Tournament bracket

What it's for

To organize a tournament (video games, sports, cards, foosball…) with a single-elimination bracket and fairly drawn matchups.

How it works

Participants are shuffled and paired. If the number isn't a power of 2, some get a bye. Print the page to follow the tournament.

The «bye», and why somebody gets one

A knockout bracket works when the entrants are a power of two: 4, 8, 16, 32. With any other number somebody has to skip the first round, and that rest is called a bye. The number of byes is the difference between the entrants and the next power of two: with eleven entries, five byes are handed out.

A bye is a real advantage: whoever gets one plays a match fewer and arrives fresher. In official tournaments it is therefore given to the seeds, that is the strongest players, to reward their ranking; in a tournament among friends, where there are no rankings, the honest choice is to draw for it.

Pure draw or seeding

The pure draw is the simplest and the fairest before the law: everybody has the same chance of meeting anybody. It has a known flaw, though, which real tournaments want to avoid at all costs: the two strongest can meet in the first round, and the final becomes a match between the second and the fifth.

The seeding solves that by separating the strongest into opposite halves of the bracket, so that they meet as late as possible. The price is that a seed has an easier path at the start. Neither system is «fair» in absolute terms: the first rewards luck, the second past results, and the choice has to be stated up front.

What happens to whoever loses immediately

That is the serious limit of a knockout: half the entrants play a single match. In an afternoon tournament among friends it means four people out of eight go home after ten minutes, and it is why improvised tournaments often end badly.

There are two known solutions. The consolation bracket, that is a second tournament among the first-round losers, which doubles the matches played without stretching things too far. And double elimination, where you are only out after two defeats: it is fairer and takes about twice as many matches, but it is the standard format in video game tournaments precisely for this reason.

Three decisions before starting

What happens in case of a draw at the end: extra time, penalties, a play-off, or advantage points. It is the question nobody asks at the start and that always comes up. How many matches per round: one is fast and random, best of three is far more meaningful and triples the time.

And how third place gets decided: with a play-off between the two losing semi-finalists, or by leaving two joint thirds. In short tournaments the play-off is played when somebody cares, and skipped when people are tired: what matters is having said so beforehand.

Nearby tools

For a round-robin tournament there is Group generator, for scoring during matches Scoreboard. To split the group Random team maker, and for the draw Wheel of fortune.