In a tournament each player played exactly one game against each of the other players. In each game the winner was awarded 1 point, the loser got 0 points, and each of the two players earned point if the game was a tie. After the completion of the tournament, it was found that exactly half of the points earned by each player were earned in games against the ten players with the least number of points. (In particular, each of the ten lowest scoring players earned half of his points against the other nine of the ten). What was the total number of players in the tournament?
Solution
Suppose that there were players and assume be the scores of each player. Because each player played exactly one game against each of the other players and each game worths 1 point, the total sum of scores is
Because each of the ten lowest scoring players earned half of his points against the other 9 of the 10, he earned the other half of his points against the highest scoring players. Therefore, the total sum of the scores earned in the games between the first players and the last 10 players is
This implies that , and thus or .
Because each of the ten lowest scoring players earned half of his points against the other 9 of the 10, the total sum of the scores earned in the games between the last 10 players is
This gives an average of 9 points of score for each of the ten lowest scoring players. Therefore, each of the first players has earned at least 9 points.
Because each of the first has earned half of his score from the games against the of the players, we have
We deduce that and hence .
Finally, we construct such a tournament with 25 players. In this tournament, there are 15 winners, each of them having 14 points of scores and 10 losers each of them having 9 points of score. Any game played between two winners or two losers results in a tie. For games played between winners and losers, each winner wins in 6 games, loses in 2 games, and 2 games result in a tie and conversely each loser wins 3 games, loses 9 games and 3 games result in a tie. This makes such a tournament possible.