How Would I Change: "Duel"?

Greetings:

I happened to see the special "Duel" mini-series on ABC in December (2007). It's a very interesting game...two players start each Duel with 10 chips worth $5,000 apiece, competing to answer multiple-choice questions correctly, even if it means selecting two, three, or all four of the possible answer choices by covering said choices with a chip. Each player has all the time in the world to answer a question, unless the first player to lock in decides to use a "Press" and limit his/her opponent's time to 7 additional seconds. Any chips placed on wrong answers are taken away and added to a progressive Jackpot. The player who is caught not covering the right answer is eliminated, and the winner collects all of his/her remaining chips in cash. In order to begin a Duel, a lone player (either the first randomly selected player of the tournament, or the winner of the last Duel) must select one of three randomly chosen opponents from the "Players' Gallery", which started with 24 players. One person is eliminated at a time...until the final night of play, when the four players who won the greatest number of Duels enter a single-elimination tournament for that progressive jackpot that had been building from all of the previous Duel...it reached over $1.7 million by the time of the final Duel.

There is really just one thing I would change about Duel if it was up to me. The way Duel is currently set up, there isn't enough time for all 24 players to have a chance to play. Also, since the Top 4 is determined by the number of Duels won first (and money won from the Duels second)...a minimum of two, in this case...the very last person to be picked before the final tournament is totally screwed. Even if he/she wins, there won't be enough time for that player to play another Duel to possibly make it into the Top 4. Something else that bothered me about "Duel" was the selection process for opponents...I was annoyed by the fact that the "Software Engineer", from near the beginning of the tournament on to the end of the week, was consistently passed over. I'm not sure why...but I'm guessing that all the players who had him as a potential opponent were afraid that someone who was a software engineer would be too smart for them (remember my third directive?).

There is one simple solution that would resolve both of these problems. Why not make "Duel" a single-elimination tournament from the very beginning? Start with 16 players instead of the original 24 (since 6-8 out of the original 24 wouldn't get the chance to play, anyway), and play through four rounds of matches. This way, all of the participants who qualify for the main game are given the chance to play...with no chance to be "passed over"...and the winner is the player who had the right combination of knowledge, skill, and luck to win all of his/her matches. That is how competition is supposed to work, after all. I wonder if ABC would actually take this suggestion seriously...?

Also, I couldn't help but notice the way the final match ended...in which Ashlee Register (the Nurse) chose to cover all of her answers on the final question: "Which of these weighs more...a gallon of water, a gallon of crude oil, a gallon of vegetable oil, or they all weigh the same?" Ashlee promptly covered all of her answers, clearly having no idea. The Car Dealer, on the other hand, covered everything except "a gallon of water"...which was, in fact, the correct answer. I understand that the object of "Duel" is to make sure you are covering the correct answer in order to survive...but Ashlee won simply because she covered all of the answers. At least the Car Dealer tried to eliminate an answer he thought was wrong. I can't quite put my finger on why that bothers me, though. Oh, well....