Care to try this simple sports-related math problem?

128 teams in an SE tournament would play 127 games.

Here’s one for whomever:

What’s the minimum number of pitches needed for a complete (ends in the bottom of the 9th) baseball game?

@Brian1946 27 for the losing side, 28 for the winning side.

128 teams would be 64 games.

64+32+16+8+4+2+1

127 & 121.

I just love correcting @ragingloli on a math problem.

Do you know the easy way to answer my question? We start with 128 teams and end up with one winner, so we have to eliminate 127 teams. One team is eliminated in each game, so we need 127 games.

The Monopoly tournament is similar. We start with 243 players and end up with 1. We need to eliminate 242 players and, since 2 players are eliminated in each game, we need 242/2=121 games.

As for@bryan’s question, I would think that the min number of pitches would be 27 + 25=52.. 27 pitches thrown by the winning pitchar, 8 inninings of 3 pitches by the losing pitcher and then one more in the bottom of the ninth that is a home run.

@filmfann I hate to break it to you, but ragingloli’s answer of 64+32+16+8+4+2+1 = 127, and is correct.

And in my book, the second question should not be answered except to correct the quizmaster that the problem is incompletely defined as “a Monopoly tournament” is not complete information about how that works. That information was withheld for the answer, which mentions that “2 players are eliminated in each game”. For just one example, it could be that such a tourney would eliminate only the first player to go bankrupt in each game.

For Brian’s question, I don’t know enough about the rules of baseball. There could be something where the score and the order of play makes it impossible for the second team to win, so the game is called at that point.