Organising small tournements

[Link]

Ok, so we are having a work do at the pub tommorow night. The idea is we will have a pool tournement and a wii tornement. I have been tasked with arranging these (Lucky mee )

The problem is, I do not know how many people will want to take part in which event. Now obviously, I just devide all entrants into pairs, they play, winners play winners from another pair and so on.

What I need, is a way to prep for this without knowing numbers. I'm trying to think of a simple method to create a scalable tornement organiser, so I'm throwing thing this out there for suggestions on how to do this.

Should I pre-print something? If so, what. Do it by hand (My handwriting is attrocious). Other suggestions. I'm not able to take any technology/laptop, other than my smartphone that I'll have on me anyway (Windows mobile)

 

[ríomhaire]

I'd say make sure have a large white- or black-board to write the tournament ladders on.

Also keep in mind that unless you have the perfect amount of people in the tournament some people are going to end up having to play more games to get to the final than others and try to keep things fair. Eg, if you have twelve contestants then eight of the contestants will need to win four matches to win the tournament but four of them will only have to win three matches to win (If it isn't immediately obvious why then draw out the tournament ladder for yourself to see it). You could also introduce some sort of back door system where the loosers play each other in order to get back into the tournament.

 

[Unfocused]

I don't get where's the problem with 12 contestants, except for round 3 when there's 3 contestants left, so they have to all play each other and there's a chance of each winning one game in the last round.

Letters are contestants, winners of each match go to the next round.

A-B C-D E-F G-H I-J K-L
A - D E - G J - K
D - G - J

If there's an even number then there's no problem. If there's not, then we have rock-paper-scissors and the loser gets to sit and drink all night as a spectator.

Also spelling tip: TOURNAMENT, not tournement or tornement.

EDIT: Forum screwed up my spaces in the ladder.