Tournament Scheduling the Easy Way

Tournaments have a multiple of purposes, including to determine a champion and to allow teams to play a number of games in a short period of time. To run a successful tournament, you need to determine the tournament format and then determine how to seed the teams. These decisions need to be based on the purpose of the tournament, the time you have to complete the tournament and the expectations of the teams involved.

  1. Tournament Format

    • The format of the tournament will determine how how many games each team is guaranteed and how long the tournament will take. The most common tournament formats are round robin, pool play followed an elimination portion, single elimination and double elimination. Round-robin tournaments are when each team plays every other team and the winner is determined based on the results of all of the games. Round-robin tournaments are best for small tournaments designed to guarantee a minimum number of games for each team. For example you could play a four-team tournament with each team getting three guaranteed games. Pool play tournaments break up the teams into pools where they play round-robin and then the top team or two teams in each pool advance to an elimination round. For example, in a 16-team tournament you could divide the teams into four pools of four teams each and have the top team in each pool advance to the semifinals of a single-elimination bracket. This guarantees each team three games yet still allows for a championship game. For round-robin and pool-play tournaments, ties are possible so be sure to have set in advance what the tie breakers will be. For example, common tie-breakers include head-to-head, point differential and fewest points allowed. If all other tiebreakers fail, a coin flip may be necessary. Single- and double-elimination tournaments are more cutthroat in their design. Double-elimination tournaments guarantee each team two games while single-elimination tournaments only guarantee one game.

    Seeding

    • Every tournament requires seeding of some type, even if it is random. Random seeding is particularly useful when you do not have criteria for comparing the teams in the tournament, such as a regular season record and is usually used in tournaments that do not determine a league champion, such as invitational tournaments. You can also seed your tournament based on criteria of your choosing, such as regular-season record. Seeded tournaments give an advantage to teams who performed better by pairing them with weaker opponents in the early rounds. If you are using a pool play format, you can still use seeding when you determine the pools that teams are put into. For example, if you have four teams in four pools, you do not want to put the top four teams into one pool because that will guarantee some will be eliminated in the pool-play round. Instead, if you seed the teams you can put the top four teams in separate pools so there would have to be an upset for one of the best teams to go home early.