Talk:Double-elimination tournament

Error
I'm confused, the article states that the winner of the upper bracket only has to lose once to lose the tournament. This is never the case as the winner of the consolation bracket will always have to defeat the upper bracket winner twice.
 * Yes, that was obviously absurd. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 22:16, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The statement that the winner of the winner's bracket only has to lose once to lose the tournament is true is it not? i.e. When the winner of the winners bracket advances to the finals and loses to the winner of the losers bracket (who has lost once) the tournament is over and the the winner of that match is the winner of the tournament. In that scenario the winner of the loser's bracket has lost only once and has not won the tournament. This was my biggest complaint about the double elimination tournament playing pool for many years. Dancindazed (talk) 23:13, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
 * The article says "It is possible for the Championship finals to be determined by just a single match if the W Bracket winner defeats the L Bracket winner." In some championships, the final is played only once, no matter if the winner comes from the W Bracket or the L Bracket. See for instance: 2012–13_Campionato_Sammarinese_di_Calcio. Tykyheg (talk) 13:12, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

On this point, see the edit I just made which clarifies that double-elimination tournaments usually have a possible second game of the finals (called the "if game") but sometimes are scheduled as a single-game final round, as mentioned by Tykyheg. See opinion piece in The Bruin. Mathew5000 (talk) 06:34, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

Rewrote article
I re-wrote much of the article in order to offer a clearer explanation of why things happen the way they do, rather than a confusing explanation about how the teams that have won once and lost once face the teams that have lost after winning the first round, the losers having lost twice and the winners who have won once and lost once then won again facing the teams that won twice and lost once, on and on and on. This, coupled with the lack of a diagram, makes it rather difficult to swallow if you don't already know how a double-elimination tournament is conducted.

Instead, I noted that each round in the Losers Bracket is conducted in two stages, the second one allowing the losers from the Winners Bracket to be "filtered down" into the Losers Bracket. This, I believe, establishes the fundamental principle behind the arrangement of the Losers Bracket (in other words, the why), rather than going off on an accurate but overwhelmingly confusing treatise on just the end result (in other words, the what).

I picked up the diagram from the Bracket (tournament) article (props to whoever made that), which while still not crystal clear, still offers a way for people to see the results and perhaps, with the aid of the written text of the article, suddenly reach that epiphany of "oh, I get it now!". -- Vystrix Nexoth 22:37, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

I found the diagram most useful, in particular the fact that the winner of the top bracket loses and gets reintroduced as a loser-on-second-chance and then goes on to win. That wasn't apparent just from reading the text. (Nor, I must admit initially understood from first glance at the diagram; it was only when working out how many matches get played per person that I needed something to explain the errors in my own disgrams, lol.) ;o) Ferdinangus 15:19, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Comparisons
Someone care to write something comparing it with the Swiss system and Round-Robin system?70.111.251.203 13:09, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Seeding
Would be interesting to see a subsection on how seeding usually is handled in these tournament systems. Mainly I wonder how losers that just lost their first game are interleaved with losers already present in the losers bracket. Andreas Lundblad (talk) 23:19, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
 * You just follow the numbering on the chart. The longer you stay in the winners' bracket, the better you are placed in the losers' bracket. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93;  ‹(-¿-)› 22:16, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Determine number of teams in losers bracket
Maybe add this for more information? the number of teams in the losers bracket for any round will always be the number of teams in the losers bracket the previous round divided by two and added to the number of teams in the winners bracket after being divided by two.(number of teams in winners bracket divded by two, not the solution to the rest of the formula divided by two). or N=L/2+(W/2)                     L- teams in losers bracket previous round. W- number of teams in winners bracket previous round.

To find how many teams are in the losers bracket for the second round of the tournament(first with team(s) in the loser bracket)you take the number of teams in the tournament and divide it by 2. Same for third round. Fourth round divide amount of teams by 2 2/3. Fifth divide it by 4. Sixth round divide by 6 2/5. Seventh divide by 10 2/3. Eighth divide by 18.2857(round your answer). Ninth divide by 32. Tenth divide by 56.8(repeating.)These work until you have two teams left, then the next round will have one.

Note:I cannot source these from any website or book;I figured these out on my own, you are free to try them if you think they are incorrect.


 * Your calculations are wrong. You missed the fact, that the losers from the Upper Bracket only join the Lower Bracket at every second stage, not every stage (exception for first-round losers). The correct numbers are:
 * 1st and 2nd round of Lower Bracket: n/2
 * 3rd and 4th round of Lower Bracket: n/4
 * 5th and 6th round of Lower Bracket: n/8
 * and so on. See the picture in the article, which exactly matches my numbers. --UncleOwen (talk) 11:13, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Why? Just follow the numbering on the tournament chart. None of this math is necessary to run such a tournament. I can see that someone somewhere might have some reason to do calculations like this, e.g. for sportsbook purposes, but that's probably outside the scope of what a WP article is for, per WP:NOT. Just my opinion, so far. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 22:16, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Variations mentioned under "Conducting the tournament"
I found the paragraph "An exception is in tournaments in which at one point there is one Winner's Bracket team left and an odd number of Loser's Bracket teams left. Quite often these tournaments will make the last Winner's Bracket team play the lowest-seeded Loser's Bracket team remaining, thus preventing more bye-rounds for teams, shortening the tournament, and potentially making the final a one-game winner-take-all event. For instance, in a double-elimination tournament of eight teams, in the fourth round there will be three Loser's Bracket teams left and only one Winner's Bracket team left. The Winner's Bracket team plays the worst Loser's Bracket team, while the other two teams play each other. If the Winner's Bracket team wins, there will be two teams left and they will go straight to the finals (with the Winner's Bracket team having a one game advantage as usual). However, if the Winner's Bracket team loses then three teams will still be in the tournament, all with one loss. Usually in the subsequent fifth round either the last Winner's Bracket team that just lost has a bye-round or the top seed remaining will have a bye, while the other two teams square off. This leaves two teams for a one game final in the sixth and last round. Whether the Winner's Bracket team wins or loses in round four, this cross-bracket procedure shortens an eight team double elimination tournament from 6-7 rounds to 5-6 rounds." highly confusing. In a double-elimination tournament of eight teams there will never be three teams left in the Loser's Bracket. If done right, that is. The french article has a nice grafics. Note how équipe G joins the Loser's Bracket in round 4, not in round 3.

It took me quite some time to figure out that this paragraph is actually describing a variant to speed things up, not the pure Double-elimination tournament! That's why I think it should be moved down to the variants. The paragraph about the College World Series should go down there, too. --UncleOwen (talk) 11:39, 8 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I moved the paragraph about the College World Series. Not sure what to do about the first one. --UncleOwen (talk) 11:47, 8 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Now I also moved the paragraph about cross-bracket elimination. I also had to rewrite part of it. What do you think? --UncleOwen (talk) 11:55, 8 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Better. Weirdness like that should not "pollute" the description of the quite simple and easy-to-follow standard tournament format.

Cross link with repechage?
It appears to me (and I don't claim to be an expert) that the losers bracket of a double elimination tournament is in effect a Repechage. Should this be added to the entry, and the two entries cross linked?

Haroldp (talk) 21:58, 12 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I've done some work there to link back here, and will do a link the other direction too


 * Who is "I"? —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 22:16, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

"Team" bias
All this verbiage about "team" this and "team" that needs to go, as single, double and round-robin tournament formats have nothing to do with whether it's a team or individual sport. Just use "competitor" or something. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 22:16, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Draw and process
This is a major variant of the double elimination and should be included. There is an explanation here http://www.croquetamerica.com/croquet/tournaments/DrawAndProcess.php and here  http://www.croquet.org.uk/tournament/regulations.html#F1  MidlandLinda (talk) 20:50, 23 October 2010 (UTC)


 * I'd say that "Draw and Process" is sufficiently different from the subject of this article, that it warrent's an article of it's own. Adding details about D+P to this article would lead to confusion, IMHO. UncleOwen (talk) 20:55, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Title image is not a true double-elimination bracket
In the current title image, the lower bracket does not accommodate the losers of the first round (losers of games 1, 2, and 3). Instead the lower bracket begins at the second round. So the first-round losers are eliminated from the tournament after a single game or match, thus it is not a true double-elimination.

While this format may be a valid variant of double-elimination, I think a standard example would be more helpful to use as the title image of the article, particularly to avoid confusion as the image contradicts with the article in many places. Derevyenot (talk) 10:19, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
 * The best solution (if wanting to keep the image relatively small) is a six-entrant bracket. I'll have a go this weekend of drawing it up.  O.N.R.  (talk) 21:05, 30 July 2020 (UTC)


 * I agree with Derevyenot. The top image in the current version of the article does not illustrate a double-elimination tournament. It depicts a hybrid of the single- and double-elimination formats. The image was put in the article in June 2020 by this edit. I'm going to restore the image that had been at the top of the article previously, which accurately illustrates a double-elimination tournament with all its complexity.     Mathew5000 (talk) 08:08, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

San Marino
What about sanmarinese association football league? They had before 2018/19 a double-elimination tournament at end of the season. 2A02:908:C38:D3A0:0:0:0:38EC (talk) 22:54, 5 May 2023 (UTC)