"Newcomer-2012. Summer"

Why was the decision made to abandon large groups?

There simply weren't enough people to form large groups; there were only 27 participants. Until the very last day, there were only 24 players registered. Tanya got to know each one, and reviewed their save files. Taking all the registered and newly registered players would have a high probability of some dropping out. The last tournaments had 56 participants, twice as many. That's why the groups were twice as large.
If those who were eliminated in the first round want to continue playing in this tournament, we can organize games to determine the rankings from 19th to 27th place. It's not difficult to create a draw; would you like that? This is how it used to be done in the "Seasons" tournaments. This would result in another 4 games, maybe even more, we need to think about it, plus games with players of a similar level.
We can continue this pattern further down the bracket, i.e., those eliminated in the second round will play for 13th to 18th place, and so on.
Do the players want this? If so, let us know, and we'll do it.