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Tournament plans you can use, from people who enjoy the art and science of tournament design.

Double and Triple Elimination Tournaments

Basic Elimination Tournaments

 traditional

Double elimination, 8 players
Triple elimination, 8 players
 

  

Balanced Elimination Tournaments

 designed by Joe Czapski

Double Elimination

6 players
7 players
8 players
10 players
12 players
16 players

Triple Elimination

4 players
5 players
6 players
7 players
8 players
10 players
12 players
16 players
20 players

 4-Loss Elimination

4 players
8 players

 Double and triple elimination tournaments are great fun, but the basic, traditional format most often used is flawed.  The problem is that the single player who comes out of the top (winner's) bracket does not play until a single opponent comes out of the bottom (loser's) bracket or brackets.  In the examples posted above, the no-losses player skips 2 rounds of play in the double elimination tournament and 5 to 6 rounds of play in the triple elimination.  Therefore, a player who loses his first one or two games must play several more games to get to the championship than the player who wins his first few games.  Also, spectators are deprived of getting to see possibly the best player participate in the tournament as much as his opponents.

These balanced elimination tournaments fix the problem.  I stuck to the following ideas in designing them:

  • Players with different numbers of losses can play each other at any point.  That complicates the brackets because it's not always known ahead of time whether a loser moves on or is eliminated, but that issue can be handled neatly by using 'if necessary' games.
  • No player shall sit idle for more than one round consecutively.
  • Even out how often each player plays each other player as much as is practical.  Avoid immediate replays.
  • The flexibility of the design means that it's unknown exactly how many players will be left in the tournament in the later rounds.  In the triple elimination tournaments, make the last couple of rounds double elimination to simplify the brackets.  In the double elimination tournaments, just make the final game single elimination.

Example: Four Player Balanced Triple Elimination Tournament

 

Elimination Tournaments Requiring
a Fixed Number of Wins

 by Matthew Fayers
Read the paper: Fayers, M. "Multiple-elimination knockout tournaments with the fixed-win property" Discrete Mathematics 290 (2005) 89-97.

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Last updated 02-Apr-2008