So you're in charge of drawing up the brackets and seeding the entries.
Your job will be easiest if the entrants number a power of two.
As luck would have it, 97 locals sign up. But at least they all have distinct
rankings, so the seeding is straightforward; and, since it's a single-elimination
format, there is no losers bracket. But since there's an odd number of entrants,
you'll need some play-in matches to start, and maybe some byes for the
higher seeds. Eventually you can reduce the number of surviving players
to a power of two, and the rest of the pairings are straightforward.
You spend a sleepless night working on it and finally come up with a
set of brackets that work.
How many matches are in the brackets that you drew up?
Spoiler for solution
