Efficacy of traditional sport tournament structures

Abstract

The ranking abilities of some traditional sport tournaments under a variety of initial conditions were analyzed using Monte Carlo procedures. A range of outcome measures were used since a tournament’s efficacy will likely depend upon both its objectives and the playing abilities of its contestants. The traditional knockout (KO) is a weak tournament in its ability to rank all players although it requires fewer games than the round robin (RR). The KO tournament’s efficacy is notably enhanced, however, in some cases beyond that of the RR tournament if double elimination procedures are used and the seeding is reasonably accurate. Under these conditions, we consider the KO structure to be the best available structure for most tournament purposes. A secondary recommendation of this study is that the fourth and fifth placings be reversed in the traditional KO structures for ranking all players in the eight player situation.