Question: 139 persons have signed up for an elimination tournament. All players are to be paired up for the first round, but because 139 is an odd number one player gets a bye, which promotes him to the second round, without actually playing in the first round. The pairing continues on the next round, with a bye to any player left over. If the schedule is planned so that a minimum number of matches is required to determine the champion, the number of matches which must be played is
This can be logically done in the following manner.
There are 139 players in all. We want to determine 1 champion among them. So all except the Champion should lose. A player can lose only once and since any match produces only one loser, to produce 138 losers, there should be 138 matches that should be played.
Hence, option (c).