So I want to host a double elimination tournament. I know that you have to lose twice to be eliminated, and that there’s a winners and a losers bracket. But I don’t really understand how it works, especially with its matchups. Reading its Wikipedia article made me even more confused…there’s “minor” and “major” loser rounds?
In:
The “double” in the name means that a team is eliminated after it loses twice. All teams start in the winners’ bracket, which has only the teams that have not lost yet. When a team loses once, it moves to the losers’ bracket, which has only the teams that have lost once. When a team in the losers’ bracket loses again, it is eliminated from the tournament.
When the tournament is down to one team in the winners’ bracket and one team in the losers’ bracket, different variations of double-elimination tournaments proceed differently. I’m guessing that’s what the major and minor loser rounds refer to. (I have not heard those terms before.)
The part about choosing which teams play each other is separate from the tournament structure. It’s common to have, say 1-16, 2-15, 3-14, and so on in the first round of matches. But when teams move to the losers’ bracket, the choice of teams in each match becomes complex because it’s desirable to not have the same two teams meet in the winners’ bracket and the losers’ bracket if it can be avoided.
It would probably be helpful to go to [Challonge](http://challonge.com) and make some brackets and play around with them. That might be more ELI5 than us describing seeding algorithms in words.
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