A single-elimination tournament (also called a knockout tournament) is a tournament format in which a team or player is immediately eliminated in case of a loss.
When you win, you advance to the next round. If you lose, you are out of the tournament.
A big advantage of single elimination is that any number of participants is possible: 5, 12, 23 or 64 - it doesn't matter.
If the number is not a nice "power of 2" (such as 8, 16, 32...), some teams are often drawn freely in the first round or extra matches are played to straighten out the number.
The tournament then still proceeds via knockout.
Eighth final, quarter final, semi-final...
The familiar names like eighth final, quarter final, semi-final and final are usually only used when the tournament starts or ends at a number of participants that is a power of 2 (such as 16 or 32).
These designations make the tournament course clear and are widely used in major sporting events such as the European Cup or World Cup.
For example:
- Eight finals: 16 teams
- Quarter finals: 8 teams
- Half finals: 4 teams
- Final: 2 teams
For example, if you start with 18 teams, there will first be a preliminary round for four teams to get to 16.
Only after that will you start the eighth finals.
With mytournament.info, you can organise a single-elimination tournament in a few minutes.
In the category settings, select Single elimination:
Summarised
- Single elimination means: loss = elimination.
- This format is appropriate for any number of participants.
- Every tournament with eighth finals is a knockout tournament, but not every knockout tournament has eighth finals.