Chapter 28 Sword Bone, Tears of Affection
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Loading the saved file, he returned to the Shushan storyline.
The Great Tournament of Shushan was in full swing.
If you looked at the early stages of the Great Tournament from a modern sporting perspective, the drawing lots and matchups were typical of a "single elimination" format.
For example, 100 disciples would pair off and compete in sword fighting.
The 50 victorious disciples would then compete among themselves again in pairs, and so on, until the ranks from 1 to 50 were decided;
Similarly, the 50 disciples who lost would also spar in this manner to determine the ranks from 51 to 100… without any messy rules like a losers' bracket comeback.
The problem with single elimination is that victories in the early stages are far more important than those later on.
For instance, in the earlier example, if you lost in the first round, you would have no chance of making the top 50, and even if you won every subsequent match, you would still only rank 51st at best.