What are Sports Tournaments

 What are Sports Tournaments

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Tournaments, as defined by Merriam-Webster, are a series of contests that make up a single unit of competition. They are a gathering of individuals or teams that compete against each other in order to determine the winner or who among them is the best. More specifically, the term may be used in either of two overlapping senses:

·       One or more competitions held at single venue and concentrated into relatively short duration of time.

·       A competition involving a number of matches, each involving a set of competitors, with overall winner of tournament determined based on combine results of individual matches. Such tournaments allow large numbers to compete against each other in spite of restriction on numbers in single match.

These two senses are distinct. The golf tournaments meet the first define but while match play tournaments meet the second define, stroke play tournaments don’t, since there are no distinct matches within tournament. In association football leagues such as Premier League are tournaments in 2nd sense, but not the first, having matches spread across, many venues. There are some other tournaments that meet both defines such as Wimbledon tennis championship.

Tournament match

Tournament match may involve one or more games-match and if necessary one or more tiebreak-matches among competitors. For example, in Davis Cup tennis tournament, a tie between two nations involves five rubbers between nation’s athletes. Team that wins the most rubber wins the tie. In later rounds of UEFA Champions League, each fixture is played over two legs, the scores of each leg are added and team with high score wins the fixture and if necessary, penalty shoot-out used if scores are equal after both matches.

Knockout Tournaments

They are also known as elimination tournament, is divided into successive round; each competitor plays in at least one fixture per round. The top-ranked competitor or winner in each fixture progress to next round. As round proceeds, the competitors and fixtures decrease. The final round also known as cup final, consist up of only one fixture, the winner of which is overall champion.

In single-elimination tournament, just top-ranked competitors in fixture progress; in 2-competitor games, just winner progresses. All other competitors are eliminated. This ensures that a winner is decided with minimum number of fixtures. However, many other competitors are eliminated after few matches.

A double-elimination tournament may be used in 2-competitor games to allow each competitor a single loss without being eliminated from tournament. All losers from main bracket enter a loser bracket, winner of which plays off against main bracket’s winner.

Group Tournaments

A group tournament or league involves all competitors playing a number of fixtures (fixture may contain one or more game-matches between matches). Points are awarded for each fixture, with competitors ranked based either on total number of points or average points. Each competitors plays equal number of fixtures, in which case ranking by total points and by average points are equivalent. The English Country Championship in crocket didn’t require an equal number of matches.

Poker Tournaments

In poker tournaments, when players are eliminated, the number of tables is reduced gradually, with remaining players redistributed among remaining tables. Play continues until one player has won all of chips one play. Finishing order is determined by order in which players are eliminated: last player remaining gets first place, last player eliminated gets second and previous player eliminated gets third position.

In a shootout tournament, players don’t change tables until table has been reduced to single player.

Bridge Tournaments

The bridge tournaments are composed up of multiple events. Some events may be single-elimination, double elimination or Swiss style. However, Paris events are most widespread. In such events, number of boards are each played several times by various players. For each board the score achieved by each north-south pair is then measured against all other north-south pairs, playing the same board.

Requirements for Tournament

There are following requirements for ideal tournaments:

·       The tournament should determine the best competitor as competition winner with greatest possible probability. The final rankings should reflect true strength of competitors accurately.

·       Other general framework conditions should be as equal as possible for all competitors. For example, all competitors should have same regeneration time between matches. As a consequence, both participants playing a match should, a rule, have played same number of matches in tournaments so far.

·       Tiebreak criteria should be transparent and based on sporting merit only.

·       For spectators, exciting matches between best pretenders to championship are desirable. Therefore, proportion of such games should be high as possible.



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