🏅 Tournament Formats

🏆 Swiss System

This format is popular at the biggest esports and chess events in the world. Its main goal is to make sure each round pairs up evenly matched opponents and nobody is knocked out of the tournament early (unlike a classic bracket).

1. How matchmaking works

• Similar plays similar: After each round, the system groups players by their current record (e.g. players on 2–0 play other players on 2–0, players on 0–2 play other players on 0–2).
• No repeats: The system guarantees you'll never face the same opponent twice during the Swiss stage. If you've already played someone, the algorithm picks you a different opponent with the same or closest possible score.
• Dynamic recalculation: Rankings and pairings are recalculated continuously, even during an ongoing round, as other matches finish.

2. Tiebreakers

If players end the Swiss stage tied on points, their final ranking is decided by these criteria, in this exact order:

1. Buchholz: The sum of the scores of every opponent you played in the tournament. It shows how tough your schedule was — a higher Buchholz means you played tougher opponents.
2. Head-to-head (H2H): If two players are tied on points and Buchholz, the result of their direct match decides.
3. Score (+/-): The overall difference between goals scored and conceded, or games/maps won and lost within series.

📅 League (Round-robin)

A classic league format built around long-term consistency and fairness.

• Everyone plays everyone: All participants play a match against every other participant in the league. The format can be single round-robin (everyone plays everyone once) or double round-robin (home / away).
• Points system: The standard football model is most commonly used — 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, 0 points for a loss.
• Tiebreakers for equal points:
  1. Head-to-head (H2H)
  2. Overall goal/score difference
  3. Higher number of goals scored

🚪 Playoff (Knockout bracket)

The most tense format, where every mistake can mean the end of the tournament. Players are seeded into the bracket based on prior qualification or group-stage results.

• Series length: Matches can be played to a different number of wins needed:
• BO1 (Best of 1) – a single decisive match (high chance of an upset).
• BO3 (Best of 3) – you need to win 2 matches.
• BO5 (Best of 5) – you need to win 3 matches (the ultimate test of stamina).
• Bracket types:
• Single Elimination: The classic bracket (quarterfinals, semifinals, final). One loss means the end of the tournament.
• Double Elimination (Losers bracket): A bracket with an upper and lower half. If a player loses in the upper bracket, they drop into the "losers bracket," where they can still win the whole tournament if they fight through every round up to the grand final.

👥 Groups

A combined format that often serves as a preliminary round or qualifier for the main playoff.

• Split: Participants are split into smaller groups (e.g. Group A, B, C, D), most commonly of 4 to 6 players/teams.
• Format: Within their group, players play a round-robin against each other. Results are tallied and evaluated completely separately for each group.
• Advancement: The best teams from each group (e.g. the top two) advance to the following knockout playoff bracket, while the rest are eliminated from the tournament.

🌍 Champions League

A specialized, prestigious format inspired by the real-life football Champions League, combining elements of a league, the Swiss system and playoffs.

• Pot seeding: Teams are split into strength-based pots before the draw. This ensures strong teams get a balanced mix of tough and easier opponents.
• League phase: Instead of traditional small groups, all teams play in one big shared table. Each team plays a fixed number of matches against different opponents (similar to the Swiss system). Advanced metrics based on opponent strength (Buchholz) are used to rank the table.
• Knockout phase:
  • The best teams in the table advance directly to the round of 16.
  • Teams in the middle of the table play a knockout play-in round to advance further.
  • The rest of the teams are eliminated. A classic two-legged (home–away) playoff bracket follows, capped off with a single grand final.