How does a double elimination bracket work?
A double elimination tournament bracket looks like two traditional tournament brackets right next to each other. One bracket is called the winners’ bracket, the other is called the losers’ bracket. All teams start in the winners’ bracket, which is prepared in the usual fashion . . . teams are divided into pairs, and each pair plays a first round game (depending on the number of teams in the tournament, some team(s) may get a “bye”). If a team wins the game, it advances to the next round. If a team loses, it drops out of the winners’ bracket, but then is assigned a spot in the losers’ bracket. In the losers’ bracket, every game is a contest between two teams that already have lost one game each. If a team wins a game in the losers’ bracket, it advances to the next round in that bracket. If a team loses a losers’ bracket game, the team is out of the tournament. Eventually, there remains only one team in the winners’ bracket, and only one team in the losers’ bracket. These two teams meet
