Why Some Participants Go Straight to Round 2
In single and double elimination brackets, you'll often find that some participants skip the first round (they receive byes).
This cannot be avoided unless the number of participants is a power of two (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, ...) — a number that can be repeatedly halved until only 1 person remains.
Imagine you paired everyone in round #1 of a 5 player bracket: 1 v 5, 2 v 4, 3 v ?.
To avoid this, an initial qualifying round will occur to create a balanced bracket. Following this rule, round #1 would have 4 v 5. The winner, or qualifier, would advance to join players 1, 2, and 3 in the next round. The bracket at this point becomes balanced with 4 participants, which is a power of 2.
In single and double elimination brackets, you'll often find that some participants skip the first round (they receive byes).
This cannot be avoided unless the number of participants is a power of two (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, ...) — a number that can be repeatedly halved until only 1 person remains.
Imagine you paired everyone in round #1 of a 5 player bracket: 1 v 5, 2 v 4, 3 v ?.
To avoid this, an initial qualifying round will occur to create a balanced bracket. Following this rule, round #1 would have 4 v 5. The winner, or qualifier, would advance to join players 1, 2, and 3 in the next round. The bracket at this point becomes balanced with 4 participants, which is a power of 2.
Updated on: 08 / 03 / 2019