the race.
That means that it only gets more valuable and exciting as the tournament progresses.
When you buy a double-digit seed team for peanuts and then they pull an upset, that's a nice return on investment.
And when a 13-seed makes a surprise run to the elite eight, someone owns that team and they probably paid next to nothing.
For pro football, this is a new and exciting way to think about fantasy. It's not about touchdowns and yards. It's about winning games and advancing through the playoffs. You hold your auction in August and then you stick with that team all the way and hope they win it all.
So when a 9-7 6th seed wins three road games and makes it to the championship that no one saw coming in August, you can smile knowing that's your team.
Just like in March Madness, there's strategy. Do you go all in on a few favorites, or try and buy a bunch of mid-range teams that could make the leap?
It's fun and addictive.
