A fellow just asked me how simple it would be to create the most simple tournament application. this is what came out in a couple of minutes.

simple_tournament.py

import random
import math
teamof = 2

def teams(people):
    teams = []
    for i in range(len(people) / teamof):
        team = []
        for i in range(teamof):
            p = random.choice(people)
            people.remove(p)
            team.append(p)
        teams.append("-".join(team).upper())
    return teams        

def play(teams):
    while True:
        if not teams or not len(teams) >= teamof:
            break
        round = []
        for i in range(int(math.ceil(len(teams) / 2))):
            a = random.choice(teams)
            teams.remove(a)
            b = random.choice(teams)
            teams.remove(b)
            round.append([a,b])
        
        for battle in round:
            won = random.choice(battle)
            print "battle %s vs %s and won %s" % (battle[0], battle[1], won)
            teams.append(won)

for y in range(100):
    people = ["Tom", "Sam","Mike", "Anna","Sandra", "John","Peter", "Nicole","Lucy", "Jenny","Phil", "Michael", "Carolina", "Frank"]
    if len(people) % teamof:
        print "Not a divided by %d number of people" % teamof
        exit(9)
    
    _teams = teams(people)
    play( _teams )
    print "Winner is: %s" % _teams[0]