excuse me if this is a repeat query....................can anyone tell me why in virtually every tournament 1st round there are only a handful of active games and a massive amount of byes?

seems wrong............

Its been asked many times, but no harm in a refresher!

Simplest way is to think of the tourney structure in reverse :

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

Now, lets say only 68 players enter. We need 64 for the next round, so 60 get byes, 8 play, leaving 4 winners, add to the 60 with byes and off you go!

my brain hurts

Hehe, it's really very simple.

In the final, you need exactly 2 players, no more, no less.

In the semis, you need a total of 4...

Quarters... 8


The first round is used to get into that pattern.

So, as spinner said, You play as many matches as needed to get down to the closest number that is a power of two (2-4-8-16-32-64 etc). The rest gets BYE.

I think I see an interesting and previously unmentioned point here. Say for example that 45 people take part. Then, in herdy's view, you'd have:

Round 1: 22 matches, 1 bye - 23 people go through
Round 2: 11 matches, 1 bye - 12 people go through
Round 3: 6 matches, 0 byes - 6 people go through
Quarters: 3 matches, 0 byes - 3 people go through
Semis: 1 matches, 1 bye - 2 people go through
Final: 1 match

Interestingly, I tried this at http://www.funkypool.com/viewTopic.do?topicid=11621, and it went well. 12 players partook, and after a DQ-DQ, 5 made it into the next round, so one got a bye. So three made it to the semis, and one of those got a bye to the final.

It would cut down on the number of byes in Rd 1 of the tournament; but it would mean then that byes would end up being handed out later on when maybe they shouldn't be, but that would be a matter of opinion. For instance, in my tournament, the guy in the semis who had got the fewest byes at that point was awarded a bye, so justice was done.

Of course, after the Round 1 byefest (?!), it's business as normal anyway after round 2.

Very good point that.

What springs to my mind is that that would be a good option for speed tourneys as it emilinates bigger numbers early on.

People don't think twice about an opponent getting a bye near the final rounds if their opponent has left or whatever, so shouldnt worry too much if they got a bye for any other reason.

Nice one.

The problem is that you should have as few byes as possible at later rounds in the tourny. The closer to the finals you get, a bye is less and less acceptable. Hence the binary structure virtually every single sports tourny in the world uses.

Giving as few byes in the opening round as possible only post-pones the problem. Giving one needlessly in a semi finals is quite simply unacceptable.

Quite correct!!! Scroll up there again to the link to the competition I ran - actually don't, the comma has broken it, it's http://www.funkypool.com/viewTopic.do?topicid=11621 - and you'll notice that I made precisely that point with regards to the number of entrants, namely that certain ranges of numbers of entrants (viz. 5-6, 9-12, 17-24, 33-48, etc) (I incorrectly said 36-48 in the original email - kudos to me for spotting that now!) would mean that there would be three players in the semis instead of 4. So if there were a way (and of course there is) to sculpt the bye structure early on so that those groups of numbers would be avoided in round 2, or between rd 2 or 3 or whatever* (see spoiler), then it would be all good.

Of course, there's nothing to say that in a quarter round of 7 or 8 that there won't be a DQ-DQ, or that of 4 qualified semi-finalists, they will all turn up.

Of course, the current structure works quite fine anyway!!!

3 in a semi a DQ-DQ means no real final as the other semi was a BYE and theres six contesting the quarters
not really much of a problem with current system (as it is used in virtually all sports)

if it aint broke dont fix it!

but i dont really see the need in this thread being brought back as the same topic is just 2 or 3 threads below

Edited at 17:58 Mon 1/09/08 (BST)