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Richard Walker

Yet another brainteaser

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I just remembered this one.

A tennis club with 200 members organises a tournament.  If a player loses a match they are out of the tournament, and there are no draws.  How many matches are needed to decide the tournament winner?

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ExLibris

Survival of the fittest

We need to eliminate the other 199 competitors which will take 199 games I think: allways (n -1) games even if n is not 2m
Richard Walker

That's right!

The arrangment of the tournament, number of byes, all that stuff doesn't matter.

!99 members must be eliminated, 1 per game.  So that is 199 games.

On a similar note . . .

If you were organising said tournament with 200 players on a knockout basis, how many first round byes would you need to give to eliminate the need for any further byes in subsequent rounds?

 

Apologies for reviving a somewhat ancient thread - I almost feel I should sing it "Happy Birthday".