Some of you may know that the Washington Post just very recently finished off a full 64 character "March Madness"-style tournament just like this, and the ridiculous thing is I became aware of it a couple weeks ago, and yet about 48 hours ago when I got the great epiphany to do this bracket thing myself, I'd obviously forgotten completely about it, because it felt like a quasi-original thing

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/ar ... dness.html

But even though there's that, I've decided what the hell, I'm still gonna go ahead with mine. However it's noticably different. As you can see they went with a full 64 choices just like the NCAA tourney, but to fill that out they included some unusual ones, like the season 1 polar bear, and even Michael's brand new alter ego 'Kevin Johnson'. I just find that kinda ridiculous. So I went the next step down, 32. This required making some hard choices, but I doubt anyone who's left off would've been making it into the final four anyway.

I wanted to be able to do it nice and evenly with 16 Oceanic survivors, and 16 people in the category of basically "everyone else", but to include all who I'd felt were deserving enough, I had to make it a little cockeyed. This is why you'll see Bernard and Rose over on the "everyone else" side. Oh well. I'm also reasonably content with how I set up the seeding, gauging general fan interest around online for different characters, and hopefully keeping the real main popular ones from having to go head to head too early to a minimum.

So if you'd like to start voting, you can basically do the entire first part of the bracket, the first 16 matchups all at the same time if you want. Please do not PM me with your choices, I have an email address I set up specifically for collecting the votes -- send your votes to: mylostbracket32@yahoo.com.

You can download a .jpeg of the whole bracket I've drawn out here in MS Paint:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/zd0zl1

But for convenience I'll also quickly layout how the seeds go below here.


OCEANIC 815 SURVIVORS
#1 John Locke
#8 Boone Carlyle

#4 Jin Kwon
#5 Walt Lloyd

#3 Kate Austen
#6 Claire Littleton

#2 Jack Shephard
#7 Michael Dawson
--------------------------

#1 James "Sawyer" Ford
#8 Shannon Rutherford

#4 Mr. Eko
#5 Sun Kwon

#3 Hugo "Hurley" Reyes
#6 Charlie Pace

#2 Sayid Jarrah
#7 Libby



EVERYONE ELSE
#1 Ben Linus
#8 Charles Widmore

#4 Tom aka Mr. Friendly
#5 Penny Widmore

#3 Richard Alpert
#6 Goodwin

#2 Juliete Burke
#7 Ethan Rom
------------------------

#1 Desmond Hume
#8 Sarah Shephard

#4 Rose Henderson
#5 Christian Shephard

#3 Bernard Nadler
#6 Mikhail Bakunin

#2 Danielle Rousseau
#7 Anthony Cooper aka Tom Sawyer



And so it goes. Please remember to ONLY send your votes to mylostbracket32@yahoo.com. If you'd like to partake, I hope you enjoy


(EDIT: Thank you to the Mod who made this its own thread, I honestly wasn't sure if I should have when I started out, and obviously made the choice that I did)

Sounds cool. I e-mailed my choices.
Kate v. Claire was the toughest choice.

Yea, though it's unfortunate that there's a very strong chance of Jack and Kate already having to face off in only round 2, but actually I purposely pitted Kate against Claire there, when I thought about it I found something very interesting about that matchup, I'm very curious to see who'll come out (note that when Entertainment Weekly I think it was did a list of the top 15 best Lost characters a few months ago, Kate didn't make the list at all).


Btw I will have the voting for this first round of 16 matchups last at least up until Sunday night, depending on how many people I've heard from.

done

Just one last reminder, I'll very likely be counting up the votes finalizing the first round choices late tonight.

Well the likes of Jin, Tom and Hurley are each wiping sweat from their brow, they were the winners by the slimmest margins. Jin and Tom each pulled out a win by a single vote, and Hurley eeked by Charlie with just two.

Those who enjoyed a clean sweep in the 1st round with 100% of the votes were Locke, Jack, Sayid and Desmond.

Technically speaking there were only two upsets, but I hesitate to really call them that, with Rose losing to Pops Shephard and Bernard losing to Mikhail, it's more a matter of seeing that I obviously did a backwards job in how I seeded these 4, because really in each case those two won the matchups quite handily, it wasn't even close.


Anyways so the 1st round is officially over, let the 2nd round begin. I'll soon decide exactly how long the voting period will last. I've UL'd .jpeg of the whole updated bracket and provided the link from which to get it, but will also write them out here below as before.

To download the .jpeg file:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/6howoz

**ROUND 2**

OCEANIC 815 SURVIVORS
#1 John Locke
#4 Jin Kwon

#3 Kate Austen
#2 Jack Shephard
-------------------

#1 Sawyer
#4 Mr. Eko

#3 Hurley
#2 Sayid


EVERYONE ELSE
#1 Ben
#4 Tom aka Mr. Friendly

#3 Richard Alpert
#2 Juliet Burke
-----------------

#1 Desmond Hume
#5 Christian Shephard

#6 Mikhail Bakunin
#2 Danielle Rousseau



And we are down to the LOST Sweet 16
Same as before, please email your choices to mylostbracket32@yahoo.com, please do not send me a PM via here on the boards. And note that this is still open to anyone interested, even if you did not fill out a 1st round bracket, you can still begin contributing here in the 2nd round. Thanks.

I missed the first round, but I just voted for the second round.

cool idea. i voted for round 2 since i missed the first round.

just curious why charlie was a 6? he was a very popular character. him v hurley was rough as those were probably 2 of the characters you just have to like.

and i'm surprised jin beat walt.

Well, yea that was a little bit of a tough on with Charlie. I personally always liked him a lot, as I've long said for one thing partly because all the stuff I've seen of the real Dom Monaghan, I get the feeling our personalities are rather similar and we'd probably get along well. But, I dunno... especially over the last season and a half I felt like I was hearing more and more rumblings from people getting sorta tired and "over" Charlie, if you take the entirety of the series so far he'd definitely seemed a bit less popular over the 2nd half than in the 1st half. Mr Eko, while true it started coming out that the actor who played him was a real jerkoff on set that nobody apparently was sorry to see get killed off, no denying that a ton of people still liked the character from the word GO. And Jin, while it probably took a bit of the first season for people to warm up to him, when he was still being that overbearing, domineering husband, it's clear that a lot of people absolutely adore him now. Walt, he's kinda tricky, because obviously we haven't really seem him hardly at all for the better part of a season+, but as we all know he's always still been somewhere in the background as a vital part of the landscape of the plot somehow.

All in all, in retrospect I'd say Charlie could've reasonably been a #5 seed ahead of Sun, but short of that, I'm totally comfortable with where I put him.
But yea don't forget, like I said, Jin just barely beat Walt, literally just one measly vote

And thanks for the kind words

well sun is my mosted hated character, so she coulda been like 26 lol. and i have loved jin for the past season and half or so. walt is just so mysterious and mystic that he is the more dynamic character; but jin is cool too.

my prediction for the final 4:

locke (tho they really need to kick his character back into gear in these 4 episodes)
hurley (as the upset pick, who makes it because he's just so darn likable)
ben (amazing bad guy)
desmond (the best character)

Well the 1st round ended up lasting just about 3 days, so I'll just make that the standard voting period time for each of the rounds. So please if you wish to vote, have your choices emailed to me by Wednesday night (4/2) by around 11pm-ish. Thanks.

Yay, the frilly insanity is over.

Now then... FYI -- less than 24 hours to go in voting for your 2nd round faves, let's ride this bitch onto an Elite 8. Wednesday night it is!

We've officially now got the Elite... or, Oceanic Eight The votes have been counted, and so we're set for the next round. As before, I've made available the .jpeg of the bracket I've drawn up made to be updated if you want to get it that way, but I'll quickly layout the winners below as usual.


To DL the bracket .jpeg:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/2k0lqn


OCEANIC 815 SURVIVORS

#1 John Locke
#2 Jack Shephard
-------------------
#1 Sawyer
#2 Sayid Jarrah


EVERYONE ELSE

#1 Ben Linus
#3 Richard Alpert
-------------------
#1 Desmond Hume
#2 Danielle Rousseau



Sayid, Danielle and Richard were the slimmest of winners, prevailing by a single vote each over Hurley, Mikhail and Juliet respectively. I really thought Kate vs. Jack was going to be a good contest at first, Kate pulled out to the early lead but then Jack stormed back and beat her by a comfy margin.
There were only 2 unanimous winners this time, Locke and Desmond each garnering 100% of their matchup's votes.

And there's your final 8. Here we are Wednesday night, I'll say we'll go to Friday night (4/2) at around this time to get in your votes to whiddle down to the Final 4. As usual, please email those votes to mylostbracket32@yahoo.com, and once again please note that even if you've not voted at all so far along the way, you can still start now and contribute votes for this next round.

Sent my vote.

Me too. As much as I like them both, I hope Jack can pull off the upset over Locke.

Oh, I'm totally cheering for Locke. Him and Ben are my favorites.

I voted for Locke, Sayid, Ben, and Desmond.

Don't forget, voters! Get in your picks for the final four by the end of tonight!

So out of these last 4 matchups, we've got two resulting in ties. This is what I'll do. I have to leave for work in less than an hour and will be back at 6am tomorrow morning. If you wanna email in a 'sudden death overtime' choice of your picks for these two, go ahead, I'll count as many as I receive, and whoever wins out of that extra bunch, that's who will move onto the championship round.

The two ties are:

#1 John Locke
#2 Jack Shephard

AND

#1 Sawyer
#2 Sayid Jarrah


Thanks for continuing to play, get in your additional picks to mylostbracket32@yahoo.com to help make your favorites survive!

We have a Final Four, ladies and gentlemen.


THE 815'ers

#2 Jack Shephard
#1 Sawyer


EVERYONE ELSE

#1 Ben Linus
#1 Desmond Hume



Well how fitting that the 815 side comes down to this matchup. The original combo of the two biggest characters butting heads on the show, Jack vs. Sawyer. I'll admit that I was a wee bit dissapointed at this result, I've purposely kept myself out of actually voting each time along the way here, but I was deep down rooting for Locke in this last one. I'm somewhat surprised Jack won out (hence my seeding of Locke above him to begin with).

In the end, Jack took Locke by 2 votes, Sawyer's victory was even thinner at just 1 over Sayid. Perhaps not surprisingly, Ben's and Desmond's wins were each pretty emphatic, in fact Danielle only got 1 vote, Richard only 2. And mind you, I really dig Richard a lot, I can't wait to see more of him, but going up against the likes of Ben, that's a tough go.

You've got now until at the latest by the end of Sunday (4/6) night to choose your sole representative from each side to establish the final LOST showdown. Keep your votes coming to mylostbracket32@yahoo.com. And as usual, even if you've not joined in on the fun at all yet, you can still do so now.


Sorry, forgot about this part earlier. If anyone also wants to download for themselves the actual bracket layout .jpeg file that I've updated, you can get it here:
http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.php? ... 3z&thumb=4

Interesting.