Can someone explain how a triple elim 12 team format would look like?
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Kickoff Format 2026
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probably the same 4 team champs qual bye, and then giving the lower bracket a lower bracket ig?
With 16 team it's easy to imagine, (And it would give T2 a path) but with 12 it's cancer. I suppose if it's same format than last year it's gonna be the same for the 3 first round
Round 1 :
- Bye 4 teams
- 8 team plays
Round 2 :
- Winner bracket : 8 teams
- Looser bracket : 4 teams (Bye)
Round 3 :
- Winner bracket : 4 teams (Bye)
- Looser bracket : 8 teams
As you can see the 4 first round are the exact same that what we currently have.
Round 4 :
- Winner bracket : 4 teams
- Looser bracket : 4 teams
-
Elim bracket : 4 teams
And then at this point it's becoming easier
I've make a graph, and I already absolutely HATE this format, with 16 team it would have been so mush perfect
https://imgur.com/cRizml9
Edit : add probably one game between the winner and the looser bracket https://imgur.com/ynhqApa
no so from what leo faria said they have finals for each bracket that qualifies the winning team instead of it all culminating in one final
Win change, in that regard, remove 3 last game in last bracket.
The format would have still be easier with 16 teams
thank u bro
but i think i prefer this one https://imgur.com/cRizml9 cause this bracket still give the upperbracket team the advantage to qualified for the Finals and Masters 1.
while this https://imgur.com/ynhqApa bracket doesn't give the upperbracket team the advantage of being in the upperbracket cause they have to face the lower bracket team to Qualify to the Finals and Masters 1. (also the game between the UB finals winner and LB finals winner make the bracket only give 2 chance for the UB finals winner team, so this match doesn't count as triple elimination cause it's only have double elimination match)
well it's looks like it was just the VCT25 Kickoff format with extra Last Chance Bracket.
well 12 team wasn't the best for using a bracket format, 8 or 16 teams was better to use this kind of format cause if they are divided by 2 again and again, the final result can be 1, while 12 if divided by 2 again and again then the final result will be an awkward result like 3 or 1.5 (i'm so bad at english but i hope u got the point) so it always need an UB system to make the 1st bracket start from 8 teams in UB and 4 teams waiting in the UB Quarter finals.
I think you might have read the 2nd bracket bad, in both scenario the winner of upper bracket is top 3 ^^
well it's looks like it was just the VCT25 Kickoff format with extra Last Chance Bracket.
Exact ! This is the definition of a triple bracket, since it was a double8 or 16 teams was better to use this kind of format cause if they are divided by 2 again and again
With 16 format you can even make it quadruple looser bracket that is a PURE banger :
Round 1 : 16 team in Bracket 1 (I will name it Br1)
Round 2 : 8 in Br1, 8 in Br2
Round 3 : 4 in Br1, 8 in Br2, 4 in Br3
Round 4 : 2 in Br1, 6 in Br2, 6 in Br3, 2 in Br4
Round 5 : 1 in Br1 (qualified), 4 in Br2, 6 in Br3, 4 in Br4 (Br4 play a deciders game winner go in Br3), 1 out
Round 6 : 1 qualified, 4 in Br2, 8 in Br3, 3 out
Round 7 : 1 qualified, 2 in Br2, 6 in Br3, 7 out
Round 8 : 1 qualified, 1 in Br2 (qualified), 4 in Br3, 10 out
Round 9 : 2 qualified, 2 in Br3, 12 out : The winner of bracket 3 is last qualified
They are sadfully no good solution for 12 teams (I found a good solution for 12 team that is a double looser bracket but triple is basically impossible sadfully)
Gotta disagree here 😄
There’s actually a pretty simple Excel template that solves exactly this problem. You can find it on YouTube under “Top3nament”. It’s not the flashiest thing ever, but it does exactly what you guys are looking for.
It uses a triple-elimination bracket with a round-robin final stage afterwards. For a 12-player tournament, just use the 16-player version and give the top 4 players a bye in round one.
Still feels fair for everyone and honestly should make for a super fun tournament 🔥
It uses a triple-elimination bracket with a round-robin final stage afterwards. For a 12-player tournament, just use the 16-player version and give the top 4 players a bye in round one.
If you do that, doesn't that mean the 4 looser of round 1 will have a bye ? It's make no sense to give a bye for team that just lose.
Best 1 can do is :
- R1, 4 bye, 8 team in bracket 1
- R2, 8 in Br1, 4 in Br2
- R3, 4 in Br1, 6 in Br2, 2 in Br3
- R4, 2 in Br1, 5 in Br2 (one got a bye), 4 in Br3
- R5, 1 Qual, 4 in Br2, 4 in Br3
- R6, 1 Qual, 2 in Br2, 4 in Br3
- R7, 2 Qual, 3 in Br3 (probably the team that just lose got a bye)
- R8, 2 Qual, 2 in Br3 (Last one qual)
Why play with 12 team, if we have same number of round with 16 teams ? (and only 1 more round for quadruple elim with 16 teams)
It is working smoothly:
https://sites.google.com/view/12-team-top3nament/startseite
Same number of rounds, but less real matches.
Same number of game since every team lose 3 times before get eliminated.
I think what he did propose is not good, it gives a bye to :
- 4 Teams top seeded
- 4 Teams in 0-1 (Making the R1 game a little bit pointless, never gives bye to team that just loose everything)
- 3 Teams in 2-2 (Meh)
Mine gives a by to - 4 Teams top seeded
- Best teams in 2-1
- Best team in 4-2 (This one can be moove out anywhere else)
Also I dont see the point of reducing the number of game if we got same number of round, thats why the 16 team quadruple seems superior to me.
My main goal with the proposal was to make the format work for arbitrary team counts — for example in cases of last-minute withdrawals or changes in participant numbers. And it does achieve that quite well.
Depending on the exact number of teams, some configurations naturally create more byes than others, but in practice this has very little negative impact and the core advantages of the format are still preserved. That’s why I don’t think it makes sense to focus on just a single aspect of tournament design when evaluating the format.
You can find a more detailed overview of the advantages and disadvantages of the Top3nament format here:
My main goal with the proposal was to make the format work for arbitrary team counts — for example in cases of last-minute withdrawals or changes in participant numbers. And it does achieve that quite well.
Doesnt classic swiss can do that ?
Anyway in Val case, so many tournament are in 12 team that I litterally made an entire video series about 12-team format and the way it backfire XD
little negative impact and the core advantages of the format are still preserved
Giving a bye to a 0-1 team has a negative impact on competitive integrity, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Adv7_Vb_29U thats why where you put the bye is important if you are "scripting" your swiss.
Also, I do like the 1-4-8 / 4-8-12 structure you made, this is really good for a large number of game... But not really 12 XD
I wanted to come back to your point about bye distribution for a second and maybe frame it a bit more objectively.
I added 2 extra examples on the site here:
https://sites.google.com/view/12-team-top3nament/startseite
One is a 4-team Top3nament completely without byes. The other is an 8-team Top3nament with 4 byes — so effectively the exact same number of actual participants.
If you compare both examples, you'll notice that the progression of the games that are actually played is completely identical (since bye matches only happen virtually). And that's despite the bye distribution you criticized earlier.
So from my perspective, the byes mainly change the visual representation of the bracket, but not the competitive flow of the played matches themselves.
triple elim with 12 teams is weird because you either stack it top-heavy or you break it into awkward chunks. like if you do 4 team bye into 8 team bracket thats not really triple elim anymore, thats just double with a bye. id guess they either go 3 separate 4 team brackets that feed into a final, or they do some janky thing where lower bracket teams can drop down twice before theyre out. either way its clunky compared to 16 where you can actually spread it clean. format matters way more than people think for who actually gets a fair shot
Reply to Fourthlygoat: you are right - same when using the Top3nament: you get less byes with 16 instead of 12 teams - distribution of byes is then easier to control. Anyway - if you use the Excel-Template of the Top3nament most of the byes are forwarded automatically - just try using the free Demo. And as only 3 teams will make it to the final, bye-handling is an easy thing to do. Looks chaotic at first sight, but it`s actually the opposite. Dont`t be afraid of getting headaches...
Regarding Anguiboks video-link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Adv7_Vb_29U
I think the main criticism in the video about the current matching system is bracket luck. I can try to describe, why there is no such thing as bracket luck when using the Top3nament-Templates:
In the 3 examples on
https://sites.google.com/view/12-team-top3nament/startseite
the seeding is filled strictly according to the recommended ranking-based seeding, and every match outcome simply assumes that the higher seeded team wins. Of course this will never happen exactly like this in reality, but it makes the structural effects of the format much easier to analyze.
What this demonstrates is:
- In every round of the preliminary stage, the ranking gap between opponents is identical across all brackets.
- With each round, that ranking gap is effectively halved, again consistently across all brackets.
- This naturally causes the strongest teams to face each other in the upper brackets, while weaker teams mostly eliminate each other in the lower brackets.
- The tradeoff is that upper-bracket teams need fewer matches to reach finals, while lower-bracket teams need more matches (essentially a play-in path) and will face tougher opponents proceeding in the tournament.
Even if preseason rankings are imperfect or outdated, these structural properties still largely hold.
That is why I actually consider this approach extremely fair:
- stronger teams are rewarded for their seeding,
- weaker teams still retain a path forward,
- and match difficulty progresses in a very controlled and symmetric way across the tournament.
In my opinion, this creates less randomness than many traditional 12-team double/triple elimination formats.
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