About This Format
Double Elimination gives every player a second chance. The tournament runs two parallel brackets — a Winners bracket and a Losers bracket. A player must lose twice across these brackets to be eliminated, making it more forgiving than Single Elimination while still maintaining a clear championship path.
How It Works
All players start in the Winners bracket. When a player loses a match in the Winners bracket, they drop down to the Losers bracket rather than being eliminated. In the Losers bracket, they face other players who have also lost once. A loss in the Losers bracket means elimination from the tournament (two total losses). The Winners bracket and Losers bracket each produce a finalist, who then meet in a Grand Final.
The Grand Final
The Winners bracket champion enters the Grand Final with an advantage: the Losers bracket champion must beat them twice to win the tournament (since the Winners bracket champion has only lost zero times and needs two losses to be eliminated). If the Losers bracket champion wins the first set, a second "true final" set is played to determine the champion.
Best-of Formats
Each match can be played as best of 1, 3, 5, or 7. Notably, the Winners and Losers brackets can use different best-of settings — for example, best of 3 in the Winners bracket and best of 1 in the Losers bracket. This is common in time-constrained tournaments where the Losers bracket (which has more matches) uses shorter series.
TGP Calculation
Meaningful games are determined by the combination of Winners best-of, Losers best-of, and player count, using the IFPA's reference lookup tables. Double Elimination generally yields more meaningful games than Single Elimination for the same player count because every player is guaranteed at least two matches.