NCAA Tournament “Pick X” Pool Strategy

Strategy advice to get an edge in NCAA Tournament "Pick X" pools, where you pick specific teams and earn points as they win games.

by Jason Lisk - Feb 25, 2026

Some of you may play in a nontraditional NCAA Tournament pool — where rather than selecting each matchup in a bracket, you pick a certain number of teams and get points based on their results, however far they advance.

We’ll refer to these pools as “Pick X” pools, where the “X” represents the number of teams you select for a contest.

Here are some characteristics of the pools we cover in this article:

• Rather than pick a bracket, you select individual teams.
• Teams can be picked by other contest entrants and appear on multiple entries.
• You get points based on the number of wins and a specified scoring system (such as team seed number).

That second characteristic sets these pools apart from Calcutta auctions (which we’ll cover separately) or a draft-style pool. In a Pick X pool, you have to determine which teams are most valuable and find unique options to differentiate your entry from popular picks.

Here is a summary of our strategy for these types of pools:

1. Know Your Scoring Rules
   
2. Use Objective Advancement Odds to Assess Each Team
3. Consider Team Popularity
4. Balance Your Picks Across the Bracket for Upside
5. Adapt Your Risk-Taking Based on Pool Size

Optimize For Your NCAA Tournament “Pick X” Pool

In a “Pick X” pool, the goal isn’t just picking the champion; it’s maximizing total wins/points.

Our NCAA Bracket Picks product includes an advancement odds table showing each team’s probability of reaching every round. By converting those percentages into fractional wins and adding them together, you can estimate how many total wins we project for each team on average.

That makes it easy to compare teams objectively and target the ones most likely to stack wins.

1. Know Your Scoring Rules

This tenet applies to many different pool contests, but it’s especially important in these types of contests because the rules can be so different from pool to pool. Common variations include seed-based scoring and round-based escalators.

For example, one of my favorite NCAA Tournament pools is a “Pick 10 teams” contest where you get “3 points + seed number” for every win. That “3 + seed” leads to some drastically different values compared to a pool where you earn points based on the exact seed number.

If you play in a pool where you get only the seed number for every win, the No. 1 seeds could get six points at most. That’s fewer points than you would get just for correctly picking a No. 7 seed to win one game. You generally wouldn’t want to take top seeds in this format because the scoring upside is so low.

However, the “3 + seed” scoring somewhat balances it out. A national title-winning No. 1 seed can earn you 24 points (four points per win times six wins). You’ll still get more scoring upside with other picks (Loyola-Chicago won me a pool in 2018 with 56 points on its surprise Final Four run).

Getting a mix of top seeds that advance far and some Cinderella runs becomes more critical.

Here’s a table showing the difference in expected scoring between the two formats based on the historical performance of these seeds.

Seed	Expected Wins	Seed Points	3 + Seed Points
1	3.4	3.4	13.2
4	1.4	5.6	9.8
7	0.9	6.3	9.0
12	0.6	7.2	9.0

In pools where you get the seed number in points for a win, the No. 1 seeds (and other high seeds) are at a disadvantage. That switches, on average, in the 3 + seed scoring.

So, pay attention to where those tipping points are and make sure you know your pool’s scoring rules.

2. Use Objective Advancement Odds to Assess Each Team

Once you know the scoring system and rules, you must determine what each team is worth (on average) in your pool. To do so, you need to find objective advancement odds that account for the path through the bracket.

Our Bracket Picks product has an advancement odds table that shows you the likelihood of a team winning in a certain round. You can convert those percentages to fractional wins and add them up to see how many wins, on average, we project for each team.

Then, you can apply your scoring rules to those win estimates to find which teams are projected to score the most points in your pool.

When looking at teams, you don’t just want to look at the average, though. You also want to look at the more extreme outcomes, the top 10-20 percentile events, and assess how many points you get if that hits a particular team by seeing what round we give each team between a 10-20 percent chance of reaching.

3. Consider Team Popularity

Once you have a list of the teams projected to score the most points in your pool, you still need to make some decisions based on how popular the pick might be and how much risk and variability you should target based on your pool.

We don’t have specific pick popularity data for these types of pools. Still, you can look at the pick popularity estimates in our bracket pool product to understand which teams are most popular relative to their seed number.

You don’t necessarily need to avoid teams because they will likely be popular. However, you need to recognize that you win a pool like this by having a mix of the “right popular teams” hitting on some picks that aren’t as commonly shared. You will inevitably end up sharing teams with other entries, but you want to have some high-value plays that are also less popular.

4. Balance Your Picks Across the Bracket for Upside

This is probably the biggest piece of advice for these pools once you have your point-value estimates for each team. If all of your teams perform to their average expectation, you aren’t going to win a pool like this. You need some positive extreme results, particularly in larger pools.

Because of that, you want to balance your picks across the tournament bracket. In other words, make sure the teams you pick can only play each other if they have already made deep runs and have scored lots of points.

If you are in a pool where you pick eight teams, you would ideally want to choose exactly two teams from each region and make sure they cannot play until the Elite Eight. Even if two teams in the same quadrant were among your most valuable teams based on average projected points, you should usually pick only one of them.

Depending on your scoring rules, you’ll also want to balance your teams based on the types of teams you are picking. If your scoring system makes selecting the top seeds a viable strategy, you still wouldn’t want to choose two No. 1 seeds on the same side of the bracket. You wouldn’t want to select the No. 1/4/5 and No. 2/3 seeds in the same region, either. That’s because these teams must make even deeper runs to be a good upside pick.

You should still apply this rule if your pool requires fewer than eight picks. However, you will have some quadrants of the bracket where you don’t have a team.

If you are in a pool that requires more than eight picks, you will have to pick some teams in the same section of a bracket. In that case, you should pair lower seeds from the top and bottom half of the region. For example, picking a No. 8 seed and No. 12 seed is better than picking lower seeds that can meet in the Sweet 16.

5. Adapt Your Risk-Taking Based on Pool Size

Finally, you need to make your team selections based on the appropriate level of risk. The bigger the pool, the more boom-or-bust your approach should be.

The entries that win these pools usually have several Cinderellas that advance deep into the tournament from the middle seeds, and maybe some key early upsets in the first week.

For example, in 2024, winning entries probably had some combination of No. 11 NC State (four wins), No. 6 Clemson (three wins), No. 4 Alabama (four wins), No. 14 Oakland (one win), and No. 13 Yale (one win).

Aside from Alabama, all those teams were underdogs in their first-round games (Yes, including Clemson, as a slight underdog to No. 11 New Mexico). Based on the betting market odds, the most likely outcome was that you would take a zero by choosing them.

But you want to play for higher variability as pools get larger, and you should have more value teams outside the best 10 to 20 teams entering the tournament if you want to cash.

In larger pools, it’s almost certain that nearly every team will be picked, and someone will have the Cinderella runs. That makes these different from even large bracket contests.

The reality is that most entries in these pools are “dead” entering the Sweet 16. To increase your odds of making a big run, you must take some big swings and risk falling out of contention quickly.