← Reading a Tournament · Lesson 1 of 3
Brackets and byes
In a knockout bracket every match sends one competitor home, so a bracket of n competitors always needs n − 1 matches to find a winner.
The bracket size is the next power of two. With 12 competitors the bracket is 16 wide, so 4 competitors get a bye: a free pass through the first round.
A bracket has 21 competitors. How many matches will it take, and how many byes?
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