Single elimination (knockout)

One loss, and the arithmetic that follows

Each match removes exactly one entrant, and everyone except the champion has to be removed once. So a knockout always has one fewer match than it has entrants: 127 for 128 players, 15 for 16.

The number of rounds comes from halving. A field of 128 becomes 64, then 32, 16, 8, 4 and 2, which is seven rounds. That is why a draw sheet is built for 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 or 128 places. Wrestling's rules call these the "ideal number" of wrestlers. Table tennis puts it as a rule: the number of places in the first round of a knockout event shall be a power of 2.

The last three rounds are the quarter-finals (eight entrants left), the semi-finals (four) and the final. Boxing's rules describe a boxer's path as preliminary rounds, quarter-finals, semi-finals and the finals. Fencing names every round by its size: the table of 64, the table of 32 and so on down to the table of 4.

Compare that with everyone playing everyone. Sixteen entrants need 120 matches in a full round robin and 15 in a knockout. That saving is the main reason the format exists.

Reading a draw sheet

The lines of a sheet are numbered from the top. Line 1 plays line 2, line 3 plays line 4 and so on down the page.

The sheet divides into halves, quarters and eighths, and those words are used in the rule books. They tell you the earliest round in which two entrants can meet.

• Different halves: only in the final.
• Same half, different quarters: in the semi-final.
• Same quarter, different eighths: in the quarter-final.

So when a draw comes out, the useful question is which section a player has landed in, and who else is in it.

Why the draw is not left to chance

If names were pulled at random, the two best players could meet in the first round, and one of them would be gone before most people had started watching. Seeding prevents that.

In the Grand Slam Rule Book for 2026, Seed 1 goes on line 1 of the draw and Seed 2 on the last line, 128. They sit in opposite halves, so they cannot meet before the final. Seeds 3 and 4 are drawn onto lines 33 and 96, one in each half. The remaining seeds are drawn in groups onto fixed lines further down, and everyone else is then drawn into the empty lines.

Badminton does the same thing with its own numbers. In the Badminton World Federation (BWF) tables, a full 16-place draw has four seeds, on positions 1, 16, 5 and 12.

Table tennis states the pattern in general terms, and it shows the logic behind every seeded draw.

So seeding is part design and part draw. The top two are fixed. Below them, chance decides which half or quarter a seed lands in. The rule's stated aim is that the highest ranked entries "cannot meet before the closing rounds".

Who becomes Seed 1 comes from a ranking list, and that belongs to the ranking pages. Two things are worth knowing here. Table tennis seeds from the latest world ranking list, but switches to a continental list when every entry comes from one continent. And seeding is not automatic everywhere: in boxing, whether a competition is seeded at all, and how many boxers are seeded in each weight category, is decided for each event and stated in the event invitation.

Keeping team-mates apart

Rankings are not the only thing a draw can respect. Some rule books also stop players from the same country meeting early.

Table tennis does. An association lists its players in order of strength. Its first and second are drawn into different halves, and its third and fourth into the two quarters the first two do not occupy. The rest are kept apart only in the first round.

Other sports refuse to. In fencing, same-country fencers are spread across different pools, but once the direct elimination table is drawn "the principle of protection of nationality will not be applied". Para badminton says the same: no nationality separation in a knock-out draw after group play.

Olympic table tennis sits between the two. Players of the same association are separated only in preliminary rounds.

When the field is not a power of two

Fields rarely arrive as a neat 16 or 32. The rule books give four answers.

Byes. The draw sheet stays at the next size up and the empty places become byes. The count is places minus entries. Take 13 entries, as a worked example from the BWF table. The sheet has 16 places, so there are three byes, on positions 2, 6 and 15. Positions 2 and 15 are the first-round opponents of the two seeds on positions 1 and 16, so both seeds go straight to the second round. Ten players contest five first-round matches, and the five winners join the three who had byes to make eight.

Gatka's rule book prints the same arithmetic as a table: 13 entries, 5 bouts, 3 byes.

Who gets the byes is not left open. Table tennis says they are spread as evenly as possible and placed first against the seeded places, in seeding order. The Grand Slam Rule Book says the same for its qualifying draw: byes go to the highest seeds first, and any left over are drawn by lot and spread evenly. A bye is a reward for ranking, and it is also what stops two byes landing next to each other and producing a second-round match nobody has earned.

Preliminary matches. Wrestling goes the other way. If a weight category does not have an ideal number, some wrestlers play qualification matches first, which cuts the field down to one. Darts has the same instinct: in a knock-out format the organisers arrange preliminary matches "so as to eliminate all byes from the first round proper".

A qualifying competition. When there are more entries than places, the surplus is settled in a separate event before the main draw. Table tennis requires it, and sizes it so that qualifiers plus direct entries fill the sheet exactly. The Grand Slams require one too, and it is itself single elimination. In 2026 a Grand Slam singles draw takes 104, 108 or 112 direct acceptances, 16, 12 or 8 qualifiers and 8 wild cards.

Exemptions for the top of the ranking. Fencing's senior World Championships, World Cups and Grand Prix build the funnel in stages.

1. The 16 highest-ranked fencers entered skip the first day entirely.
2. Everyone else fences a round of pools, and 20 to 30 per cent of them are eliminated on their pool results.
3. The 16 with the best pool results skip the next step.
4. The rest fence a preliminary direct elimination table until 32 remain.
5. The main table has 64 places: the 16 exempt fencers on places 1 to 16, the 16 pool leaders on 17 to 32 and the 32 survivors on 33 to 64.

A fencer ranked in the world's top 16 therefore starts in the last 64 without having fenced a bout.

A bracket seeded by an earlier stage

Seeds do not have to come from a world ranking. They can come from what happened earlier in the same competition.

Fencing is the clearest case. After the pools, every fencer is put into one list, ordered by victories divided by bouts fought, then by hits scored minus hits received, then by hits scored. That list seeds the elimination table, so a good day in the pools buys a better place in it.

Target archery works the same way. A qualification round ranks the field, and the ranking decides each archer's place on the match play chart. A tie for the last place in the elimination rounds is settled by a shoot-off.

When a group stage comes first, the bracket is built from the group tables. Para badminton places group winners on set positions and draws the runners-up into the remaining places, and no runner-up may meet the winner of their own group in the first knock-out round (the rule allows an exception for events with 9, 10 or 11 entries). The group stage page covers this in full.

Every match needs a winner

A knockout cannot carry a drawn match forward. Sports where a match always ends with a winner, such as tennis and badminton, need nothing extra.

Football does. The Laws of the Game for 2026/27 allow only three ways to get a winner after a drawn match or a home-and-away tie (a tie played over two matches): the away goals rule, penalties and two periods of extra time of up to 15 minutes each. A competition may combine them, and its own rules say which it uses.

Ice hockey shows how the same sport treats the two kinds of game differently. Under the International Ice Hockey Federation's rules for 2026/27, a tied round-robin game goes to sudden-death overtime of up to five minutes. A tied playoff or bronze medal game gets up to ten. In the gold medal game of a top championship, overtime periods go on, one after another, until somebody scores.

Breaking has its own version. A battle in the knock-out phase is won by taking the majority of its rounds, and if rounds and judges' votes are level, a deciding round is danced.

Rounds played over more than one match

One match per round is the usual form, but a round can be longer.

Two matches, added together. Basketball's rules set this out with worked examples. In a two-game home and away series the two games count as one game of 80 minutes. If the first game ends level, no overtime is played. If the total score is level after the second game, that game continues with five-minute overtimes until the tie is broken.

One example from the rule book: Team A wins the first game 80 to 75. Team B wins the second 73 to 72. Each has won once, so the totals decide it: A has 152 points and B has 148, and A goes through.

Football's Laws name the same idea, the home-and-away tie, and list the away goals rule as one permitted way to settle it. Which competitions play their rounds this way is a matter for their own regulations.

A series. Basketball's rules also refer to play-offs decided over the best of three, five or seven games. They name the format without saying which competition uses which length.

A tie made of several matches. In team events the "match" in the bracket is itself a set of individual matches. A table tennis team match is played as the best of five, seven or nine individual matches, and it ends as soon as one team has won a majority. A fencing team match is a relay of nine bouts between two teams of three.

Third place, and ranking the losers

The champion has beaten everyone put in front of them. Beyond that, the format is thin on information. The losing finalist won one half of the draw, which is not the same as being second best overall. Two players who lost in the same round are not separated at all.

A knockout only needs to know who won, never by how much. Lawn bowls' laws make the point by stopping a knockout game as soon as one side cannot catch up in the ends that are left. In its tournament play, by contrast, the net total of shots can decide the winner.

Tournaments deal with the missing information in different ways.

• A match for third. The two losing semi-finalists play each other. Wrestling uses one when a category has six or seven athletes, and awards a single bronze medal. Ice hockey's rules provide for a bronze medal game.
• Two third places, no match. Fencing's default is that the two losing semi-finalists are placed equal third. A bout for third is fought only "when it is necessary to separate them", and at senior World Championships and World Cups the rules say there is none.
• Repechage. A second chance for those who lost to a finalist. In wrestling's standard format, everyone beaten by either finalist goes into one of two repechage groups, and the winner of each gets a bronze medal.
• Playing for every place. At fencing's senior and junior World Championships, team events fight for all places down to 16th. A team that loses in the quarter-finals keeps fencing, for fifth to eighth.
• Ranking by seeding. Where nobody plays on, a rule still has to order the field. In fencing, those who lose in the same round are placed in the order of the ranking that seeded the table, and those eliminated in the pools come after everyone who reached it.

A knockout can also sit inside something larger. At the Paris 2024 Olympic badminton competition, players first played in groups, and in singles only the winner of each group went into the knock-out stage.

When someone cannot play

A bracket has no spare entrants, so every rule book says what happens to an empty place.

The opponent goes through. In boxing a boxer who is in the ring, ready, when the other fails to appear wins by walkover. In fencing the opponent is declared the winner, and the fencer who withdrew keeps a place in the final classification.

If both are out, the next round's opponent benefits. Boxing's rule is that when neither boxer in a bout can compete, at any stage before the semi-finals, the opponent in the next round wins by walkover.

Nobody comes back. Darts is blunt about it: if a player who has won is then disqualified, the next opponent gets a bye, and players already beaten are never brought back to fill the place.

The draw is not quietly rearranged either. In table tennis a player is not moved from one place to another, and if withdrawals leave the draw seriously unbalanced the event is, wherever possible, completely re-drawn. Once an event has started, the only changes allowed are deletions.

What the format is good at, and what it costs

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

It is the cheapest way to find one winner: the fewest matches, and half the field gone after each round, so courts, officials and days are needed in a predictable, shrinking amount. Every match decides something, which is why broadcasters and crowds like it.

The costs are the other side of the same coin. With a full sheet, half the entrants play exactly once. Who you meet depends on where the draw put you. One upset removes a strong player for good. And the order of everyone below the winner is only roughly known.

Most of the other formats on this site exist to buy back one of those losses: repechage and double elimination give a second chance, round robin measures everyone against everyone, and a group stage guarantees each entrant more than one match before the knockout begins.

It changes from event to event

None of the numbers above belongs to "knockout" in general. They belong to a rule book and an edition.

The one thing to remember: single elimination is built to produce a champion, and the rest of the draw sheet (seeds, byes, a bronze match) is there to cover what that leaves out. For any tournament you are following, the draw size, the number of seeds and the way a level match is settled are in that edition's regulations.

Drafting table. Each row is a way single elimination differs between events, with where it was found.