The Volokh Conspiracy - Elimination Tournaments:

Some variation on this was sent to me by a few different readers. Here's my own take:

The U.S. Open Men's Singles draw contained 128 people. Each round was single-elimination, meaning that two people played each other, and the loser was immediately disqualified and the winner moved on to the next round. How many TOTAL matches were played before Roger Federer was named the champion on Sunday? How did you calculate this?

	[Puzzleblogger Kevan Choset, September 13, 2005 at 12:11pm] Trackbacks Elimination Tournaments: Some variation on this was sent to me by a few different readers. Here's my own take: The U.S. Open Men's Singles draw contained 128 people. Each round was single-elimination, meaning that two people played each other, and the loser was immediately disqualified and the winner moved on to the next round. How many TOTAL matches were played before Roger Federer was named the champion on Sunday? How did you calculate this?