How to Make Brackets for a Tournament When I Am Using Multiple Fields
Brackets are used for tournaments of all kinds. Whether your tournament is for card or board games, school athletic teams or a professional sporting event, a bracket system can assist you in organizing your tournament so that there are minimal delays and maximum enjoyment of the competition. If you wish to speed up the tournament, you can have it take place on multiple playing fields simultaneously; when you use multiple fields, you need to adjust the brackets accordingly.
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Instructions
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Decide which type of bracket you wish to make, how long the event will last and how many teams or individuals will participate. Standard, single-elimination brackets are the most commonly used bracket, and tournaments can last a few hours, a weekend or even several weeks.
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Divide the number of teams playing by the number of playing fields. For example, if you have 32 teams playing on four fields, your number will be eight.
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Use this number to create a bracket for each playing field. Eight teams, in accordance with the previous example, will play on each field. Thus, with four fields, you will have four "Round 1" games for each field rather than waiting for hours in order to have 16 "Round 1" games on a single field. In this example, you could schedule the first set of four games to be played at 9 a.m., the second four games to be played at noon, the third set to be played at 3 p.m., and the final set to be played at 6 p.m. This will eliminate half of the teams in one day.
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Schedule only three games on each field the second day. The first two games on each field will be "Round 2," as winners of the first round in the upper and lower sections of "Round 1" will face other winners in their section. "Round 3," also known as the "Quarterfinals," will be the championship round for each field.
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Set the final games to be played on the last day. The winners from the first two fields will play each other and the winners from the remaining two fields will play each other in the "Semifinal" round. Choose the best two fields to hold the games simultaneously, or have them held back-to-back on a single field. Then, have the winners face each other in the tournament "Finals."
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Place half of your brackets on each side of your paper or poster when drawing them. Following the example, the two brackets on each side will form a larger bracket as the "Semifinal" round will connect them. Field 1 will be in the upper left-hand corner, Field 2 will be on the bottom left, Field 3 on the top right and Field 4 in the remaining corner.
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Tips & Warnings
When dealing with a number of teams and fields that does not divide into a perfect number, round the number of teams down until it does. Set up "bye" games for a few lucky teams that will get to skip a game, or set up extra games for a few unlucky teams that will have to survive an extra round.
Some tournaments move quickly and can be completed by following the same example in a single day. They can also be drawn out to only have one game per day.
When organizing a "double-elimination" tournament, create a "loser" bracket for each regular bracket, each two brackets or the final few rounds.
Companies such as Microsoft offer bracket templates that you can print from your computer.
References
- Photo Credit Roger Weber/Digital Vision/Getty Images
