every thursday a friend of mine runs a pool tournament at his bar. we're having a hard time making the brackets work out when there aren't a multiple of 8 players. sometimes there are 12 players, 6 players (double elimination), 11 players and so on. what is the easiest/best way to run a tournament when there aren't 8, 16, 24players?
All you do is make the next size bracket up and make all the extra spaces byes. So if you have 12 players, you make a 16 man bracket and have 4 byes. As long as the byes are spread out evenly and you pick the positions of the players randomly, everything is fair. This is the simplest way to do it, and any brackets you find for odd numbered players is exactly what I'm describing. The link posted above is fine, but notice that all they did was add byes to larger brackets when there were odd numbers of players. If you just put your own byes into brackets that are multiples of 8 you won't need to carry around 20 different brackets depending on how many people show up.
An alternative to using the brackets and inserting byes where you have no players is to use a round-robin format. Make a chart with the players' names in the left-hand column. Use a deck of playing cards (this is best for smaller tournaments) and write numbers on the back of them: take the number of players and divide by two-- if you have 22 players, write the numbers 1-11 twice on the backs of the cards. Shuffle the cards, then have someone draw cards at random and call out the numbers as you write them down in the column next to the names. The players with matching numbers play each other. If you're starting with an uneven number, round up after you divide by twothe person whose number doesn't match any others has a bye that roundMake sure you don't give anyone two byes before everyone has has one. You repeat that method each round, making an x in the chart if a person loses (it's easiest to x through the losers' numbers, and circle the winners'). You'll have two remove cards from the deck as players get knocked out. --Lea p.s. Round-robin format is really inferior to a real bracketit works well, though, for something like a handicapped 8-ball tournament in which each round is just one game and people have to lose different numbers of games to get knocked out.
bracket 1 1. Nas 8. MF DOOM 5. Canibus 4. Inspectah Deck 6. Eric B 3. Lauryn Hill 7. Method Man 2. Big L bracket 2 1. Rakim 8. Del Tha Funkee Homosapien 5. Black Thought 4. DMX 6. Kurupt 3. Big Daddy Kane 7. Andre 3000 2. Brother Ali
One of the best sites for brackets that I've found is below. I like it cuz it takes out all the guesswork for odd number of entries. Very easy to use, just print a bunch of different number sheets and you should be good to go.
