Double-elimination tournament
Some tournaments, such as in tennis, will use "seeding" to prevent the strongest contestants from meeting until the later round.
Double elimination overcomes this shortfall by allowing a strong team which loses early to work their way through the L bracket and progress to the later rounds, despite meeting the strongest team in the early rounds of competition.
This can also be seen as a disadvantage of the system, particularly if broadcasting and ticket sales companies have an interest in the tournament.
Another disadvantage of the double-elimination format is the fact that some games are played by competitors that have completed an unequal number of matches so far in the tournament.
The differences in the number of matches for a given stage of a double-elimination tournament, especially in the later stages, could result in an uneven level of preparation or energy between competitors; a player in the winners' bracket may have a long wait between matches, while losers' bracket players have to play multiple games in a comparatively short timeframe.
The NCAA Division I baseball and softball tournaments make heavy use of the double-elimination format.
The format recurs in both the Men's and Women's College World Series (MCWS and WCWS), where the field of 8 teams is divided into two double-elimination brackets and the survivor of each bracket advances to the best-of-three championship series.
[5] The Little League World Series switched from round-robin to double-elimination formats for each of its pools starting in 2010 in an effort to eliminate meaningless games.
The 2020 Olympic baseball event also used a modified double elimination bracket, combined with a preliminary group stage.
On the June 26, 2002, weekly Asylum PPV, TNA used a double-elimination match to determine the TNA X Championship in a four-way match featuring AJ Styles, Jerry Lynn, Low Ki, and Psicosis.
[6] Pool, surfing, windsurfing and kiteboarding freestyle competitions, as well as Curling bonspiels (where triple-elimination is also used), Hardcourt Bike Polo are all known to sometimes use double-elimination formats.
[10][full citation needed] Players with different numbers of losses can play each other in any round.
This format still allows a competitor to lose (perhaps multiple times) while still remaining eligible to win the tournament.
Another is the modified single-elimination tournament which guarantees at least two games per competitor, but not necessarily two losses for elimination.
The two respective champions then play a single elimination game for the World Series championship.
Many esports competitions, such as The International use a variation on the double-elimination format where, after the initial group stage, the first round of the L bracket begins pre-seeded with the lower-performing teams from said stage, rather than all teams starting in the W bracket.
Much of this is due to time concerns, with some esports games taking upwards of an hour per match in a series, and the schedule not allowing for the additional time costs of scheduling like a traditional double-elimination tournament.
