Double Elimination Bracket

There are two brackets. Everyone starts in the winners bracket. A team that loses there drops into the losers bracket, where a second loss ends its tournament. The last team standing in each bracket meet in the grand final.

The winners-bracket champion arrives at the grand final without a loss, the losers-bracket champion with one. If the unbeaten team wins, it is over. If it loses, both teams have one loss, so a second, deciding game is played. Some events skip that second game to save time; the switch beside the bracket turns it off.

Every team but the champion loses twice, so n teams play 2n − 2 games, or 2n − 1 when the second final is needed: 14 or 15 games for 8 teams, 30 or 31 for 16.

Each game has a number, shown at its right edge, in the order the games can be played. In the losers bracket a line that reads “Loser of game 5” is the slot where that team drops in; the name appears once game 5 has a result.

Teams dropping from the winners bracket are placed on the opposite side of the losers bracket from the team that just beat them, so two teams do not meet again straight away.

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