number of possible sequences of a game

Question

Each of two teams has seven players numbered 1 to 7. In the first game, the two players numbered 1 play each other. The loser of each game is eliminated and replaced by the next player of the same team, until all players from one team have been eliminated. Let $N$ be the number of possible sequences of games. Find the remainder when $N$ is divided by 1000.

I think I can solve this by laying out all the possible cases of $a_1,a_2,...a_7$ and $b_1,b_2,...b_7$ combinations — one such example would be $a_b,b_1,a_2,b_2,a_3,b_3,a_4,b_4,a_5,b_5,a_6,b_6,a_7,b_7$ (so team B wins). And even though I numbered each member, in truth, it really doesn't matter which exact number comes in, so we can say that all team members of A are $a$ and all team members of B are $b$. All games would start with $a,b,...$, so I think $\frac{12!}{6!6!}$ would do the trick, but I'm not completely confident if I'm over/undercounting. Any help would really be appreciated!

Answer 1

Hint:

$\frac{12!}{6!6!}=924$ would be the number of ways twelve games could be played with each team winning six of them. But here you need one team to win seven games, and the other to win fewer, for example team A could win its seventh match when B has won only four. So the number of possibilities is likely to be more than double $924$

A better approach might be to say that if team A wins overall then

• team A must win the last game
• team A must win $6$ other games while team B wins $n$ games, with these $6+n$ games in any order and $n \in \{0,1,2,3,4,5,6\}$

You then need to double this result since another possibility is that team B wins overall

Finally you have to do the remainder calculation

Answer 2

I think it should be $\frac{14!}{7!7!}$.

Each round one player gets eliminated. Write down in a list which team each eliminated player belongs to (A or B). Once one team is completely eliminated, you can pad the list with letters representing the still remaining players of the winning team. This will give you a list containing seven A's and seven B's. Every such list corresponds uniquely to such a series of rounds.

Answer 3

There is an ambiguity in the question.

If "sequence of games" means sequence of winning teams (or losing teams) then there are $\binom{14}{7}$ sequences, as Jaap Scherphuis shows.

But if "sequence of games" means sequence of pairing of players, starting with $(1,1)$ and ending with $(n,7)$ or $(7,n)$, then $\binom{14}{7}$ overcounts. This is because each sequence ending $(7,7)$ is counted twice (once when team A wins the final game, once when team B wins) whereas it should only be counted once. With this interpretation the number of sequences is $\binom{14}{7} - \binom{12}{6}$.

To illustrate the difference, consider the case of $2$ players on each team.

There are $\binom{4}{2}=6$ sequence of winning teams:

$AA\\ BAA\\ ABA\\ BB\\ ABB\\ BAB$

but only $\binom{4}{2}-\binom{2}{1}=4$ sequence of player pairs:

$(1,1),(2,1)\\ (1,1),(2,1),(2,2)\\ (1,1),(1,2)\\ (1,1),(1,2),(2,2)$

Answer 4

Split this into cases in the perspective of one of the Teams : Win 7, Win 6, Win 5, Win 4, Win 3, Win 2, Win 1, Win 0. Case 1: Win 7.
Games played Outcomes 7 6 Games Choose 6 of the first games to be won and the last predetermined. 8 7C6
9 8C6 10 9C6 11 10C6 12 11C6 13 12C6 we can use hockey stick identity so that is 14C7. We notice the other cases will just be 13C7 since win 7 case counts all of the possiblities for the other team too. The answer is 14C7 x 2=3432 so the remainder is 432