Double-elimination tournament

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A double-elimination tournament is a type of elimination tournament competition in which a participant ceases to be eligible to win the tournament's championship upon having lost two games or matches. It stands in contrast to a single-elimination tournament, in which only one defeat results in elimination.

One method of arranging a double-elimination tournament is to break the competitors into two sets of brackets, the winners' bracket and losers' bracket (W and L brackets for short; also referred to as championship bracket and elimination bracket,^[1] upper bracket and lower bracket, or main bracket and repechage) after the first round. The first-round winners proceed into the W bracket and the losers proceed into the L bracket. The W bracket is conducted in the same manner as a single-elimination tournament, except that the losers of each round "drop down" into the L bracket. Another method of double-elimination tournament management is the Draw and Process.

As with single-elimination tournaments, most often the number of competitors is equal to a power of two (8, 16, 32, etc.) so that in each round there is an even number of competitors and never any byes.

The number of games in a double-elimination tournament is one or two less than twice the number of teams participating (e.g. 8 teams would see 14 or 15 games).