There has been a lot of recent discussion on how to run a fair tournament. Summer is approaching and I expect a lot of tournaments to start popping up (there are already several scheduled: The Chicago one, B4, Southern Hills might start tournaments soon and there's some SFA2 gathering on the east coast, I hear). As such, I'm writing down just about everything I know about running a tournament in the hopes that it will help some of you out there. I've participated in tournaments since Classic. More recently, I've been a participant in weekly Sunnyvale Golfland tournaments, and have helped organize and run Mega-tournaments B2 and B3. I hope someone out there can benefit from my experience. There's a lot to running a tournament. You need to obtain prizes, do some promotion, etc. I'm going to limit my discussion to the actual "fight-management". Who fights whom, for how long, and how you determine who wins. WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! This post is not for the feight of heart. It is not a casual read. It's hella long. I would recommend reading this post only if you're seriously interested in running a tournament of your own. And so, without further ado. (Sorry for the big copyright notice. I really don't want to have to put this in here, but I feel it's necessary to protect me from the likes of EGM). ======================================================================= GUIDLINES TO RUNNING A TOURNAMENT Author: Tony Cannon (ponder@best.com) ======================================================================= Copyright, 1997. Do not distribute this document in part or in whole without this copyright notice. Feel free to distribute over any free medium as long as this notice is left in tact. For profit distribution of this guide is strictly prohibited without expressed written permission from the author. [Author's Note] This is only a preliminary document. I'm working on a web version which will be much easier to read, and sample brackets that you call can print up instead of having to draw your own. However, this should still be pretty informative. :: INDIVIDUAL MATCH RULES There are several systems you can use to match one player against another. All of the most popular systems are variations of these basic rules: . Machine is set to best 2/3 rounds. . Winner is determined by the best 2 out of 3 games (or 3/5 or 5/7) . The winner of a single game must keep his character. The loser is allowed to pick a new character. . The loser is given the option of switching sides (eg. from the left to the right joystick) after the game. The two most popular variations on this are what I call Standard and Double-Blind character selection. Standard Character Selection . Flip a coin. The winner chooses whether he wants to pick his side or defer. . The player who chooses his side must also choose his character first. . The player who didn't get to choose his side is allowed to make his character selection 2nd. Double-Blind Character Selection . Flip a coin. The winner chooses his side first. . After choosing his side, the winner whispers his character selection to a judge. . The player who didn't choose his side must pick a character first. . The judge enforces that the other player chooses the character that was whispered to him. I like the Standard system because it's simple and doesn't require an outside arbiter. Double-Blind is good when character selection plays a crucial role in determining the winner of a match (eg. in ST). Whichever system you choose, be sure to use it for EVERY match in the tournament. :: TOURNAMENT SYSTEMS There are several different ways to run a tournament. Some of the most popular are listed below. Single Elimination Perhaps the simplest tournament system. 1 loss and you're out. People are put into a funnel-like bracket designed to narrow down the pool to 1 winner. Is by far the fastest system; in a 32 man tournament, you can determine the winner in only 31 matches. Double Elimination A variation on single elimination with a "Winners" and a "Losers" bracket. One loss sends you to the losers bracket, a second loss and you're out. Overall, is much more fair than a Single Elimination bracket, and you'll (theoretically) always have #1 vs #2 as the final match. However, a 32 man tournament will take either 62 or 63 matches to determine the winner (twice as long as single elimination) Round Robin Divide the pool of players into several groups. Within each group, everyone plays everyone else at least once. The players with the best records in each group are put into a final group, which fights it out for the winner. Perhaps the most fair system, but takes a LOT of matches. If you divide a 32 man pool into 4 groups of 8 and take the top 2 from each group to form another group of 8, it will take you 140 matches to determine the winner. IMHO, impractical for most large tournaments. For SF, I think the Double Elimination format is the best comprimise of fairness with the time it takes to run the tournament. :: THE DOUBLE ELIMINATION FORMAT When you're using a double-elimination format, you should always have a bracket. There are several very good reasons for this: 1) It helps you to keep things organized. Tournaments can be hectic sometimes. 2) It lets the participants of the tournament know that you're organized. This is important, as there's often at least a moderate sum of money on the line at large tournaments. 3) It adds to the excitement of the tournament when people can see how things are actually developing. It's nice to be able to see things like "Everyone from Utah is in the losers bracket!" or "If I can just get past this match with Choi, I'm on easy street." Even at its simplest, running a double elimination bracket is no cake walk. Before I talk about some of the more exotic things you can do, lets just look at a simple 8 man bracket. _______(B) | _________ _____| _____ _________ _____ | |______| (A|_____ | |_____ _________ _____| | ____| _________ | | | _______(A) (C|_______ | | | _________ | | | |_____| _____ _________ _____ | | _____|D) |______| (B|_____| |__________ | |_____ _________ _____| | |_____(C) _________ (D)______| Complicated, eh? Don't worry, it's not so bad. The first thing you do is fill in your 8 players right in the middle (suppose our players are named 'one', 'two', ... 'eight'). _______(B) | __one____ _____| _____ __two____ _____ | |______| (A|_____ | |_____ __three__ _____| | ____| __four___ | | | _______(A) (C|_______ | | | __five___ | | | |_____| _____ __six____ _____ | | _____|D) |______| (B|_____| |__________ | |_____ __seven__ _____| | |_____(C) __eight__ (D)______| You'll notice that puts 4 pairs of people right along the middle. These are your first 4 matches. Run each match from top to bottom, writing the loser of the match in the space to the left and the winner in the space to the right (as shown below). In this example, we'll assume 'one' is better than 'two' etc. We'll also assume no upsets (so one is going to end up winning the tournament) _______(B) | __one____ _____| two__ __two____ _one_ | |______| (A|_____ | |four_ __three__ three| | ____| __four___ | | | _______(A) (C|_______ | | | __five___ | | | |_____| six__ __six____ five_ | | _____|D) |______| (B|_____| |__________ | |eight __seven__ seven| | |_____(C) __eight__ (D)______| At this point, you've got your 4 losers on the left, and your 4 winners on the right. We haven't eliminated anyone yet; we've just separated the pool into 2 groups. A general rule in double elimination brackets is that you should run the losers out until you can't do any more matches. So next, we'll run the 2 matches in the losers bracket. Again, we'll go from the top to the bottom (our last match was seven vs eight. If we went from bottom to top, then eight would have to play 2 matches in a row). _______(B) | __one____ _____| two__ __two____ _one_ | |_two__| (A|_____ | |four_ __three__ three| | ____| __four___ | | | _______(A) (C|_______ | | | __five___ | | | |_____| six__ __six____ five_ | | _____|D) |_six__| (B|_____| |__________ | |eight __seven__ seven| | |_____(C) __eight__ (D)______| Notice that four and eight have been eliminated (four lost to three and two, eight lost to seven and six). Since they're out, you don't need to write their names anywhere. Two and six won, so you write their names in the blank to the left. What should you do now? Well, two is suppose to fight the person in the blank labeled (B). This person is going to come from the _loser_ of the five vs. seven match. Since that position hasn't been determined yet, there's nothing more we can do on the loser's side. At this point, go ahead and run (from top to bottom) the 2 matches on the winners side of the bracket: _seven_(B) | __one____ _____| two__ __two____ _one_ | |_two__| (A|_one_ | |four_ __three__ three| | ____| __four___ | | | _three_(A) (C|_______ | | | __five___ | | | |_____| six__ __six____ five_ | | _____|D) |_six__| (B|_five| |__________ | |eight __seven__ seven| | |_____(C) __eight__ (D)______| One and five won, so you write their names in the blank to the right. Since three and seven are in the _winners_ bracket, they aren't yet eliminated. Instead, they go over to the losers bracket. You see that little (B| next between the five vs. seven match? That means you should put the loser of the match in the blank labelled (B) in the losers side. The same goes for the (A| in the one vs three match. Now that we've filled in the (A) and (B) holes in the loser's side, we can run the two matches over there (and should do so). Don't run the one vs. five match yet! If you do, the winner will have to wait FOREVER for his turn! So long that he's likely to fall asleep or go home. =) So run the seven vs. two and three vs. six matches. _seven_(B) | __one____ _two_| two__ __two____ _one_ | |_two__| (A|_one_ | |four_ __three__ three| | ____| __four___ | | | _three_(A) (C|_______ | | | __five___ | | | |three| six__ __six____ five_ | | _____|D) |_six__| (B|_five| |__________ | |eight __seven__ seven| | |_____(C) __eight__ (D)______| Seven and six are eliminated, and two and three continue. Since we can still run more matches on the loser's side, go ahead and run two vs. three. _seven_(B) | __one____ _two_| two__ __two____ _one_ | |_two__| (A|_one_ | |four_ __three__ three| | two_| __four___ | | | _three_(A) (C|_______ | | | __five___ | | | |three| six__ __six____ five_ | | _____|D) |_six__| (B|_five| |__________ | |eight __seven__ seven| | |_____(C) __eight__ (D)______| At this point, you only have 1 person left in the loser's bracket, so you need to jump back to the winner's side and run off one vs. five. _seven_(B) | __one____ _two_| two__ __two____ _one_ | |_two__| (A|_one_ | |four_ __three__ three| | two_| __four___ | | | _three_(A) (C|_one___ | | | __five___ | | | |three| six__ __six____ five_ | | _____|D) |_six__| (B|_five| |__________ | |eight __seven__ seven| | |five_(C) __eight__ (D)______| As before, we move the loser of a match in the winner's bracket to his corresponding blank on the losers's side. This sets up the match between two and five, which two will win. That makes two the WINNER of the losers bracket. As such, he gets the right to return to the winners bracket to fight one in the FINALS (as shown below) _seven_(B) | __one____ _two_| two__ __two____ _one_ | |_two__| (A|_one_ | |four_ __three__ three| | two_| __four___ | | | _three_(A) (C|_one___ | | | __five___ | | | |three| six__ __six____ five_ | | _two_|D) |_six__| (B|_five| |__________ | |eight __seven__ seven| | |five_(C) __eight__ (D)_two__| Here's the last tricky part... Two has lost one match. Therefore, if one beat two, One is the grand champion and the tournament is over. HOWEVER, if two beats one, then that will be one's first loss. This is a double elimination tournament and one is NOT eliminated. Two must beat one AGAIN in order to claim the title. Let me rephrase that: In the final matchup, the winner of the losers bracket must beat his opponent twice in a row in order to claim the title. The winner of the winners bracket need only win once. One will beat two (of course), and the final bracket will look like this: _seven_(B) | __one____ _two_| two__ __two____ _one_ | |_two__| (A|_one_ | |four_ __three__ three| | two_| __four___ | | | _three_(A) (C|_one___ | | | __five___ | | | |three| six__ __six____ five_ | | _two_|D) |_six__| (B|_five| |_one______ | |eight __seven__ seven| | |five_(C) __eight__ (D)_two__| :: DETERMINING PLACES Places are usually labelled on a double-elimination bracket so you don't have to think about it. The way it works is that the longer you were in the tournament, the higher you place. Our final ranking looks like this: 1st Place: One 5th Place: Six (tie) 2nd Place: Two 5th Place: Seven (tie) 3rd Place: Five 7th Place: Four (tie) 4th Place: Three 7th Place: Eight (tie) :: LIKE I'M GOING TO HAVE EIGHT PEOPLE! That's a valid point. 90% of the time, you're not going to have a power of 2 number of people in your tournament. Suppose you only have 23? Then what do you do? Well, the answer is to create a 32 man bracket and fill in only 23 of the spaces. If someone has to fight an empty space, they automatically win (lucky guy!). We call this giving the player a "Bye". Filling the bracket is no trivial task, either. Which 23 slots should you use? Most people are inclined to just go ahead and use the first 23 and use the bottom 9 empty. This results in the people in the bottom of the bracket getting an unfair number of byes. What you should do instead is to fill in the bracket as evenly as possible. First fill in 16 people, leaving a space between each person. Of the remaining 7 people, put 4 in the top and 3 in the bottom (again, evenly spaced). This will guarentee that the number of byes you give is shared evenly among all the participants. :: WHY YOU MUST GIVE BYES Some people think giving a bye isn't really fair. You shouldn't be able to advance in the tournament without having to fight another player. It's not fair to the people who don't get byes. These are all valid complaints. However, if you fill your bracket properly, then at WORST you'll have a some people getting 1 more bye than everyone else (in the winner's bracket). If you have a situation where 1 person gets 0 byes and another gets 5 or 6, then you didn't fill your bracket properly. Byes almost always occur in the beginning of a tournament, where they have no affect on the final rankings. Furthermore the alternative to not giving a bye is to have the player fight someone else. If you have him fight someone who is still in the tournament, you've essentially given that person a -1 bye (by making him fight an extra match). This means that the player replacing the bye has to be someone outside of the tournament (we'll call him the Eliminator). If the Eliminator wins, then the player is counted with a loss (and possible is kicked out of the tournament if he was in the losers bracket). If the Eliminator loses, than the player advances. This looks like a fine solution until you try to implement it in a bracket system. Consider what happens when you have 17 players in a bracket. 17 is 1 greater than a power of 2, so what you end up having is 1 match and 15 players getting a bye. In the Eliminator system, this means you need _15_ Eliminators! This really draws out the length of the tournament, considering that it's possible for you to fight 16 matches and only generate 1 "real" loss. Furthermore, suppose after this round of Eliminators that you're left with 9 people. That's 1 more than a power of 2 and you'll need _8_ Eliminators this round. On average, in a bracket system, about 1/2 of your matches will be meaningless. Now, you can get around this by doing away with a bracket and using a random pairing system. In that case, when you have 17 players you fight 16 of them off and only use 1 Eliminator. However, in a random pairing system, there is no bracket. I feel the benefits of the bracket system over the random pairing system outweight the cost of having to give byes by a significant amount. :: A INSIDE LOOK AT THE BRACKET If you've read this far, you should already know enough to run your own double-elimination tournament. However, there's a lot more we can do to ensure that our tournament is as fair as possible. To do so, we're going to have to take apart the bracket a bit and see how it works. Lets look at the initial bracket again, shall we? _______(B) | __one____ _____| _____ __two____ _____ | |______| (A|_____ | |_____ __three__ _____| | ____| __four___ | | | _______(A) (C|_______ | | | __five___ | | | |_____| _____ __six____ _____ | | _____|D) |______| (B|_____| |__________ | |_____ __seven__ _____| | |_____(C) __eight__ (D)______| I call your attention to the way people are moved from the winners' to the losers' bracket. Specifically, when three lost to one, we moved him from the top of the bracket all the way to the bottom on the other side. Why is that? Wouldn't it be easier to move him straight across to the top? Yes, but consider the following situation: one vs two -> one wins. three vs four -> three wins. two vs four -> two wins. one vs three -> three pulls off the upset and WINS! If we move people straight across, that will generate a bracket that looks like this: _one___(A) <------------- Move one to here. BAD! | __one____ _____| _two_ __two____ _one_ | |_two__| (A|three | |three __three__ three| | ____| __four___ | | | _______(B) (C|_______ | | | _________ | | | |_____| _____ _________ _____ | | _____|D) |______| (B|_____| |__________ | |_____ _________ _____| | |_____(C) _________ (D)______| Look at poor two! Not only did he lose his first match to one, he has to play him again in his third match! This is what is known as DOUBLE JEOPARDY. In a fair tournament, you shouldn't have to play a person you've lost to EVER again until it's impossible to avoid it. Not only is this unfair to two, it skews the rankings! Although one and two are the 2 best players, they can't possibly take the top two spots now (one of them is going to get eliminated). If you're making your own brackets, be SURE to avoid double jeopardy. Had we moved one to the bottom of the losers' bracket instead of the top, this never would have happened (one would have played two in the semi-finals of the losers bracket and one of them would have take 4th place, the other going on to take top 3). As long as we're on the topic of fairness, lets look again at the final rankings of our tournament: 1st Place: One 5th Place: Six (tie) 2nd Place: Two 5th Place: Seven (tie) 3rd Place: Five 7th Place: Four (tie) 4th Place: Three 7th Place: Eight (tie) First of all, Five sucks (he's bottom 50%), yet he managed to take 3rd place. And look at poor four! He's one of the best players (only 3 others are better than him), but he got LAST. It was just his bad luck that resulted in him fighting 2 of the 3 best people in the tournament for his first 2 matches! (The technical term for this is BPS, or Bob Painter Syndrome). There's a reason this happened: A double-elimination bracket is only guarenteed to select the top _2_ players from the entire pool. If you have a pool of 32 people, that isn't very fair. Why are our rankings do skewed? Look back at our initial bracket. For some bizarre reason, we decided to put the all the good players at the top of the bracket and all the bad ones at the bottom. This results in all the good players eliminating each other, letting the bad ones take places that they _really_ didn't earn. If we had spread out the good players, we would have gotten different results. Consider this bracket: _three_(B) | __one____ three| eight __eight__ _one_ | |_five_| (A|_one_ | |five_ __four___ _four| | three_| __five___ | | | _four__(A) (C|_one___ | | | __two____ | | | |four_| seven __seven__ _two_ | | _two_|D) |_six__| (B|_two_| |_one______ | |_six_ __three__ three| | |_two_(C) __six____ (D)_two__| Now look at our final rankings: 1st Place: One 5th Place: Five (tie) 2nd Place: Two 5th Place: Six (tie) 3rd Place: Three 7th Place: Seven (tie) 4th Place: Four 7th Place: Eight (tie) Because we spread out the good players when we first filled in the bracket, we got much more fair results. This is an important point, so I'm going to write it in caps. IF WE CAN IDENTIFY THE GOOD PLAYERS, THEN WE CAN MAKE THE BRACKET MORE FAIR BY SPREADING THEM OUT IN THE INITIAL PLACEMENT. Sorry about that, but it's really really very important. The ideal situation, of course, is one where you can arbitrarily seed all the players in the bracket and fill it accordingly. This, however, is most likely not going to be the case. I would even argue, that you don't want to do this, because it can promote bad blood unnecessarily. All you need to do is to identify the top players. If you can rank the top 4 players in the tournament, you're already doing very well. This lets you spread them out in a way that ensures that if they indeed _are_ the 4 best players and they win all the matches they're supposed to win, then they will rank 1-4. The more you can seed, the better. For a 32 man bracket, I think the ideal situation is: . Rank the top 4 players. These are top tier players . Identify 4-8 additional players who are in the 2nd tier. They are clearly better than the rest of the pack, but you really don't need to rank them. Just let them be a pack. . The remaining 20-24 player make up the rest of the field. With this information, you can run a very fair tournament. As an aside, I'd also argue that these kinds of tournaments are also much more exciting. When you get right down to it, the last few matches of your tournament are _ALL_ going to be block busters. The last 5 matches of our most recent bracket are one vs four, three vs four, one vs two, three vs two, and one vs two. That kind of lineup makes for great drama. :: REVIEW Ok, lets review. We've talked about different kinds of rules to use when running individual games. We've talked about different tournament systems, and explained in detail how to run a double elimination tournament. In a double-elimination tournament, we've shown that random seeding usually leads to semi-random results after the top 2. We've also illustrated the importance of avoiding double-jeopardy in tournaments. Finally, we showed that if you seed your tournament just a little bit, you're results will be much more indicative of who the best players are. :: SEEDING BY REGION The SF tournament scene seems to be growing a lot. I blame it on the Internet. The big tournaments are getting bigger and more frequent, and little tournaments are popping up everywhere. In this age, more and more people are starting to travel (sometimes at great expense) to the big tournaments. If you're running a big tournament that attracting a lot of non-local competition, you might want to consider seeding by region. The logic behind seeing by region is simple: You have a small group of people who put a lot on the line to travel to the tournament (plane tickets, 28 hours drive, whatever). In order to be as fair as possible, you really don't want any of these people to have to fight against each other in the tournament. I mean, no one travelled hundereds of miles to fight in a tournament where they're eliminated by their buddies in the first 2 matches, right? As such, we should rig the bracket so that such a thing is unlikely. A similar thing is done in the NCAA basketball tournament. In 1997, Stanford, Cal, Arizona, and UCLA (all PAC 10 teams) made it to the tournament, but none of those teams had to play against each other at any point in the tournament. We've already seen a method of spacing people out in the bracket according to their seed. If we take a person's region into account when giving them a seed, then we can use the same system to space people out by region (thus the term, Seeding by Region). Basically, you want to find your top 4 seeds from each region. If you can't come up with 4, that's fine. Do the best you can. Next, you assign seeds to the bracket as follows (suppose you have 2 regions): Region A Region B 1st seed 1st seed <--- Bracket Seeds 1 and 2 2nd seed 2nd seed <--- Bracket Seeds 3 and 4 3rd seed 3rd seed <--- Bracket Seeds 5 and 6 4rd seed 4rd seed <--- Bracket Seeds 7 and 8 A fully played out bracket will probably look something like this (I've added seeding to the initial ranks for clarity): __A2___(B) | 1)_A1____ _A2__| __B4_ 8)_B4____ __A1_ | |__A3__| (A|__A1_ | |__A3_ 4)_B2____ __B2_| | _A2_| 5)_A3____ | | | __B2___(A) (C|__A1___ | | | 2)_B1____ | | | |_B2__| __A4_ 7)_A4____ __B1_ | | __B1_|D) |__B3__| (B|__B1_| |__A1______ | |__B3_ 3)_A2____ __A2_| | |__B1_(C) 6)_B3____ (D)__B1__| Notice how this does 3 things: 1) Almost everywhere in the bracket, we have A vs B. We've prevented almost every intra-region matchup. 2) We've maintained seeding such that the #1 seeds are on opposite sides of the bracket. The top 4 final places are A1, B1, A2, and B2 3) Most importantly, we've avoided all cases of double jeopardy. Even if you're not seeding everyone, it's important that you fill in the seeds of the bracket from left to right across your regions. For example, had we only seeded the top 2 players in each regions, our bracket should STILL look like this: Region A Region B 1st seed 1st seed <--- Seeds 1 and 2 2nd seed 2nd seed <--- Seeds 3 and 4 unseeded unseeded <--- Seeds 5 and 6 unseeded unseeded <--- Seeds 7 and 8 _______(B) | ___A1____ _____| _____ ___B?____ _____ | |______| (A|_____ | |_____ ___B2____ _____| | ____| ___A?____ | | | _______(A) (C|_______ | | | ___B1____ | | | |_____| _____ ___A?____ _____ | | _____|D) |______| (B|_____| |__________ | |_____ ___A2____ _____| | |_____(C) ___B?____ (D)______| That is, we need to ensure that we get a separation across regions, even if we're not seeding the entire region. :: SEEDING BY REGION WITH FLOATS Even if you've seeded by region, you can still run into trouble. For example, if you look at our bracket that has been seeded by region, we still have a few conflicts (in the losers' bracket, A2 vs A3 and B2 vs B3). There's no way you could have planned for this situation without creating a possibility for double jeopardy (and you _always_ want to prevent double-jeopardy. ALWAYS!). At this point, you should probably bite the bullet and play the intra-region matches. There is an alternative, however, called "floating". Floating is a highly advanced technique and should be approached with caution. Specifically, if there's anything in this document that you don't understand, don't even ATTEMPT to float. You can REALLY screw yourself over by floating people. A float is basically this (using the same bracket as an example). 1) I notice at least 1 intra-region pairing in the bracket. If there are no intra-region pairings, DON'T FLOAT. 2) I propose a _theoretical_ float that fixes the intra-region pairing while maintaining the seeding as much as possible. If there is no float which will reduce the number of intra-region pairings, then DON'T FLOAT. For example, if you have 4 people in the loser's bracket (A2, A3, A4 and B1), there's no way you can prevent an A vs A matchup. Leave it alone. In this case, I can re-arrange the bracket to be either: A2 vs B2 and A3 vs B3 or A2 vs B3 and A3 vs B2 I choose the second pairing because the seeding is most like the original setup. 3) Look at everyone's records in the proposed float: A2 lost to B1 A3 lost to B2 B2 lost to A1 B3 lost to A2 4) Check for existing double-jeopardy in your theoretical pairing. I have A2 vs. B3 when A2 has previously lost to B1 (ok) and B3 has previously lost to A2 (bad!). THAT's double jeopardy. Therefore, I REJECT this float. 5) Go back to step 2 and look for another float. The only remaining valid float is A2 vs B2 and A3 vs B3. 6) Check for existing double-jeopardy. A2 lost to B1 and B2 lost to A1. Therefore, there's no double-jeopardy in this matchup. Check the A3 vs. B3 matchup and notice there's no double-jeopardy there either. 7) Look for double-jeopardy in the future as a result of this float. That is to say, if certain people win certain matches, will someone end up in double jeopardy. If the odds are likely enough, then REJECT the float. This is where you can really screw yourself. If you float and it does result in double-jeopardy, then you're going to have to float again to fix it. Generally, 0 floats is better than 2, so you didn't want to float in that case. Our floated bracket looks like this (floats indicated with a *) *_B3___(B) | ___A1____ _A2__| __B4_ ___B4____ __A1_ | |__A3__| (A|__A1_ | |__A3_ ___B2____ __B2_| | _A2_| ___A3____ | | | __B2___(A) (C|__A1___ | | | ___B1____ | | | |_B3__| __A4_ ___A4____ __B1_ | | __B1_|D) |*_A2__| (B|__B1_| |__A1______ | |__B3_ ___A2____ __A2_| | |__B1_(C) ___B3____ (D)__B1__| This bracket is much better. Our float didn't affect the final rankings, but prevented two intra-region matchups. A2, A3, B2, and B3 thank us. Although everything turned out ok in this hypothetical situation, I cannot stress enough how much you can absolutely SCREW yourself by floating when you shouldn't. Be sure to look carefully and consider all your options when floating. If there's any doubt as to the safety of the float, REJECT it. Finally, if this is your first tournament, I strongly recommend that you don't use a floating system. :: CONCLUSION Well, I hope someone has actually gotten to the end of this and possibly found it helpful. As I mentioned, I'm working on putting all this in HTML format with all kinds of sample 8, 16, 32, and 64 man brackets. If you think this would help you, please send me mail and I'll work on it a bit faster. Otherwise, it may be a week or two before it's all finished. -- Tony Cannon ponder@best.com