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by minus1 5069 days ago
The value of the round-robin stage is to establish team rankings before the single-elimination stage.

You have some alternatives, but no silver bullets:

* Establish rank before the tournament (in which case you're just moving the problem)

* Eliminate rank and seed teams randomly (which makes it much less likely to see the best teams medal)

* Use random seeding and a double-elimination structure (as a fan, I dislike double-elimination, but I'm not sure what the consensus is on this)

* Try to mitigate the problem by playing matches consecutively (you'll need lots of courts), hiding the actual seeding until the single-elimination round (people will assume you're corrupt), or other creative methods (you probably won't catch all the edge cases, so throw in a rule that says "you must try your hardest")