I’m a big fan of that one college basketball tournament going on right now whose name I can’t say for fear of violating their trademarks. Last year, we did a “Top Travel Tool March Mayhem” tournament where we ranked the top miles and points tool, with Award Wallet beating out AutoSlash in the finals.
CardMadness
This year I thought I’d try a similar tournament to pick the “best” miles and points credit card. While the definition of a “best” credit card is fairly impossible to judge, since there are so many factors that go into that decision, most importantly figuring out where you want to go before you just sign up for cards, but hey, let’s give it a try!
CardMadness bracket
Here is our CardMadness bracket for 2017.
You could certainly argue with some of the seeds I’m sure, but I think it’s a fairly reasonable list.
- Chase Sapphire Preferred
- Amex Platinum Business
- Chase Sapphire Reserve
- Chase Ink Plus
- Alaska
- Amex Platinum
- Chase Freedom Unlimited
- AT&T Access More
- Starwood Preferred Guest
- Citi DoubleCash
- Citi Prestige
- Barclaycard Arrival Plus
- Chase Freedom
- Amex EveryDay / EveryDay Preferred
- IHG
- Southwest Airlines
- US Bank FlexPerks
- Amex Hilton Surpass
CardMadness schedule
Here’s how we’ll run things for the first week of CardMadness
Tuesday 3/14 – First Four games (15-18 and 16-17)
Thursday 3/16 – Sunday 3/18 – Quarterfinal games
Stay tuned to Points With a Crew as we decide what the “best” credit card is
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
Would be interesting if you could get a bunch of your readers to fill out their winners for each head-to-head and see what bracket is the most popular.
hilarious!
too bad most your teams are shooting 5/24!! ha
LOL! We’ll see if 5/24 will be a factor against any of these cards in the tourney!
LOL. You guys crack me up ! YES !! 5/24 should be an immediate tournament ejection !! I just got declined for the CSR because of 5/24 …. an insane, stupid and outdated rule. So I will continue to use my Amex Platinum and the company who issues a lot of those other cards will lose my business and my respect. But you guys still makes me laugh about it !
This reminds me a lot of Wallaby’s Card Madness tourney they do every year. I think Chase will go all the way with the Reserve. No contest.
We’ll see! With the 100K signup maybe, but I wonder if the $495 annual fee will scare off many people