Double elimination

Why give a second life

Two rule books say what they want from the format.

The International Surfing Association (ISA) rule book refers to "the 8 surfer double elimination format". Where entries fall below six and that format would be unfair, its officials may design another draw "with the object of giving the competitors more than one opportunity to surf". The same rule book recommends a repechage round after the first round whenever heats have had to be made by random draw, with no seedings to go on. An unseeded first round can throw the best entrants together, and a second chance softens that.

USA Pickleball puts the aim as an entitlement. Each player is entitled to at least two scheduled matches in an event, and the only format excused from that is single elimination without consolation.

The two brackets

USA Pickleball's rulebook describes the format in three steps. After one loss, a player or team plays in the consolation bracket. One loss in the consolation bracket eliminates them. The winner of the consolation bracket then plays the winner of the winners' bracket for first and second place, and the loser of the consolation bracket's final match takes third.

Surfing uses different names for the same structure. The ISA calls the two sides the Main Round and the Repechage Round. Its heats have four surfers, so a "loss" is finishing third or fourth. The top two in a Main Round heat go to the next Main Round and the bottom two drop to the Repechage Round. The top two in a Repechage heat continue, and the bottom two are out.

One event, match by match

Here is the usual arrangement for eight entrants in head-to-head play. It is a worked example to show how the two sides feed each other, not a quotation from a rule book, and a particular event may arrange its second bracket differently.

That is 14 matches. The losers' side alternates between a round among its own survivors and a round that takes in the newest arrivals from the other side. It is why the second bracket has more rounds than the first, and why an entrant who loses early has the longest road.

Counting the matches

Every match hands out one loss. Each entrant except the champion has to lose twice, and the champion loses once at most. So the total is two matches for each entrant, less two, or less one if the champion lost on the way.

How the two brackets meet

This is where events differ most.

A final, with a decider if needed. In pickleball, the consolation winner arrives with one loss and the winners' bracket winner with none. If the unbeaten side wins the final, it is over. If the consolation winner wins, both now have one loss, so a tie-breaker match to 15 points is played to decide first and second.

A combined final with no advantage. The ISA's Grand Final puts the top two surfers from the Main Rounds against the top two from the Repechage Round in one heat, and that heat decides the event. Coming through unbeaten earns a place in the final and nothing more.

No final at all. World Curling's "double knock" for eight teams is used to pick four qualifiers. The two teams that win twice on the A-Road qualify. Teams that lose on the A-Road move to the B-Road, where two more qualify. A team with two losses is out, and nobody needs to be ranked first.

A second bracket that stops at third. Wheelchair fencing's World Championships use a direct elimination table with a repechage table beside it, and a fencer is out at the second defeat. But the repechage does not lead back to the final. Its last winners are placed third. It has the loss-counting of double elimination and the ceiling of a repechage.

The first of these is the one most people mean by the term. The choice between a decider and a plain final is a choice about what an unbeaten run is worth, and the rule books read here answer it differently.

Who finishes where

A double elimination ranks more of its field than a knockout does, because everyone is eliminated at a known point in a known bracket.

Pickleball names third place outright: the loser of the consolation bracket's final match. The ISA goes further and gives every finishing place a number of team points, from 1,000 for the winner of a division downwards, so that a country's surfers can be added together.

What it is not

Three formats are easy to confuse with it.

Pickleball's rulebook lists "single elimination with consolation" as a separate format. A loser still drops into a consolation bracket, but the two brackets never meet. The winners' bracket decides first and second, and the consolation bracket only decides third.

Repechage in judo and wrestling works the same way: the second chance leads to bronze, never back to the final. The words overlap all the same. The ISA calls its second bracket repechage, and the Ju-Jitsu International Federation labels a draw "Repechage (Double Elimination)".

In roller speed skating, "double elimination" means something else entirely: taking out the last two skaters at once in an elimination race.

When the schedule breaks

Two brackets need more time, and surfing depends on waves. The ISA's rules cover what happens when either runs out.

A surfer who misses a heat in the first Main Round may still compete in the first Repechage Round. Miss that too and they are placed last.

If time runs short, the repechage runs until everyone left is at the same round, the winners are brought back into the main bracket, and the event continues without repechage.

If the event cannot continue at all, the points still to be decided are divided among the surfers still in the competition, and those who are in the repechage get half.

A disqualified surfer is withdrawn from the remaining schedule and listed last, with no team points.

What it is good at, and what it costs

This section is reasoning from the structure, not something a rule book states.

It keeps a knockout's sense that matches matter while removing its harshest feature. A strong entrant who slips once, or who is drawn against the favourite early, is still there at the end. And the final places are more believable, because the runner-up has been tested against more of the field.

The costs are real. It needs about twice the matches and noticeably more rounds, since the second bracket is longer than the first. Entrants on the losers' side play more often and rest less. The bracket is hard to read at a glance. And the final is awkward by nature: one side has lost once and the other has not, so the organiser has to decide whether a single match should settle it.

World Boxing's rules name double elimination as one of the formats its board may choose in place of single elimination, with the details left to each event's rules.

It changes from event to event

The one thing to remember: count the losses. In double elimination an entrant is out at the second one. Then check how the event ends, because a final with a decider, a combined final and no final at all are three different contests. The event's own rules say which.