The game would be pretty boring if the best team always won. Indeed, as many sports folks have pointed out, one of the most popular annual sporting events in t

The game would be pretty boring if the best team always won. Indeed, as many sports folks have pointed out, one of the most popular annual sporting events in the USA is the NCAA college basketball tournament. A single-elimination event which is pretty much designed to improve the odds of having the "best" team get accidentally disqualified by an improbable fluke. The winner must win six consecutive games, while under enormous pressure, without making a mistake. As it happens, the distribution of talent in college basketball still makes the seedings work fairly well. Just as World Cup soccer seedings work decently well, though it too becomes a single-elimination tournament after the first round. But these tournaments could obviously be much better designed if the objective was science.