hey i was just wondering why there are always so many byes at the start of a tourny?

so to get 64 players in the 2nd round!

Yep thats it, the easy way to understand it is to think of the tourney backwards;

1-2-4-8-16-32-64-128 etc.

- The final needs to have 2 players.
- The semis need to have 4 players.
- The quarters need to have 8.
- The round before that neds to have 16.
- The round before that, 32; before that, 64; and 128, 256, 512, etc.

In other words, byes are handed out in Round 1 so that the number of players remaining in round 2 is one of these numbers. These numbers are collectively called powers of 2, because each of them is 2 to the power of a number (2², 2³, 2 to the power of 4, 2 to the power of 5, etc).

So if 41 players are in a tournament, there's need to be 32 players in round 2. So 9 players have to be eliminated in round 1. Therefore 18 players will play in round 1, and the other 23 players will get a bye.

Now, when players aren't logged on at the time the draw is made, more players get byes. If in the above scenario above 5 players are logged off, the middle column of the draw column will look like this:

player BYE-DQ player
player BYE-DQ player
player BYE-DQ player
player BYE-DQ player
player BYE-DQ player
player 0 - 0 player
player 0 - 0 player
player 0 - 0 player
player 0 - 0 player
player BYE
player BYE
player BYE
player BYE
player BYE
player BYE
player BYE
player BYE
player BYE
player BYE
player BYE
player BYE
player BYE
player BYE
player BYE
player BYE
player BYE
player BYE
player BYE
player BYE
player BYE
player BYE
player BYE

You can count there 41 players, 5 byes at the top due to players logged out, 23 planned byes, and 32 players are going to go through to round 2 whatever happens.

Finally, if there's a DQ-DQ in any round, there'll be less than...

Edited at 21:57 Mon 30/07/07 (BST)

...the 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc players, and then more byes will be needed.

Edited at 21:58 Mon 30/07/07 (BST)

Ahhhh clooneman, ever the brilliant decipherist, couldnt have explained it better myself

i dont get it lol

cheers for that, i knew it would be a simple answer

Yep thats right!

Nice example cloone!

very nicley put cloone.
oh by the way hope you didnt miss an invite writing that lot lmao