Comparing Draws for Single Elimination Tournaments

Jeff Horen and Raymond Riezman
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Jeff Horen: AT&T Communications, Morristown, New Jersey

Operations Research, 1985, vol. 33, issue 2, 249-262

Abstract: Tournaments are used to select a single winner from a group of participants in a sporting event or a paired-comparison experiment. This study compares different draws, or pairings, of teams in single-elimination tournaments under a set of relatively nonrestricting assumptions about the participating teams' pairwise probabilities of winning. We analyze and compare draws for four-team tournaments using various criteria, then attempt to generalize the results to eight-team tournaments. For example, only one-four team draw maximizes the probability that the best team wins for all pairwise probabilities, whereas eight draws are possibly optimal for eight-team tournaments.

Keywords: 237 pairing teams in single-elimination tournaments; 570 pairing teams in single-elimination tournaments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1985
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (37)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:oropre:v:33:y:1985:i:2:p:249-262

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