Shortly after the NCAA Tournament begins, some low-seeded mid-major will beat up on a Final… Shortly after the NCAA Tournament begins, some low-seeded mid-major will beat up on a Final Four contender, and you will get a text message, a call or a nudge from the person sitting next to you.

“Lehigh’s winning,” that person will say. “I so have that in my pool.”

Don’t be that guy.

In the fervor of March Madness’s first round, it’s easy to get lost in the commotion as high-definition basketball is blasted in our face for four days straight. Nonetheless, this year, follow a few simple rules to maintain proper bracket etiquette.

First, don’t count your first-round upsets before they hatch.

Little does Mr. Lehigh know, the top-seeded powerhouse will soar back in the second half. On the off chance that it doesn’t, Mr. Lehigh will become more and more animated. The excitement that he is about to earn two points in his bracket pool will overtake him.

This leads to the second guideline: Try to pick the champion, not the first-round surprise.

Sure, it’s awesome to brag to your friends that you had Vermont over Syracuse or Virginia Commonwealth over Duke. But what really mattered were your hastily-assembled Final Four picks of Texas A&M, Oklahoma State, Wake Forest and Radford.

Most pools weigh the scoring so that the latter rounds count exponentially more than the first. Still, many people spend their lunch breaks fretting over that No. 8 vs. No. 9 seed matchup instead of who emerges from the region. If you predict the champion, you usually win the bracket — even if Mr. Lehigh’s lucky guess blindsides you.

Guideline three: Just pay the man.

Some brackets have money involved. Sometimes the winner just gets a big sash with a button that says “I’m a champion!” on it. No matter what’s at stake, do your commissioner a favor and pay him right now if you haven’t already. Nobody likes hunting a friend down for the entry fee.

Guideline four: Be consistent.

ESPN, Yahoo!, CBS and a handful of other websites run bracket competitions that offer big prizes. On top of that, invitations into friends’ groups will linger in your inbox. You might be tempted to diversify your portfolio, selecting different upsets and different Final Fours for each pool. This, though, is bush league.

Mr. Lehigh actually has Lehigh in one out of four of his brackets. He has Kansas making it to the Final Four in another bracket, and the Jayhawks as the champion in another.

If you mix it up with each bracket, you’re saying to yourself that you never really believed in the upset in the first place. Pick your teams and stick with them. Maybe even buy a shirt.

Guideline five: Don’t be like everybody else.

March Madness is big business. It’s so big of a business that it causes real business to grind to a halt — to the tune of $1.8 billion in the Tournament’s first week alone, according to the Seattle Times. ESPN broadcasts a two-hour program to help you fill out your bracket. There are magazines for your benefit — even Kabbalah-like books about the emerging patterns in the Tournament.

With that said, don’t listen to them. They are usually wrong. Don’t listen to my picks, either, because they’re usually wrong, too.

Statistically speaking, statistics mean nothing. All four No. 1 seeds never make the Final Four — except in 2008. A No. 12 seed always beats a No. 5 — except in 2007.

Nobody really knows who “this year’s George Mason” will be. If you follow the crowd and blindly agree with the popular upsets, you lose a lot of the fun.

Take some advice from 1960s British rock and don’t be like everybody else. Pick a team nobody else has going anywhere. If that team wins, you’ll feel really good. If it loses, so what?

Guideline six: Have your computer handy.

With 32 games crammed into two days, CBS puts the scores of the regional broadcasts at the top of the screen on a nifty little black banner. It’s a beautiful thing most of the time — until your No. 15 seed one-chance-in-a-thousand upset game tips off. You stop paying attention to the game in front of you and instead squint at the tiny white font.

Your heart skips a beat when you misread “19-10” as “19-18.” The score doesn’t change for minutes at a time. CBS goes to commercial, and when it returns, Cinderella’s deficit has suddenly been halved. When will Greg Gumble cut in!?

It’s best just to have your computer at the ready, so you can watch Cinderella’s nail biter in its entirety. Just don’t act like Mr. Lehigh when it’s close.