There is also a way you could have the first round of the tourney be non-poers of two. You would just need some equitable method of determining which players got byes for the second round. For example:
Say you get 26 people sign up for the tourney. So you have 13 one on one games in the first round. The idea will be to do whatever it takes to get down to 8 players for round 3 from the 13 players left after round 1. So for round 2 you would have 5 one on one games and 3 players with byes. That would leave you with 8 players in round 3. The byes could be given to the three players in round 1 that knock off their opponent in the fewest number of turns.
Is this fair? Not totally. As we said before the numebr of turns it takes to knock someone off could be as much an indication of a lack of skill of the loser. But mabye it's more fair than excluding those 10 people from the tourney that otherwise wouldn't have got a chance to play.
EDIT: For that matter, the byes could be done randomly as well. Simply set up the brackets early on, then randomply stick people into each spot in the bracket. They will all see at the begining of round one who will get the byes if there are any. No muss, no fuss.
The thing you just have to remind anybody that starts to talk about something not being fair is that in a one on one tourney it's all up to you. If you don't win the tourney, you can't say it's because someone else got an easier road to the final, because you are responsible for your own games and that's all that matters.
Geoschmo
[ December 04, 2002, 13:09: Message edited by: geoschmo ]