Tournament of Champions - Season 3

Photo - Food Network

Season 3 of Tournament of Champions hosted by Guy Fieri begins on Food Network Sunday, February 27th at 8pm.  They changed the format again for this season with there now being 32 chefs competing to win the prize and bragging rights.  They also upped the ante by making the prize $100,000.  With the extra competitors there will be extra episodes (eight) and each episode will be two-hours long with four matchups in each.

The 16 chefs representing the East are:

Eric Adjepong, Einat Admony, Karen Akunowicz, Kelsey Barnard Clark, Maneet Chauhan (season 2 winner), Madison Cowan, Tobias Dorzon, Tiffani Faison, Darnell Ferguson, Amanda Freitag, Richard Hales, Christian Petroni, Michael Psilakis, Aarthi Sampath, Justin Sutherland and Bryan Voltaggio.

Madison Cowan, Maneet Chauhan, Darnell Ferguson, Amanda Freitag, Christian Petroni, and Bryan Voltaggio all have competed in past years, while the other chefs are competing for the first time.

The 16 chefs representing the West are: 

Carlos Anthony, Shirley Chung, Chris Cosentino, Tiffany Derry, Elizabeth Falkner, Phillip Frankland Lee, Timothy Hollingsworth, Antonia Lofaso, Crista Luedtke, Brian Malarkey, Aaron May, Joe Sasto, Jet Tila, Marcel Vigneron, Michael Voltaggio and Season 1 winner Brooke Williamson (season 1 winner)

Elizabeth Falkner, Antonia Lofaso, Brian Malarkey, Aaron May, Jet Tila, Marcel Vigneron, Michael Voltaggio and Brooke Williamson have competed in the past, while the other chefs are new to the competition.  Elizabeth Falkner was competing on the East in season 1, but now is in the West.

You will also notice a lot of the competitors have appeared on Bravo's Top Chef in the past.

Simon Majumdar and Justin Warner will once again be providing the play-by-play analysis of the competition, and Hunter Fieri will again be following the action backstage.  The rotating panel of judges include Scott Conant, Cat Cora, Dominique Crenn, Giada De Laurentiis, Traci Des Jardins, Rocco DiSpirito, Lorena Garcia, Alex Guarnaschelli, Mashaharu Morimoto, Eric Ripert, Nancy Silverton, Ming Tsai, and Jonathan Waxman.  Alex Guarnaschelli competed in season 1, but is now a judge in this season.

I will update this post with the bracket once it is known and update this post each week with the winners like I did last year.  Feel free to discuss season three of Tournament of Champions in the comments.

UPDATE - Visit this post to see the bracket and to track the winners.