Organizing a DDR tournament

[natthew]

I'm planning on organizing a DDR tournament as a fundraiser for my school. It's going to have around 30-50 people, probably, and I would like some advice as to how to run it.

Obviously, we don't have many people who can play heavy songs or get AAAs, but it's a fun thing for a bunch of kids to get together and stuff. But how should I eliminate people from the tournament?

Should I have a simple bracket, picking people at random to dance each other and the one who gets the better grade moves on, or should I start with all the people and eliminate people if they get lower than, say, a B on songs with increasing difficulty?

I'm leaning towards the second option, as it seems more fair, but what's a good level to eliminate about 50% of people each round who have played anywhere from a few times before to people who can get decent scores on heavies?

Thanks, Natthew.

[GotACoolName]

The tournament I went to last weekend did the following, and it worked pretty well:

-By popular demand, a certain song is chosen for a qualifier. The more Perfects someone gets on the qualifier, the higher they are seeded on the tournament bracket.
-"Straight-up" PA. Two people play at a time in a three-song round, and whichever of the two who accumulates more total Perfects over the song set wins the round.
-Double elimination. The first time you lose you go to the loser's bracket, and you're out of the tournament after a second loss.
-For the first few rounds of the tournament, whichever of the two that was seeded higher on the bracket by the qualifier gets to choose the first and third songs, and the other choose the second; each player selects their own mods (though both would have to agree to Solo, as Solo goes into effect for both players even if only one chooses the option). In later rounds, the person who was seeded higher on the bracket still picks the first and third songs and the other player the second song; however, the player who does not select the song instead selects the mods for both players.

I'm not sure how/if the winner and loser brackets associated with each other, as I didn't pay much attention to that. But hopefully these guidelines will help you out.

EDIT: And for future reference, tournament discussion goes here.

EDIT 2: I just noticed that you're expecting a less excelled group. In that case, maybe you could replace Perfect count with total dance points (if you're playing on SuperNOVA) or total number of more correctly executed hits (Perfects/Greats/Goods?) (if you're on a mix other than SuperNOVA).
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