It has been several weeks now that the Game’Her Challenge has been announced. This event is a League of Legends (LoL) tournament organized around indulgence, gender-diversity and pushing players to surpass themselves. If you are eager to play in this event, read the related announcement article.
To organize a tournament, choices are to be made about its structure. Loser bracket, direct elimination, Round Robin, there are a lot of ways to create a tournament, and that is exactly what we are addressing today.
The majority of recent tournament use loser brackets, like the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) or the Rocket League Championship Series (RLCS). The Game’Her Challenge will also feature a loser bracket. Let’s now dive deeper into the structure of our tournament.
Every team which made it to the finals compete in the winner bracket (see: WB Round 1). While it wins, a team stays in the winner bracket until it reaches the grand final. Once a team loses a match, it falls in the loser bracket, but is not eliminated yet! Here, losing is not an option anymore, as one more defeat means the team is eliminated from the competition. First matches will happen as Best Of 1 (BO1). As we move to semi-finals, matches will happen as BO3 (see: LB3.1; LB Final; WB Final). Finally, the grand final will feature a BO5 match between the last standing teams. Let’s have a quick reminder on “Best Of” matches. For example, when a match stands as a BO3, there can be up to 3 games played. To win the match, a team has to win 2 of the 3 games. This means that the match can end after only 2 games.
Thus, only winning teams meet in the winner bracket, and only teams with one defeat meet in the loser bracket. In the grand final, we end up with a team which has won every single match, and a team with one defeat. For the tournament to be equal, the team from the winner bracket could afford to lose one match as well. That’s why we could see a “bracket reset”. It means the team from the loser bracket has to win the final match twice to win. The first win is actually there to reset the bracket and set both teams on equal footing, in terms of defeats.
The loser bracket format is often used on Versus Fighting tournaments, as it allows teams to have a second chance. Spectators may also witness incredible turnarounds from teams going in the grand final after losing in the early rounds.
- addenda, in charge of the events division
However, before going to the finals, teams will have to do well in Round Robin first. Teams will be dispatched in 8 pools (groups) containing 4 teams each. Matches will stand as BO1, to take less time. Each team will encounter every other team twice, which is called Double Round Robin.
The decision to have only BO1 encounters is mainly motivated by a time issue. The number of matches to be played being high, the matches must be spread out as little as possible in time. Conversely, the more you progress in the final tree, the more time you can take to have longer matches. This allows teams to have more than one chance in a match and limits the factors of success or failure. Thus, if a team shows a lack of motivation, a lack of concentration, or any other poor performance, it can bounce back and expose its true potential.
