Tournament Math -- how many matches?

[Nuke]

A tennis puzzler, of sorts: let's say you have an odd number of players entered in your tournament and you need to know how many matches will be played. For the sake of this example, we'll say there are 50 players signed up for your tournament. How would you calculate the number of matches that must be played (single elimination) to arrive at your champion? There are several ways to do it, but one of them is much simpler than the others. How would you figure it out?

 

[Koz]

easy. If there's 50 people playing, single elimination...49 matches must be played. 49 losers, and one winner. In order for 49 people to lose, you must play 49 matches

*edit* assuming they're playing singles!
*double edit* BYEs are not counted as matches.

 

[Nuke]

That's it. Just count the losers. Simple. But if you ask the average person this question, most people start counting 1 (finals) + 2 (semifinals) + 4 (quarters). Sorry to say I was one of them, first time I heard it.