I’m first in the online NCAA (Men’s) basketball pool I’m doing with my wife and daughter this year. It’s fun to know I’m first but the online brackets take much of the fun out of following the tournament. I found it much more interesting and exciting when we found out the score of each game and then compared the outcome to our predictions. With the online brackets, I’m not really engaged with the tournament, just my overall ranking in the pool.

I only started doing the tournament brackets in the past few years. I was just getting the hang of the process through following the tournament and getting to know the teams. This year it doesn’t seem to matter who is playing since the focus has moved to my bottom line rank in the pool. . In the past, I enjoyed the process of comparing the predictions I made with those of my fellow pool participants. There’s something Machiavellian about this that I’m not comfortable with. As long as I know I’m quote better than the others” I don’t really need to know the choices I’ve made.