In spring of 2006, whoswithme.org held a sixteen man, single elimination tournament to decide history's best beardsman. In the first three rounds, readers cast hundreds of votes, eventually narrowing the field to two competitors.
The fourth and final round was decided by an automated, randomly generated battle, initiated when a new user visited the site. Upon each battle's completion, its results were submitted to a database. After one week, the results of every user-generated battle were tallied and a final winner was decided.
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Screenshots of Flash game: