What is "tournament"

Tournament \Tour"na*ment\, n. [OE. turnement, tornement, OF. torneiement, tornoiement, F. tournoiement a turning or wheeling round. See Tourney.]

1. A mock fight, or warlike game, formerly in great favor, in which a number of combatants were engaged, as an exhibition of their address and bravery; hence, figuratively, a real battle. ``In battle and in tourneyment.''
   --Chaucer.

   With cruel tournament the squadrons join.
   --Milton.

   Note: It different from the joust, which was a trial of skill between one man and another.

2. Any contest of skill in which there are many contestents for championship; as, a chess tournament.

"medieval martial arts contest," c.1200 (figurative), c.1300 (literal), from Old French tornement "contest between groups of knights on horseback" (12c.), from tornoier "to joust, tilt, take part in tournaments" (see tourney). Modern use, in reference to games of skill, is recorded from 1761.

n. 1 (context historical English) During the Middle Ages, a series of battles and other contests designed to prepare knights for war. 2 A series of games; either the same game played many times, or a succession of games related by a single theme; played competitively to determine a single winning team or individual.

1. n. a sporting competition in which contestants play a series of games to decide the winner [syn: tourney]

2. a series of jousts between knights contesting for a prize

A tournament is a competition involving a relatively large number of competitors, all participating in a sport or game. More specifically, the term may be used in either of two overlapping senses:

1. One or more competitions held at a single venue and concentrated into a relatively short time interval.
2. A competition involving multiple matches, each involving a subset of the competitors, with the overall tournament winner determined based on the combined results of these individual matches. These are common in those sports and games where each match must involve a small number of competitors: often precisely two, as in most team sports, racket sports and combat sports, many card games and board games, and many forms of competitive debating. Such tournaments allow large numbers to compete against each other in spite of the restriction on numbers in a single match.

These two senses are distinct. All golf tournaments meet the first definition, but while match play tournaments meet the second, stroke play tournaments do not, since there are no distinct matches within the tournament. In contrast, football (soccer) leagues like the Premier League are tournaments in the second sense, but not the first, having matches spread across many stadia over a period of up to a year. Many tournaments meet both definitions; for example, the Wimbledon tennis championship.

A tournament-match (or tie or fixture or heat) may involve multiple game-matches (or rubbers or legs) between the competitors. For example, in the Davis Cup tennis tournament, a tie between two nations involves five rubbers between the nations' players. The team that wins the most rubbers wins the tie. In the later rounds of UEFA Champions League of football (soccer), each fixture is played over two legs. The scores of each leg are added, and the team with the higher aggregate score wins the fixture, with away goals used as a tiebreaker and a penalty shoot out if away goals cannot determine a winner.

A tournament, or tourney (from Old French torneiement, tornei) was a chivalrous competition or mock fight in Europe in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (12th to 16th centuries). It is one of various types of hastiludes.

A tournament is a directed graph (digraph) obtained by assigning a direction for each edge in an undirected complete graph. That is, it is an orientation of a complete graph, or equivalently a directed graph in which every pair of distinct vertices is connected by a single directed edge.

Many of the important properties of tournaments were first investigated by in order to model dominance relations in flocks of chickens. Current applications of tournaments include the study of voting theory and social choice theory among other things. The name tournament originates from such a graph's interpretation as the outcome of a round-robin tournament in which every player encounters every other player exactly once, and in which no draws occur. In the tournament digraph, the vertices correspond to the players. The edge between each pair of players is oriented from the winner to the loser. If player a beats player b, then it is said that a dominates b.

A tournament is a form of organized competition.

Tournament may also refer to:

• Tournament (medieval), a chivalrous competition of the Middle Ages
• Tournament (solitaire), a solitaire card game
• Tournament (graph theory), a kind of directed graph

In media:

• The Tournament (TV series), a 2005–06 Canadian TV show
• The Tournament (1974 film) (Cantonese: Chung taai kuen taan sang sei chin), a Hong Kong film featuring Sammo Hung
• The Tournament (2009 film), an action film starring Robert Carlyle
• The Tournament (2015 film), a 2015 French film
• Tournament – Play & Replay, a 2010 Malayalam-language film
• The Tournament (Clarke novel), a 2002 novel by Australian writer John Clarke
• The Tournament (Reilly novel), a 2013 novel by Australian writer Matthew Reilly

Tournament is a solitaire card game which uses two decks of playing cards shuffled together. Despite the name, the game play doesn't seem to be related to the word tournament.

First, the cards are shuffled and dealt as two columns of four cards laid out. The player must make sure that these eight cards include either a king, an ace, or both. If neither a king nor an ace is found among these eight cards, all cards are collected and shuffled and two new columns of four cards are dealt. As long there is no king or ace among the eight cards, the shuffling and dealing continues. When at least a king or an ace are present, six columns of four cards are then dealt. At least a king or an ace must be present among the first eight cards for the game to work. The first eight cards compose the reserve (or "the kibitzers") and the six columns of four cards form the tableau (or "the dormitzers").

The object of the game is to free one king and one ace of each suit and built them by suit. The kings should be built down while the aces should be built up.

The top cards of each column on the tableau and all eight cards on the reserve are available.

The cards on the reserve are available to be built on the foundations, and any space it leaves behind are filled from any from the tableau. But filling spaces doesn't have to be done immediately; it is the player's discretion on whether to fill a gap or leave it open.

The cards on the tableau are available only to be built on the foundation or placed on a space in the reserve; they are not built on each other. In case there is a gap resulting on all cards on the column leaving it, it is immediately filled by a new set of four cards.

Furthermore, the top cards of foundations are available to be built on each other, handy when the two foundations of the same suit meet.

When the player has made all the moves one could make, four cards from the stock are deal onto each column. Then game play continues. Dealing of new cards and making of new moves continue until all cards have been played.

After the game play goes on a standstill, the player then collects all the cards on the tableau by first gathering the rightmost column and placing it on the pile to its left, and then placing this new pile to the pile on its left and so on. Then, without shuffling, six new columns of four cards each are dealt. And game play continues as before. This can be done twice in the game.

The game is won when all cards are dealt onto the foundations.