Question

How many rounds of matches does a knock-out tennis tournament have if it starts with 64 players and every player needs to win 1 match to move at the next round?

Answer 1

There should be 63 matches

Answer 2

Answer:

Step-by-step explanation:

Given this is a knock-out tournament, once a player loses, they are out of the tournament.

Let us give a game to each of the players. Given there are 64 of them, there will be 32 games in the first round. You can understand this by the following logic:

Round 1: player_1  vs  player_2, player_3  vs  player_4, up to player_63  vs  player 64

Here we have 64 players, 32 games.

Now in the second round, we have 32 players remaining (32 knocked out). Again, repeat the same process. This time we will get 16 games.

Round 2: 32 players, 16 games

Now continue this:

Round 3: 16 players, 8 games

Round 4: 8 players, 4 games

Round 5: 4 players, 2 games

Round 6: 2 players, 1 game

And we have a winner. It took us 6 rounds to get him. Therefore, the correct answer is 6.

Tip: As a general rule, you can just express 64 in terms of 2 to the power n. Since 64 = 2^6, correct answer is 6.