Someone Actually Won Warren Buffett’s Bracket Challenge
Even though he made one crucial mistake
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After accurately predicting the outcomes of the first 29 games of March Madness, one West Virginia factory worker will bring home a good chunk of money—$100,000 to be precise. According to CNN, he beat all of his colleagues at Berkshire Hathaway to win the prize, and went on to correctly pick the 31st and 32nd game winners in the first round to boot. That being said, his failure to pick the winner of the 30th game cost him Warren Buffett’s famous prize of $1 million a year for life for having a flawless bracket.
Berkshire Hathaway has yet to release the lucky winner’s name, but we’re guessing he’s grateful he doesn’t have to share his winnings with another employee, which was the case with last year’s company-wide competition. He may not have won the ultimate prize this year, but if his predictive abilities are any indication, he has a good chance of winning big next year—as long as he keeps working at Berkshire Hathaway, that is.
When Buffett initially started the competition in 2014, he opened it up to the general public and offered $1 billion to anyone who could correctly fill out a truly flawless bracket and predict the winners of all 63 games in the tournament. If you didn’t hear about anyone becoming a billionaire overnight, that’s because no one won. To be fair, the odds of filling out a perfect bracket are 1 in 9.2 quintillion according to Forbes. Since then, Buffett has limited the competition to just his employees, which number in the hundreds of thousands at Berkshire Hathaway alone. Hopefully, we’ll see one of this year’s 96,000 entrants win the grand prize this time next spring.