Group elimination bracket tournaments

Group elimination brackets are a popular way to organize tournament playoffs. Players are placed into four-player groups using a seeding method (typically manual seeding). The first and second finishers advance in the bracket, while third and fourth place are eliminated.

Typically, players will play three or four matches each round. This mimics the popular playoff formats known from PAPA, Pinburgh and other large pinball tournaments. In those cases, players accummulate points in each match. After all matches have been completed, the first and second finishers advance. Tournament organizers have access to several different scoring options (see below).

At the beginning of each round, players are re-seeded using the original seed in the tournament. This gives a significant advantage to players with a good initial seeding.

When players are eliminated from the bracket, their final standing in the tournament is determined by the amount of points earned in the round they were eliminated.

Four-player bracket

Group elimination bracket tournaments require at least eight players to fill a bracket. Some smaller tournaments only advance four players to finals. In that case, the finals should not be configured as a group elimination bracket. Instead, choose group match play playing multiple matches per round but only a single round. This will effectively provide you with the same result as if you played a group elimination bracket with only four players.

Multi-match play

Group elimination brackets can also be used for multi-match play tournaments in which four players play four machines simultaneously. The only thing to note is that Match Play will keep the same player order for all four matches so extra care must be taken when recording results. If you are playing multi-match play for a final tournament with only four players, use group match play instead of a group elimination bracket (see above section).

Configuration options

Seeding

See seeding.

Bracket size

Determines the size of the bracket that will be built. Regular brackets for 8/16/32/64/128 players are available as well as special brackets for 12 players (top four players recived a bye), 24 players (top 8 players receive a bye) and 28 players (top four players receive a bye). There is also a special setting for 40 players to mimics the format used in the Stern Pro Circuit finals (this is limited to two rounds). You must have the exact number of players in your tournament to match the bracket size. Create "dummy" players to fill out the field if you don't have enough actual players.

Scoring system

Decides how many points are awarded for 1st/2nd/3rd/4th placements. See the available options in the table below.

Arena draws

See arena assignments.

Matches each round

Determines how many games each pair of players should play against each other each round. For each game, players will receive points according to the scoring system chosen.

Scoring options