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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.

card-madness-2017-bracket-2

You could certainly argue with some of the seeds I’m sure, but I think it’s a fairly reasonable list.

Card Madness Opening Round

The opening round games have now finished, and the results are in!

3 big upsets as the Chase Ink and both versions of the Platinum Card® from American Express go down.  The Chase IHG card winning as a #15 seed was a big shocker for me – to the point of wondering if there were any voting shenanigans.  Or perhaps people just didn’t like the healthy $450 annual fee, preferring other premium cards.

Card Madness Second Round

The second round is now complete as well

So yeah – OVERTIME.  As I went this morning to check the poll results, I saw that the #1 seed Chase Sapphire Preferred and #9 Starwood Preferred Guest® Credit Card from American Express were TIED

card-madness-2017-tie

I thought for a bit on how best to break the tie, and in the end I decided to throw it up to the Points With a Crew Slack channel and Points With a Crew Miles and Points Facebook group (both free to join!)

card-madness-2017-tiebreakers

So SPG it is!  And that gets us to our final 4

card-madness-2017-bracket-4

Here will be our schedule

  • Thursday 3/30 – #9 Starwood Preferred Guest® Credit Card from American Express vs. #13 Chase Freedom
  • Friday 3/31 – #3 Chase Sapphire Reserve vs. #15 Chase IHG Rewards card

Both polls will run through Monday night (4/3) and we’ll announce the winners on Tuesday 4/4.


Points With a Crew has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Points With a Crew and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Responses are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered. Other links on this page may also pay me a commission - as always, thanks for your support if you use them
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