Once the tournament finishes, pick up the logN competitors that were beaten by the tournament winner and hold a mini-tournament to find which one is the best among them. If we imagine that better players correspond with smaller numbers, the algorithm now goes like this. Hold the tournament to find the smallest number (requires N−1 comparisons). During this step, for each number construct the list of numbers it was smaller than. Finally, pick the list of numbers associated with the smallest number and find their minimum in logN−1l steps. This algorithm requires N+logN−2 comparisons to complete
How is the competitors beaten by tournament winner log N ?