Single-Elimination Bracket Layout

The single-elimination bracket is the most common and well-known variety of sporting tournament, most notably used for the NCAA Basketball Tournament to determine the best men's and women's collegiate program in the United States each March and April. In single-elimination, each team plays until they lose once, at which point they are out of the tournament.

  1. Standard Brackets

    • The simplest bracket works with multiples of four. The basic tournament bracket is drawn by writing the two teams playing, underlining them, then drawing a vertical bar to connect the end of the underlines. In a small four-team tournament, the two brackets are stacked vertically, and a line extends from each one for listing the winner of each game. These lines are connected as before, with yet another line coming from the center to list the winner of the championship game.

    Arranging Larger Tournaments

    • For tournaments of more than four teams, but still in multiples of four, split the teams in half and draw the brackets opposite each other. Cluster no more than eight brackets together. For example, in a 64-team tournament, the left side of the bracket will have two 16-team clusters that lead eventually to a semi-final for that side, while the right side of the bracket will appear the exact same way, as in a mirror.

    Tournament Seeding

    • Most tournaments rank the teams before play, then pair teams off according to an outside-in matchup system. This means that the best team will play its first game against the worst team, the second-best against the second-worst, and so on until the two middle teams face each other. Matchups are also arranged so that the best-worst matchups are at the edges of the bracket, saving a potential game between the No. 1 and No. 2 team until the final round.

    Odd-Numbered Brackets

    • For tournaments with entrants not in a multiple of four, draw the bracket as if preparing for a tournament of the next-highest multiple of four, and give the top-seeded teams a bye in the first round. For example, in a 29-team tournament, draw up a bracket for a 32-team tournament, but have no opponent listed for the No. 1, 2 and 3 seeds, allowing them to automatically pass into the next round.

    Consolation Rounds

    • Some single-elimination tournaments have consolation rounds. While one loss will eliminate a team from playing for the championship, a consolation round allows those one-loss teams to continue playing for lower rankings such as third, fourth or fifth place. Whether an extra set of brackets is created for one-loss teams or simply one extra game is played between the semifinal game losers to determine third place is entirely at the tournament director's discretion.