Cross bracketing

Cross bracketing is used in Double Elimination brackets, and is basically the way you fill the repechage matches to avoid the same athletes fighting more than once. So if John fights Richard in the Quarterfinals and John loses, John will then be placed in a repechage match. If Richard then loses the semifinals and John wins his repechage match, we don't want them to fight each other again. We at least want to minimize the risk!

Keep in mind that there is no foolproof method of cross bracketing, and depending on the bracket size there will always be cases where you end up fighting the same athlete twice. However, there are still different ways to do cross bracketing which all have their strengths and weaknesses. At the end of the day, it only comes down to bracket size and preference.

We currently offer three cross bracketing types on Smoothcomp; Alternating, NCAA, and IJF Standard. The alternating type is the Smoothcomp standard and will be selected by default on your events. This is by far the simplest one and will take you very far, especially on smaller brackets. We'll break down the different cross bracketing types in different bracket sizes to give you a good understanding of how they work and which one suits your needs and preferences!

Basics of DE

Double elimination exists in many shapes and forms, but the basics are the same: you start out in the top elimination tree, and once you lose there you get another shot in the repechage rounds. Which placement is possible to reach depends on the type of DE, but in this article we will use Double elimination - Loser bracket to final. The cross bracketing is applicable on most DE types though. The ones not supporting cross bracketing (they don't need it) are crossed out in the image below:

We always think of the order of the elimination tree matches (the ones on the top part of the bracket) in the following order:

Left to right - First the far left column, then the second far left column and so on.

Top to bottom - In each column, we start from the top of the column and go down it one by one.

Once a match in the elimination tree is finished, the loser from that match is sent to a repechage match. Which match this is depends on the cross bracketing type, and so cross bracketing could be summarized as "The order of which the repechage matches are populated".

Alternating

The alternating type is very simple and by far the least complicated. The reason for this is that it keeps the same behavior no matter the bracket size and only alternates between two possible population orders.

The matches in the first elimination round will populate the first repechage round from top to bottom, we'll call this regular order. The matches in the second elimination round will populate the second repechage round from bottom to top, we'll call this reversed order. It then goes regular, reversed, regular, reversed and so on... That's it! This order keeps alternating for all repechage rounds which are populated from the elimination tree. Keep in mind that not all repechage rounds are being populated with losers directly from the elimination tree. The first two repechage rounds are, and then every other after that. Here's a small example in an 8-person bracket:

Since the repechage winners need to eliminate each other as well, they will have to have matches with only repechage winners, no elimination tree losers. So the alternating type will only alternate on repechage rounds which are populated from the elimination tree. This is why the repechage round 3 in the image above is not marked because it only contains winners passed on from the other repechage rounds.

Smaller brackets (8-person and below)

Brackets containing 8 athletes or fewer will not be affected by which cross bracketing type you have. You could also say they all will act like the alternating type; there's not really room for any other variations.

NCAA cross bracketing

This cross bracketing type is named after the NCAA Wrestling community, which often uses this type of cross bracketing. In a 16-person bracket, it will act like the alternating type but gets increasingly advanced when you move up in size.

16-person bracket

32-person bracket

Here we switch it up a bit. We start by doing the first column regular and the second column reversed. So far so good. We then get to the third column, and here's when the switch-up happens. Here we'll do a reversed order again, but we'll split the column in the middle and have the two halves switch places.

From here we move on to column four where we do a reversed order, and that's it!

In summary, we did:

1. Regular
2. Reversed
3. Reversed switched
4. Reversed

64-person bracket

Here we basically follow the same concept as in the 32-person bracket.

First and second columns do regular and reversed just like the other sizes. In column three, we start off with a reversed order again, and then split the column in two. We then switch the halves just like in the 32-bracket.

Column four then gets a regular split once and switched as well. Column four gets a regular. Phew, we got through that one nicely!

In summary, we did:

1. Regular
2. Reversed
3. Reversed switched
4. Regular switched
5. Regular

IJF Standard

This is the trickiest one by far and is named after the IJF, which uses this as their standard cross bracketing type.

16-person bracket

We start off a bit tricky from the 16-person already. The first column we do regular, and in the second column, we do a reversed with a switch. We then do a normal reversed in the third column, and that's it.

In summary:

1. Regular
2. Reversed switched
3. Reversed

32-person bracket

Oh boy, time to spice things up! We start by doing a regular on the first column, but we split this into four pieces. We let the first and second piece switch places, and the third and fourth switch places. After this, we do a regular for the second column.

For column three, we do a reversed switched, and then a normal reversed for the fourth column.

Summary:

1. Regular, split into four with two switches
2. Regular
3. Reversed switched
4. Reversed

64-person

This one's very similar to the previous 32-person bracket, but we'll add a regular column at the bottom (left) of the bracket. After this regular column, we do the same as we did with the 32-person first column; we split the column into four pieces and have the first and second switch places as well as the third and fourth switch places. We follow this with a regular in column three, a reversed switched in column four as well as a reversed in column five.

Phew, all done!

In summary:

1. Regular
2. Regular split into four with two switches
3. Regular
4. Reversed switched
5. Reversed

That's about it! 👏

We do have support for 128- as well as 256-sizes, but that's a bit much to cover here since they are basically never used. We might fill up with this in the future though, and if you need to use cross bracketing with the biggest sizes and need some help, feel free to reach out!