Seeding and byes in a tournament bracket
Seeding puts the strongest teams as far apart as the bracket allows. Byes fill the gap when the number of teams is not 4, 8, 16, 32 or 64.
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Where the seeds go
Seed 1 plays the lowest seed, seed 2 the second lowest, and so on, and the pairs are arranged so that seeds 1 and 2 can only meet in the final, and seeds 1 to 4 only in the semifinals.
| Teams | First-round pairs, top of the bracket to the bottom |
|---|---|
| 4 | 1 v 4, 2 v 3 |
| 8 | 1 v 8, 4 v 5, 2 v 7, 3 v 6 |
| 16 | 1 v 16, 8 v 9, 4 v 13, 5 v 12, 2 v 15, 7 v 10, 3 v 14, 6 v 11 |
A quick check
In any first-round game of a full bracket the two seed numbers add up to the bracket size plus one: 9 in an 8-team bracket, 17 in a 16-team bracket. If a pair does not, the bracket is seeded wrongly.
Byes
A bracket needs 4, 8, 16, 32 or 64 places. With any other number of teams, the empty places become byes: the team opposite an empty place moves on without playing.
Byes go to the top seeds, in order. The number of byes is the next bracket size minus the number of teams.
A bye is not a game
Some bracket tools draw a bye as a game with one team in it. That adds a column of boxes that are never played and makes a 9-team bracket look like a 16-team one. On a correct sheet a team with a bye simply appears in the second round, and the games are numbered without gaps.
Seeding without rankings
If there are standings, a league table or last year's result, use them. If not, there are two honest options. A blind draw: shuffle the names and take the order as it falls. Or a split draw: agree the two or four strongest teams, give them the top seeds so they cannot meet early, and shuffle the rest.
The names list on every bracket here is the seed order, best first. Shuffle does the blind draw.