Tourney odds are calculated using a Monte Carlo Simulation. Actually, multiple Monte Carlo Simulations.
Basically, every remaining game has a projection from the model of what percent of the time each team *should* win. The simulation then uses a random number generator to pick a winner for that game. So, if your team is a 75% favorite, when the random number is 1-75, it’ll pick you to win. If it’s 76-100, it’ll pick you to lose. It then does this for every game in the state and generates Heal Point Standings based on those results. If you do this enough times, you will end up with every possible combination of Heal Points. Of course, that’s a LOT of times. Normally, you would do 10,000 simulations, but since this is actually multiple Monte Carlo Simulations built inside of a larger one, I find my computer can do 1,000 without completely bogging down to the point of being unusable.
The process is then repeated using a 50/50 prediction for every game, which creates more combinations where the 0-14 team actually wins their final 4 games.
So, when the Tourney Odds say that you’re 42% to get the 3 seed, that means that in 42% of the simulations using the model’s predictions, you ended up in the 3 seed. Simple enough.
The Best and Worst Case Scenarios come from the 50/50 simulations, as they tend to find more of the outlier combinations.
If both simulations agree on your tourney status, it’ll say you’ve clinched. It IS possible to “un-clinch” if the next time I run the random number generator, it finds a new combo that it had previously missed. Again, there’s a LOT of different combos. Short of spending over $6K on a custom program that does all this instantly, that’s the best I can do.