March Madness being absent this year doesn’t mean your bracket betting game is over. Despite the NCAA having cancelled its tournament until next year, sportsbooks still pushed through with their bracket contests through polls, and opened up a new market for bracket betting in simulation sports.

This means that even if March has passed, there are still plenty of rooms you can pull off your bracket skills. And do it the best way you can. Here are 5 useful tips that can help you create a bracket with extreme potential.

Home court advantage matters

Other bettors or bracket experts may say home court advantage doesn’t matter in bracket betting, but not me. While it’s true that not all teams playing in their home soil get a predetermined win, there are certain factors that one may consider, especially in college basketball. For example, a team that has to travel and deal with jet lag for a day or two is already behind a team who only takes a few minutes to get to the court and get a training head start.

Avoid relying on instant brackets

Because bracket betting has become so easy to do online, it can be very tempting to simply pattern your bracket from a ready-made template presented by sports sites or pundits. While these sites have credibility, you can’t be sure that it’s a winning bracket. Often, bracket bettors would just copy what is shown and call it a day. Do your own research, and instead of looking for instant brackets, study the odds presented by sportsbooks so you can come up with a stronger prediction supported by facts and figures.

Switch it up

Lastly, drafting a bracket is no easy task. It’s like creating a massive game plan, or finding your way out of a lengthy maze. It can be very difficult, which is why I’ll let you in on a simple strategy to make it easier. Some bracketing betting pros find it efficient and quite effective to start from the top of the ranks all the way to the bottom, instead of starting from the first game like the usual. This makes sense, as usually when predictions come before the tournament, it’s the top seeds that get presented. Start from there, and it’ll be easier to map out the lower parts.