There were fourteen professional piping competitors,  a drawing was held at 2:00 in the afternoon to select competition pairings, and the order of play:

The evening's competition events started promptly at 8:00, with each competitor required to play a set consisting of 2 two parted marches, 2 two parted strathspeys, 2 two parted reels, and four parts of Jig.  As you can imagine, there were lots of interesting tune selections, and lots of music.  It was fast paced, and very entertaining.

There were three judges for the event:
from the left: Angus Macpherson, David Hilder, and Neil Dickie.

After each pair of competitors, the judges simply held up a small white board with the number (1 or 2) of the competitor that they (the judge) felt was the winner. 

In this manner, 7 Professional Pipers advanced to the second round, to be held in February. 

Here is the order of play, and the pairings - * indicates the winner of the pairing.

Alan Walters & Jori Chisholm*
Andrew Smith* & Ed McIlwaine
David Hicks & Andrew Bonar*
Alison Dunsire* & Michael Fitzhenry
Owen Shaw* & Stewart Smith
Glen Mitchell & Colin Gemmell*
Christian Hryniw & Alan Bevan*

At the end of the evening, the draw for order of play for the next round of the KnockOut was held:

1 - Jori Chisholm (Washington)
2 - Alan Bevan (Ontario)
3 - Colin Gemmell (Washington)
4 - Andrew Bonar (B.C.)
5 - Owen Shaw (Alberta)
6 - Andrew Smith (Alberta)
7 - Alison Dunsire (Washington)

From this group, 4 will advance to the final event in March.