Introducing Newsvine Tournament Pick ‘Em

March 13th, 2006

March is the greatest month of the year for basketball fans. Not only are there a ton of great NCAA Tournament games to watch, but there are a ton of bracket games to enter as well.

Bracket games, as most college hoops fans know, are designed to test your ability to predict the outcome of the NCAA Basketball Tournament. From a field of 64 teams, you pick the winners of each game, collecting points along the way in each round, and the person with the most points at the end wins. ESPN’s Tournament Challenge is one of the best such bracket games out there and having worked on it for several years at ESPN, I can attest to how popular it is.

So now that we’re building a world-class sports section on Newsvine, we figured we should do an NCAA Tournament game as well. But brackets are a little played out.

We wanted to do something new.

Presenting Newsvine Tournament Pick ‘Em. Newsvine Tournament Pick ‘Em has no bracket. Instead, each entrant is given a budget of 300 “doubloons” with which they can purchase however many teams they’d like. The rub is that each team costs a different amount, with the higher seeds being the most expensive. You can buy three teams or 15 teams… it’s up to you.

Each win is worth one point and the person with the most points wins a 60GB Video iPod from Newsvine.

Entering can take anywhere from 10 seconds to an hour depending on how long you stew over your picks.

So here’s the best part though: You can also invite up to 50 of your friends to enter your Tournament Pick ‘Em “group”.

If anyone you invite ends up winning the Video iPod, you will win one as well.

How’s that for teamwork?

So head on over to Newsvine Tournament Pick ‘Em and fill out your entry today.

… and you thought the iPod Contests were going away. :)

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16 Responses:

Matt Hoult says:

New, ingenious and representative of people as always, Mike.

#1 - March 13th, 2006 at 1:29 pm
FrankC says:

You never cease to amaze. This is awesome. To bad my Boilers have sucked since Gene Keady left. Cool game none the less.

Keep up the good work over at Newsvine.

#2 - March 13th, 2006 at 1:33 pm
Thomas M. says:

Excellent idea. In the immortal words of the two guys on the Guiness commercial: “Brilliant”!
Now to go purchase the Jayhawks.

BTW, love the interface of the bracket!

#3 - March 13th, 2006 at 2:12 pm
web says:

Is it possible to put all 300 on Boston College to win?

Its NANO-time!

#4 - March 13th, 2006 at 2:42 pm
ACoolie says:

I was wondering, since it technically says “If anyone you invite ends up winning a Video iPod, you do to,” does that mean that if I invite person a and she invites person b who invites person c. And if person c wins, does that mean that I, person a, person b, and person c win a Video iPod?

#5 - March 13th, 2006 at 5:44 pm
Daniel David says:

I’ve got all my picks and I’m ready to go!

I only wish I had seen the iPod give-a-way connection sooner, only you Mike.

#6 - March 13th, 2006 at 6:26 pm
Rob Goodlatte says:

I just filled in my picks. And I gotta say, the interface you’ve built is damn slick. This is a great replacement for the iPod giveaways.

And if any fellow Dukies are reading and want to join a tournament group, drop me an email – rsg4 -at- duke -dot- edu.

It was nice to meet you and Calvin at SXSW – the South by Northwest party was one of the highlights of the weekend.

#7 - March 13th, 2006 at 7:25 pm
Brent says:

If only Vanderbilt had made it. /cry. Those #16s for 1 point are so tempting…Too bad one has never before knocked off a #1 seed.

#8 - March 13th, 2006 at 11:17 pm
Mike D. says:

ACoolie: Nope. The invites only go one level deep. :)

#9 - March 14th, 2006 at 8:12 am
Ryan Berg says:

Thomas,

Glad to see another Jayhawk passing through Mike’s site.

Picking teams for this was quite difficult. Damn Newsvine, always making me think…

#10 - March 14th, 2006 at 6:08 pm
Jason F says:

When does Newsvine plan on recognizing revenue (I’m not talking about profits, just revenue of some kind). I don’t see any advert’s yet, so I was just wondering.

(Editor’s Note: Very soon.)

#11 - March 15th, 2006 at 1:43 pm
Jay says:

The page doesn’t seem to have any title at all… (The title element in the code is blank with appearing)

Very nice idea though, it’s great to see the Newsvine team will expand with fun events like this :)

Hopefully we’ll see something to do with the World Cup when that comes up (It’s an old sport in America called Soccer… but it’s the number one sport in Europe, and goes by the name of Football)

#12 - March 16th, 2006 at 3:20 pm
Jay says:

The previous comment is meant to say ‘with appearing’ … but I forgot about the tag stripping :) sorry ;)

#13 - March 16th, 2006 at 3:21 pm
Jeff Hartman says:

I love the style of tournament…but is there no way to see the picks of the others in your group(s)?

#14 - March 17th, 2006 at 9:09 am
Jeff Hartan says:

Ah, you listened! …or you were planning this before.

I feel my run on the leaderboard is over. Good times. Thanks!

#15 - March 24th, 2006 at 6:42 am
Jeff Hartman says:

I can’t believe I spelled my own name wrong. :)

#16 - March 24th, 2006 at 6:43 am

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