How to use technology to beat Obama’s March Madness Bracket

Fear not, slowpoke gamblers: There’s still time to fill out that NCAA Tournament bracket. The games don’t begin in earnest until Thursday morning, so many bracket pools still have several hours remaining for cogitation and predictions.

President Obama on Wednesday afternoon tweeted a link to a page on barackobama.com where you can examine his bracket and fill out one of your own. The president’s love of hoops is well documented; he was known in high school as Barry O’Bomber for his lefty jumpshot, and coolly drained a three-pointer for troops in Kuwait during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Mashable decided to give the Obama Bracket Challenge a whirl, and in the process found a tech-centric bracket service to help with your picks if you trust algorithms more than intuition.

Pick My Bracket is a site with an interesting premise — enter the stats you deem most important, and it produces a bracket based on seedings, statistics and “some randomness.” The site’s criteria is a bit simplistic, however, you only get to pick one of four stats (offense, defense, rebounds or assists) to emphasize, along with another more offbeat factor. But it’s not a bad start for a group of college kids, and fun to play with. Pairing “defense” with “SAT Scores” crowned Duke as national champion, while matching “offense” and “partying” gave Kansas the title.

If you trust in tech, Pick My Bracket could give you a leg up on President Obama. It’s fun to compare your picks against his in the bracket challenge, but also ends with a bit of a letdown. After finishing your picks, the site whisks you away to a page asking for credit card information and donations. But, like the site says, there’s “another another big match-up that’s happening this year: the one in November.”

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