Improving Multiplayer Elimination Tournaments

[FSKFSK]

There seems to be two flaws with multiplayer elimination tournaments.

If a tournament is configured to "5 play, 3 advance", and someone times out, the engine randomly decides which of the 4 players gets eliminated. Instead, a fairer solution is to advance 4 players when this happens, even if it creates pairing problems in later rounds or creates extra byes.

Second, the bye algorithm needs to be fairer. Some setups like "5 play, 3 advance" or "5 play, 4 advance" cannot be completed without byes, especially near the end of the tournament. Bye priority should be (go down the list until the tie is broken):

1. Player who has already received the fewest byes.
2. Player who eliminated the most other players. (So advancing from a 5 person game gives you higher bye priority than someone who advanced from a 4 person game.)
3. Most first place finishes, then most second place finishes, then most 3rd place finishes, etc.

[Grey Lord]

The same issue. Tournament was configured to "4 play, 2 advance" but for final table only 1 player advanced from previous game + 3 players who received BYE in last round. In this case giving BYE to weakest players who did not received BYE before does not make sense.

[FSKFSK]

"4 play 2 advance" is one of the only multiplayer elimination formats that's sensible. Offer enough byes in the first round so that in the next round, the number of players is a power of 2. (I.e., 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128)

On the other hand, it still could be unfair if someone times out. Then there is the problem I mentioned, that the engine randomly picks one of the 3 players to eliminate.