Skip to content
BracketPrintout

Double elimination brackets

Everybody gets a second chance, which roughly doubles the matches. Here is the structure, the arithmetic, and the decision about the grand final that has to be made before anybody plays.

The tournament

Paste a list of names
The list sets the size of the draw.

8 entrants in a 8-slot double-elimination draw: 7 winners-bracket matches, 6 losers-bracket matches across 4 losers rounds, and the grand final — 14 in all, or 15 if the bracket is reset. No byes, because the field is already a power of two.

Check this before you rely on it. This bracket generator is provided free and without warranty, and its results are not professional advice.

The bracket

Two sheets · landscape · the losers bracket starts a fresh page

Winners bracket

Quarter-finals

  1. 1Ashford
    8Halstead
  2. 4Dunmore
    5Eastfield
  3. 6Fernhill
    3Castleton
  4. 7Granton
    2Bellweather

Semi-finals

  1.  
     
  2.  
     

Final

  1.  
     

Undefeated

  1.  

Losers bracket

Losers round 1

  1.  
     
  2.  
     

Losers round 2Semi-finals losers drop in

  1.  
     
  2.  
     

Losers semi-final

  1.  
     

Losers finalWinners final loser drops in

  1.  
     

One loss

  1.  

Grand final, and the reset

  1.  
     
  2.  
     

Top box: the entrant who arrives undefeated. Bottom box: the one who arrives out of the losers bracket, already carrying a loss. The second match is played only if the undefeated entrant loses the first — at that point they have lost once, and one loss does not eliminate anybody in this tournament.

Click a name and type over it. Enter moves to the next entrant. Nothing you type is uploaded.

Matches, by field size

Double elimination against single, for the same field
Entrants Winners bracket Losers bracket Total With a reset Single elimination
4 3 2 6 7 3
8 7 6 14 15 7
16 15 14 30 31 15
32 31 30 62 63 31
64 63 62 126 127 63

How the two brackets fit together

Everybody starts in the winners bracket. Lose once and you drop into the losers bracket; lose there and you are out. The winner of each bracket meets in the grand final, which is why an entrant who has never lost can arrive at it against somebody who has lost once.

The losers bracket has twice as many rounds as the winners bracket, because it takes entrants dropping in from every winners round and has to fold them together. That is what makes double elimination long: the losers bracket is where most of the tournament actually happens.

It is also what makes it worth running. A single-elimination draw eliminates half the field in one round, and at a club night that means half the people who turned up have finished before the coffee. Double elimination gives everybody at least two matches.

The arithmetic, and the grand final question

Every entrant except the winner must lose twice, so the count is fixed: 8 entrants is 14 or 15 matches, 16 entrants is 30 or 31 matches and 32 entrants is 62 or 63 matches. The winners bracket is n − 1 of them and the losers bracket n − 2.

The two figures differ by the bracket reset. If the entrant coming out of the winners bracket loses the grand final, they have lost once — and the tournament said everyone gets two lives — so a second grand final is played. Some tournaments do this; some declare the grand final a single match and accept the asymmetry.

Decide which before anybody plays and say so at the start. A tournament that discovers this question after the grand final has already been lost is a tournament with an argument in it, and the argument is always about fairness rather than about the rule.

Common questions

How many matches in a double elimination tournament?

Twice the field minus two, plus the grand final — so 14 or 15 for eight entrants and 30 or 31 for sixteen. The higher figure includes a bracket reset if the grand final is lost by the entrant who had not lost before it.

What is a bracket reset?

A second grand final, played when the entrant arriving from the winners bracket loses the first one. They have then lost once, and in a tournament where two losses eliminate you, one loss cannot. It is optional, and it has to be agreed before the tournament starts.

Is double elimination better than single?

It is fairer and roughly twice as long. For a field that travelled to be there, or where one bad match should not end somebody’s day, it is worth the time. For a one-evening knockout with a fixed finish time, single elimination is the only one that fits.

The other tools