About This Format
Group Elimination is the finals format made famous by the PAPA World Championships and Pinburgh tournament. Instead of head-to-head bracket matches, players compete in groups of 3 or 4 and the bottom finishers in each group are eliminated each round. Players are re-seeded between rounds based on their original qualifying seed, giving top qualifiers a persistent advantage.
How It Works
In each round, players are placed into groups of 4 (or 3, depending on configuration). The group plays a set of games together (typically 3 or 4 games per round). Points are awarded based on finishing position in each game — in 4-player groups, the standard scoring is 4-2-1-0. After all games in the round are complete, the top 2 point-scorers in each group advance and the bottom 2 are eliminated.
Re-seeding
A key feature of Group Elimination is that players are re-seeded at the start of each round using their original qualifying seed, not their current standing. This means the #1 qualifier will always be placed in the most favourable group position, even in later rounds. This gives a significant and intentional advantage to players who performed well in qualifying.
Elimination Placement
When players are eliminated, their final tournament standing is determined by the number of points they earned in the round where they were knocked out. Players eliminated in earlier rounds are ranked below those eliminated in later rounds, regardless of point totals.
3-Player Groups
When configured with 3-player groups, only 1 player advances from each group per round (the top scorer), while the bottom 2 are eliminated. This is less common but can be used when the player count doesn't cleanly support 4-player brackets.
TGP Calculation
Meaningful games equal the number of rounds multiplied by games per round, then multiplied by the group-size factor (2.0x for 4-player groups, 1.5x for 3-player groups). In auto mode, the number of rounds is derived from the player count — for example, 16 players in 4-player groups yields 3 rounds (16 → 8 → 4 → champion group).