HMMT November 2022 H10

There are 21 competitors with distinct skill levels numbered $1,2, \ldots, 21$. They participate in a pingpong tournament as follows. First, a random competitor is chosen to be "active", while the rest are "inactive." Every round, a random inactive competitor is chosen to play against the current active one. The player with the higher skill will win and become (or remain) active, while the loser will be eliminated from the tournament. The tournament lasts for 20 rounds, after which there will only be one player remaining. Alice is the competitor with skill 11 . What is the expected number of games that she will get to play?