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At least now we know why productivity drops during the basketball tournament.

The NCAA basketball tournament starts every year on March 15th and lasts until April 2nd. The national championship game will take place Monday, April 2nd.

A total of 64 basketball teams will take part in this tournament. They will battle it out on the basketball field until there will be just two. The only way to stay in the tournament is to keep winning. All the losing teams are out of the tournament. This is traditionally called “The Big Dance”.

Out of the 64 teams that started the tournament, the 32 winners will play on Thursday and Friday and again Saturday or Sunday. 48 teams will be out of the tournament by late Sunday night. The remaining 16 teams, known as the “Sweet 16” will advance to the third round next Thursday and Friday. Only 8 teams will be left two days later. Four teams will be left later on, and then the national championship game will take place.

According to the experts people will wager around $2.5 billion on the NCAA basketball tournament this year. Only 4% of the estimated $2.5 billion will be wagered legally in Nevada.

Fun fact: The total amount of money wagered on the NCAA basketball tournament surpasses the amount of money wagered on the last Super Bowl.

Mathematical fact: The odds of picking a perfect bracket are 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 1. That is 9 quintillion to 1, or a billion times bigger than 9 billion. It is even bigger that Bill Gates’ estimated fortune.

Here is how I think about it: if every man, woman and child on planet Earth randomly filled out 10 million brackets each, the odds would be less than 1% that even one would have a perfect bracket.

RJ Bell from Pregame.com has a few pointers meant to help you pick the winner. You may even know him if you ever gambled online.

Note that the statistics presented below cover the last 21 years of the NCAA basketball tournament, starting with 1985 when the tournament expanded to 64 teams.

- Be very selective about picking any team below a No. 12 seed to win in round one. No. 16 seeds are 0 for 88 and No. 15 seeds are only 4 for 88.

- In 11 out of 24 games, for the last 6 years, No. 12 seeds have beaten No. 5 seeds and No. 9 seeds have beat No. 8 seeds

- No. 1 seeds advance almost automatically in round two. 86% of the time they will win heir first two games.

- The No. 12 and No. 10 seeds you picked to win in round one will have a 50% chance of winning in round two.

- Only 9% of the teams seeded No. 13 or lower advance past round two.

- Advance exactly three of the No. 1 seeds in the “Sweet 16”. Only 70% of the No. 1 seeds advance into the Elite Eight.

- No team seeded No. 12 or lower has ever advanced into the Elite 8.

- Exactly one or two No. 1 seeds have made the Final Four 18 in the last 22 years.

- Do not advance any team lower than a No. 8 seed to the Final Four. Only 2 out of 88 Final Four teams have been seeded lower than No. 8.

- Do not advance any team lower than a No. 6 to the championship game. No such team has ever made it to the championship game.

- Usually the championship is won by a No. 4 seed or higher. For 18 consecutive years a No. 4 seed or higher has won the NCAA basketball tournament.

Keep this information in mind the next time you enter an office pool. It may prove very useful.