Warren Buffett Is Giving Away A Billion Dollars In Basketball Contest

[Moonglow]

Damn! This would be the year I paid no attention to college basket ball.....

 

[Pop23]

Misleading title.

Buffett isn't giving anything away, his company sold an insurance policy to Quicken Loans for the contest.

So if someone wins his company has to pay up?

Don't think it's ever been documented that anyone ever has done it

Creightons my pick ( I work 5 miles from the campus )

 

[Politico]

Which is why he offered it.

 

[Rocko]

Dayton beat Ohio State. I'm done.

 

[eflatminor]

Misleading title.

Buffett isn't giving anything away, his company sold an insurance policy to Quicken Loans for the contest.

So if someone wins his company has to pay up?

Yes.

That's different than giving something away. Quicken Loans bought an insurance policy from him.

In all likelihood, Buffet/Quicken bought a policy from an insurance company that offers coverage for things like 'hole in one' events and other prizes that are statistically not likely to be paid. For this billion dollar bracket thing, the premium for such a policy wouldn't be much. The odds are ASTRONOMICAL that anyone would pick every single game correctly. It's never been done and will probably never be accomplished if we had NCAA tournaments for the next thousand years. The chances of someone picking it THIS YEAR? So high that it's a safe bet for any insurance company.

Would love to be proved wrong, but I'm confident in saying it ain't gonna happen.

Still, they will pay out $100k to those with the best bracket picks. I signed up...didn't cost nothing.

 

[Truthseeker420]

Dayton beat Ohio State. I'm done.

me too !

 

[Pop23]

Harvard and Oregon took me out.

Go Bluejays!

 

[Truthseeker420]

Harvard and Oregon took me out.

Go Bluejays!

Who would take Harvard?

 

[Pop23]

Harvard and Oregon took me out.

Go Bluejays!

Who would take Harvard?

Second year in a row they upset in the first round. Honestly I was that close to picking them but just couldn't do it. I mean HARVARD?

 

[Rocko]

Dayton beat Ohio State. I'm done.

me too !

You have to admit it, it's kind of funny that we lost after the first game. I was actually under the delusion that I had a chance.

 

[Synthaholic]

Misleading title.

Buffett isn't giving anything away, his company sold an insurance policy to Quicken Loans for the contest.

DING! DING! DING! We have a winner!


Don’t Take Warren Buffett’s Bracket Challenge


You’ll get $1 billion if you fill out a perfect NCAA bracket. Don’t do it.

*snip*


1) You will not win.

There is a chance, but the chance is so vanishingly small that it’s actually more rational to say there’s no chance. As Yahoo and Quicken note in the fine print of their rules page: “odds of winning the Grand Prize are 1:9,223,372,036,854,775,808.” That’s 1 in 9 quintillion and change. See the image to the left for what a mere 1 quintillion pennies would look like (the larger white sliver is the Empire State Building). Another way to think about it: If all 317 million people in the U.S. filled out a bracket at random, you could run the contest for 290 million years, and there’d still be a 99 percent chance that no one had ever won.

2) No one will win.

ESPN has been running a large-scale bracket contest for 13 years. Nobody has ever come close to perfection, the sports network’s John Diver told CNN in January. Only one person in the last seven years managed to pick just the first-round winners correctly.

“I don’t want to say it’s impossible,” Diver said, “but it’s basically impossible.”

The giant Powerball and Mega Millions lotteries are set up so that someone has to win eventually. As a given jackpot grows, more people hear about it and buy tickets, and since there’s no limit on the number of tickets sold, the probability that one of them is a winner approaches 100 percent.

Not so here. Buffett and Quicken have capped the number of entries at 15 million, so the odds that there’s a winner stay very, very small. If you use Bergen’s calculation, generously assuming the contest fills up with 15 million basketball experts, then Buffett and Quicken would have to pay the billion only 0.012 percent of the time. That means there’s about a 1 in 8,500 chance that anyone wins, period.

 

[PredFan]

You can't just pick the winner. You have to correctly pick the whole bracket.

Far be it for me to support that asshat Buffet but it isn't as long odds as has been posted. The odds would be that way only if you blindly picked the teams or threw darts at it. But it isn't that way. Some teams we know will win certain games. I would bet that a lot of people correctly pick the winners if the first round. Still, probably no one will win it.

 

[Pop23]

You can't just pick the winner. You have to correctly pick the whole bracket.

Far be it for me to support that asshat Buffet but it isn't as long odds as has been posted. The odds would be that way only if you blindly picked the teams or threw darts at it. But it isn't that way. Some teams we know will win certain games. I would bet that a lot of people correctly pick the winners if the first round. Still, probably no one will win it.

I agree, some people truly study the game. It's a bit like poker, to be an expert you have to play a ton of hands. Nobody will win, but I'm not sure a perfect bracket won't be completed before my demise.

 

[asterism]

So if someone wins his company has to pay up?

Yes.

That's different than giving something away. Quicken Loans bought an insurance policy from him.

In all likelihood, Buffet/Quicken bought a policy from an insurance company that offers coverage for things like 'hole in one' events and other prizes that are statistically not likely to be paid. For this billion dollar bracket thing, the premium for such a policy wouldn't be much. The odds are ASTRONOMICAL that anyone would pick every single game correctly. It's never been done and will probably never be accomplished if we had NCAA tournaments for the next thousand years. The chances of someone picking it THIS YEAR? So high that it's a safe bet for any insurance company.

Would love to be proved wrong, but I'm confident in saying it ain't gonna happen.

Still, they will pay out $100k to those with the best bracket picks. I signed up...didn't cost nothing.

While generally true, Buffett doesn't buy those policies. He's the one who sells them.

Gen Re delivers reinsurance solutions to the Life/Health and Property/Casualty insurance industries. We work closely with our clients to understand their strategic and operational goals, offering a wide range of products, tools and resources that aim to promote our clients’ ongoing growth and success. As a direct reinsurer, we are in the risk assumption business, just like our clients. Our shared perspective helps us understand and evaluate even the toughest risks - and propose the right solution for you.

Gen Re is a member of the Berkshire Hathaway family of companies, and has earned superior financial strength ratings from each of the major rating agencies. We take our commitments very seriously. And with $14 billion in capital and $6 billion in premiums, we only make promises we can keep.

Welcome to Gen Re

 

[Synthaholic]

You can't just pick the winner. You have to correctly pick the whole bracket.

Far be it for me to support that asshat Buffet but it isn't as long odds as has been posted.

Your ridiculous mathematical pronouncements are as ridiculous as your climate change pronouncements.

But, hey, any moron can say whatever they like - look at Sarah Palin.

The odds would be that way only if you blindly picked the teams or threw darts at it. But it isn't that way. Some teams we know will win certain games. I would bet that a lot of people correctly pick the winners if the first round. Still, probably no one will win it.

Dayton is laughing their asses off at you.

 

[Pop23]

You can't just pick the winner. You have to correctly pick the whole bracket.

Far be it for me to support that asshat Buffet but it isn't as long odds as has been posted.

Your ridiculous mathematical pronouncements are as ridiculous as your climate change pronouncements.

But, hey, any moron can say whatever they like - look at Sarah Palin.

The odds would be that way only if you blindly picked the teams or threw darts at it. But it isn't that way. Some teams we know will win certain games. I would bet that a lot of people correctly pick the winners if the first round. Still, probably no one will win it.

Dayton is laughing their asses off at you.

Ohio state finished 5th in the Big Ten. A Dayton win was not all that surprising.

 

[eflatminor]

Yes.

That's different than giving something away. Quicken Loans bought an insurance policy from him.

In all likelihood, Buffet/Quicken bought a policy from an insurance company that offers coverage for things like 'hole in one' events and other prizes that are statistically not likely to be paid. For this billion dollar bracket thing, the premium for such a policy wouldn't be much. The odds are ASTRONOMICAL that anyone would pick every single game correctly. It's never been done and will probably never be accomplished if we had NCAA tournaments for the next thousand years. The chances of someone picking it THIS YEAR? So high that it's a safe bet for any insurance company.

Would love to be proved wrong, but I'm confident in saying it ain't gonna happen.

Still, they will pay out $100k to those with the best bracket picks. I signed up...didn't cost nothing.

While generally true, Buffett doesn't buy those policies. He's the one who sells them.

Gen Re delivers reinsurance solutions to the Life/Health and Property/Casualty insurance industries. We work closely with our clients to understand their strategic and operational goals, offering a wide range of products, tools and resources that aim to promote our clients’ ongoing growth and success. As a direct reinsurer, we are in the risk assumption business, just like our clients. Our shared perspective helps us understand and evaluate even the toughest risks - and propose the right solution for you.

Gen Re is a member of the Berkshire Hathaway family of companies, and has earned superior financial strength ratings from each of the major rating agencies. We take our commitments very seriously. And with $14 billion in capital and $6 billion in premiums, we only make promises we can keep.

Welcome to Gen Re

I'm very familiar with GenRe. They don't sell 'hole in one' type policies. They're a "reinsurance" company, which means they provide insurance for the insurance carriers on both a facultative and treaty basis. So, depending on the insurance company that provided the coverage (if one did), GenRe may be on the line if the award is paid out and they have a pre-existing agreement with that carrier...but GenRe would only pay after the primary carrier has paid their limits.

The more I think about this, the more I suspect they didn't bother with insurance. It's just not going to happen, so why bother paying the premium?

 

[Pop23]

Ok, Mercer beat Duke

Warren will sleep good tonight

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Do you have to pick the scores too?

 

[Synthaholic]

You can't just pick the winner. You have to correctly pick the whole bracket.

Far be it for me to support that asshat Buffet but it isn't as long odds as has been posted.

Your ridiculous mathematical pronouncements are as ridiculous as your climate change pronouncements.

But, hey, any moron can say whatever they like - look at Sarah Palin.

The odds would be that way only if you blindly picked the teams or threw darts at it. But it isn't that way. Some teams we know will win certain games. I would bet that a lot of people correctly pick the winners if the first round. Still, probably no one will win it.

Dayton is laughing their asses off at you.

Ohio state finished 5th in the Big Ten. A Dayton win was not all that surprising.

Where did Dayton finish?