I'll play as well.

I'm in.

You can always count me in for a chance at fame and glory.

I'm certainly in

Firstly, you proposed the idea of having 81 players because it works well with the top 3 promoting through and resulting in 9 in the final. That makes perfect sense. However, why not add an extra player into the first round matches to call it an even 90 players with 3 still promoting. Still works and 90 sounds better than 81

The hardest part about hosting a tournament was assuring that you could get people to host the games. So I have the following idea for you to consider:
There are 9 games in the opening round. Find yourself 9 reliable hosts on the forum and they are each in charge of their first round game. Then, get 5 of the hosts to create public rated games at U.S. primetime, 2 hosts to create games during U.k./Europe primetime, and then 2 at Aus/Asia primetime. The hosts don't need to be from these countries but just need to start hosting at these times.
List the times on the forums so that people who want to play can be ready to jump in them quickly. And then the remaining spots will be filled by randoms. Inside the game the host of the game is in charge of explaining to everybody that it's a tournament and that the top 3 progress. If, when the time comes, one of the top 3 players doesn't want to play the next round then the host is in control of talking to the person in 4th to fill the spot.
So by doing this you have each of the games controlled by a reliable host.

When the 2nd round comes around, if the top 3 of 3 games are combined then surely at least 1 of the reliable hosts has progressed through and can host the next round. If not, the 3 eliminated hosts would be able to find a good replacement.

I think that hoping to get 81 (90...) players to sign up on the forum will be tough, and if so it will be a logistical nightmare to get up and running. This proposed system is similar to the qualifier games for king of the hill which allowed randoms to join directly from lobby instead of requiring to check the forum.

@champinoman

Yeah, it'd probably make sense to put some veteran players in charge of hosting the individual games. If this looks like it'll get off the ground i'll probably do that.

I'd rather not make the games publicly joinable if at all possible though. The random matching part of this tounament was my main motivation to propose the tournament. If all else fails, i'll go with that though.

As for recruiting entrants, i was planning on advertising it a little more on the other places (reddit/etc) where people discuss the game. And hopefully get you guys on the forum to spread the word to any players you think might be interested that don't frequent the forums.