Tournament Bracket Types

Tournaments come in a large variety of formats. Tournaments can be arranged for sports, academic or social purposes. Once you have designed a tournament, you will need a way to track the results. One way is by using a tournament bracket. Just like tournaments, tournament brackets are customizable to meet your desired purpose.

  1. Double Elimination Brackets

    • In some tournaments, a single loss does not eliminate you from the competition, it takes two losses for that. These are known as double elimination brackets. For these you create two separate brackets. One is called the winners bracket, in which competitors advance as they win. The second is the consolation bracket. As a team loses, they enter that bracket. In the end, the winner of the winner's bracket and consolation bracket play for the championship. If the winner of the winner's bracket loses the first game, a second game for the championship must be played as that team would only have one loss.

    Round-Robin Brackets

    • In a round-robin or pool bracket, teams are divided into groups. They play everyone in their own group or pool one time. The tournament creator must determine ahead of time how many teams advance. It can be just the team with the best record, or possibly several teams with the best records. They can then advance to another round-robin round against others that advanced, or to a standard single elimination tournament. Round-robin tournaments can help reduce the number of competitors quickly in tournaments where there are a large number of entrants.

    Rotating Partner Brackets

    • Card games are an example of an activity that use rotating brackets. Groups are formed of four, with two pairs of partners. Each player plays a round of the game with one of the other three players. Even though the players play as partners, they keep their scores as individuals. An example would be in Spades. The game ends when one partnership has 500 points -- each player on the team gets his team's score as his individual score, and then plays with a new partner. His final score is his combined score of all three games. The top player then advances to either another rotating partner bracket or a single elimination bracket.

    Single Elimination

    • The single elimination tournament is one where you must win to continue in the tournament. Team or player names are written on a bracket before the competition advances. If she wins, the player advances to the next round of the bracket, where she plays another winner. This continues until only two teams or players remain. That game is the championship in a single elimination bracket.