A tournament (IPA [tərnəmənt]) is a competition involving a relatively large number of competitors, all participating in a sport or game. Competition is a rivalry between individuals groups nations or animals for territory or resources Sport is an Activity that is governed by a set of rules or Customs and often engaged in competitively A game is a structured activity, usually undertaken for Enjoyment and sometimes also used as an Educational tool More specifically, the term may be used in either of two overlapping senses:
- One or more competitions held at a single venue and concentrated into a relatively short time interval. Some game clubs focus on preparing members for such tournaments. A game club is an organization devoted to bringing Game players together Chess clubs, for instance, frequently employ similar ranking systems, chess clocks, and etiquette to those used in chess tournaments. Chess is a recreational and competitive Game played between two players. A ranking is a relationship between a set of items such that for any two items the first is either "ranked higher than" "ranked lower than" or "ranked equal A game clock consists of two adjacent Clocks and buttons to stop one clock while starting the other such that the two component clocks never run simultaneously Etiquette is a code that governs the expectations of Social behavior, according to the contemporary conventional norm within a Society,
- A competition involving multiple matches, each involving a subset of the competitors, with the overall tournament winner determined based on the combined results of these individual matches. These are common in those sports and games where each match must involve a small number of competitors: often precisely two, as in most team sports, racket sports and combat sports, many card games and board games, and many forms of competitive debating. Team sport refers to Sports that are practiced between opposing teams where the players interact directly and simultaneously between them to achieve an objective A racquet (or racket) is a sports implement consisting of a handled frame with an open hoop across which a network of cord is stretched tightly A combat sport (also known as a combative sport) is a competitive Contact sport where two combatants fight against each other using certain rules of engagement typically A card game is any Game using Playing cards either traditional or game-specific A board game is a Game in which counters or pieces that are placed on removed from or moved across a "board" (a premarked surface usually specific to that game Debate ( American English) or debating ( British English) is a formal method of interactive and position representational Argument. Such tournaments allow large numbers to compete against each other in spite of the restriction on numbers in a single match.
These two senses are distinct. All golf tournaments meet the first definition, but while match play tournaments meet the second, stroke play tournaments do not, since there are no distinct matches within the tournament. Match play is a scoring system for Golf in which a player or team earns points for each hole in which they have bested their opponents this is as opposed to Stroke play Stroke play is a scoring system for Golf (compare to Match play) In contrast, football (soccer) leagues like the Premier League are tournaments in the second sense, but not the first, having matches spread across many stadia over a period of up to a year. Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a Team sport played between two teams of eleven players and is widely considered The Premier League, colloquially referred to as the Premiership, is an English professional league for football clubs Many tournaments meet both definitions; for example, the Wimbledon tennis championship. The Championships Wimbledon, or simply Wimbledon, is the oldest Tennis tournament in the world and is widely considered as the most prestigious
A tournament-match (or tie or fixture or heat) may involve multiple game-matches (or rubbers or legs) between the competitors. For example, in the Davis Cup tennis tournament, a tie between two nations involves five rubbers between the nations' players. The Davis Cup is the premier international team event in men's Tennis. Tennis is a sport played between two players ( singles) or between two teams of two players each ( doubles) The team that wins the most rubbers wins the tie. In the later rounds of UEFA Champions League of football (soccer), each fixture is played over two legs. See also List of European Cup and UEFA Champions League winners The UEFA Champions League, which evolved from the European Champion Clubs' Cup is a seasonal club The scores of each leg are added, and the team with the higher aggregate score wins the fixture, with away goals used as a tiebreaker and a penalty shootout if away goals cannot determine a winner. The away goals rule is a method of breaking ties in Association football and other sports when teams play each other twice once at each Penalty shootouts, properly named kicks from the penalty mark, are a method sometimes used to decide which team progresses to the next stage of a tournament (or wins the tournament
Contents |
Knockout tournaments
A knockout tournament is divided into successive rounds; each competitor plays in at most one fixture per round. The top-ranked competitors in each fixture progress to the next round. As rounds progress, the number of competitors and fixtures decreases, and the final round consists of just one fixture, the winner of which is the overall champion.
In a single-elimination tournament, only the top-ranked competitors in a fixture progress; in 2-competitor games, only the winner progresses. A single-elimination tournament, also called a knockout, cup or sudden death tournament, is a type of Tournament where the loser of each All other competitors are eliminated. This ensures a winner is decided with the minimum number of fixtures. However, most competitors will be eliminated after relatively few matches; a single bad or unlucky performance can nullify many preceding excellent ones. Some single-elimination tournaments such as NBA use a multiple-game format, in which teams would play each other more than one game (e. g. best-of-seven series in NBA) in order to determine who is the winner of this round. Other knockout formats provide a "second chance" for some or all losers.
A double-elimination tournament may be used in 2-competitor games to allow each competitor a single loss without being eliminated from the tournament. A double-elimination tournament is a Competition in which a participant ceases to be eligible to win the Tournament 's championship upon having lost two All losers from the main bracket enter a losers' bracket, the winner of which plays off against the main bracket's winner. A bracket is the diagrammatic representation of the series of games played during a Tournament, named as such because it appears to be a large number of interconnected (punctuational
Some formats allow losers to play extra rounds before re-entering the main competition in a later round. Rowing regattas often have repechage rounds for the "fastest losers" from the heats. GB coxless pair of Toby Garbett & Rick Dunn at Henley Royal Regatta 2004 A regatta is a term used to describe either a Boat race or series of boat races Repechage (repêchage lit re-fishing meaning "to rescue" or "to save" is a practice amongst ladder competitions that allows participants that failed to meet qualifying The winners of these progress, but are at a disadvantage in later rounds owing to the extra effort expended during the repechage.
In the playoffs of the Australian Football League, the teams with the best record before the playoffs are allowed to lose a game without being eliminated, whereas the lesser qualifiers are not. The Australian Football League (AFL is both the professional Australian national competition in the Sport of Australian Rules Football and its highest In athletics meetings, fastest losers may progress in a running event held over several rounds; e. g. the qualifiers for a later round might be the first 4 from each of 6 heats, plus the 8 fastest losers from among the remaining runners.
An extreme form of the knockout tournament is the step-ladder format where the strongest team is assured of a berth at the final round while the next strongest teams are given byes according to their strength/seeds; for example, in a four team tournament, the fourth and third seed figure in the first round, then the winner goes to the semifinals against the second seed, while the survivor faces the first seed at the final.
Group tournaments
- For details of ranking systems in group tournament, see: Group tournament ranking system
A group tournament, league, division or conference involves all competitors playing a number of fixtures. In a group tournament, unlike a knockout tournament, there is no decisive final match A league system is a hierarchy of leagues in a sport that usually teams can be promoted or relegated between depending on finishing positions or playoffs A division in Sports consists of a group of Teams which compete against one another for a divisional title A conference usually refers to a grouping of teams typically (and loosely based on geographical location Points are awarded for each fixture, with competitors ranked based either on total number of points or average points per fixture. Usually each competitor plays an equal number of fixtures, in which case rankings by total points and by average points are equivalent.
In a round-robin tournament, each competitor plays all the others an equal number of times, once in a single round-robin tournament and twice in a double round-robin tournament. A round-robin tournament or all-play-all tournament is a type of group tournament in which each participant plays every other participant an equal number of times This is often seen as producing the most reliable rankings. However, for large numbers of competitors it may require an unfeasibly large number of rounds. A Swiss system tournament attempts to determine a winner reliably, based on a smaller number of fixtures. A Swiss system tournament is a commonly used type of Tournament in Chess, bridge, Scrabble, squash, Magic The Gathering Fixtures are scheduled one round at a time; a competitor will play another who has a similar record in previous rounds of the tournament. This allows the top (and bottom) competitors to be determined with fewer rounds than a round-robin, though the middle rankings are unreliable.
There may be other considerations besides reliability of rankings. In some professional team sports, weaker teams are given an easier slate of fixtures as a form of handicapping. Professional sports, as opposed to amateur Sports are those in which athletes receive payment for their performance For "handicap" as it refers to disabled persons see Disability. This occurs in the National Football League in the USA. The National Football League ( NFL) is the largest professional American football league. Sometimes schedules are weighted in favour of local derbies or other traditional rivalries. In many countries the term local derby, or simply just derby (pronounced 'dur-bee' in American English and 'dar-bee' in British English after the city of Derby A sports rivalry is intense competition between athletic teams or athletes For example, NFL teams play two games against each of the other three teams in their division, one game against half of the other twelve teams in their conference, and one game against a quarter of the sixteen teams in the other conference. American sports are also unusual in providing fixtures between competitors who are, for ranking purposes, in different groups.
In 2-competitor games where ties are rare or impossible, competitors are typically ranked by number of wins, with ties counting half; each competitors' listings are usually ordered Wins-Losses(-Ties). To tie or draw is to finish a Competition with identical or inconclusive results Where draws are more common, this may be 2 points for a win and 1 for a draw, which is mathematically equivalent but avoids having too many half-points in the listings. These are usually ordered Wins-Draws-Losses. If there are more than 2 competitors per fixture, points may be ordinal (for example, 3 for first, 2 for second, 1 for third).
Multi-stage tournaments
Many tournaments are held in multiple stages, with the top teams in one stage progressing to the next. American professional team sports have a "regular season" (group tournament) acting as qualification for the "post season" or "playoffs" (single-elimination tournament). A playoff or final in Sports is a game or series of games played after the regular season is over with the goal of determining a league champion or a similar accolade In the FIFA World Cup, each continent has one or more qualifying tournaments, some of which are themselves multi-stage. The FIFA World Cup, occasionally called the Football World Cup, but usually referred to simply as the World Cup, is an international Association football The top teams in each qualify for the finals tournament. There, the 32 teams are divided into eight round-robin groups of four, with the top two in each progressing to the knockout phase, which involves four single-elimination rounds including the final.
Sometimes, results from an earlier phase are carried over into a later phase. In the Cricket World Cup, the second stage, known as the Super Eight since 2007 and before that the Super Six, features two teams from each of four preliminary groups (previously three teams from two preliminary groups), who do not replay the teams they have already played, but instead reuse the original results in the new league table. The Cricket World Cup is the premier international championship of men's One Day International (ODI Cricket. The 2007 ICC Cricket World Cup was a Men 's Cricket Tournament that took place in the West Indies from 13 March to 28 April 2007 using the sport's Formerly in the Swiss Football League, teams played a double round-robin, at which point they were split into a top "championship" group and a bottom "relegation" group; each played a separate double round-robin, with results of all 32 matches counting for ranking each group. The Swiss Football League is organised in several leagues A similar system is also used in the Scottish Premier League since 2000. The Scottish Premier League, currently known as the Clydesdale Bank Premier League for sponsorship reasons and often known as the Premier League or SPL After 33 games, when every club has played every other club three times, the division is split into two halves. Clubs play a further 5 matches, against the teams in their half of the division. This can (and often does) result in the team placed 7th having a higher points total than the team placed 6th, because their final 5 games are considerably easier.
The top Slovenian basketball league has a unique system. The Premier A Slovenian Basketball League ( 1 A slovenska košarkarska liga) abbreviated as 1 In its first phase, 12 of the league's 13 clubs compete in a full home-and-away season, with the country's representative in the Euroleague (an elite pan-European club competition) exempt. EuroLeague WomenThe Euroleague (EL is one of the professional Basketball competitions in Europe, with teams from thirteen different European countries The league then splits. The top seven teams are joined by the Euroleague representative for a second home-and-away season, with no results carrying over from the first phase. These eight teams compete for four spots in a final playoff. The bottom five teams play their own home-and-away league, but their previous results do carry over. These teams are competing to avoid relegation, with the bottom team automatically relegated and the second-from-bottom team forced to play a mini-league with the second- and third-place teams from the second level for a place in the top league.
Promotion and relegation
Where the number of competitors is larger than a tournament format permits, there may be multiple tournaments held in parallel, with competitors assigned to a particular tournament based on their ranking. In chess, scrabble, and many other individual games, many tournaments over one or more years contribute to a player's ranking. Chess is a recreational and competitive Game played between two players. The verb "to scrabble" also means to scratch scramble or scrape about see Wiktionaryscrabble. However, many team sports involve teams in only one major tournament per year. In European sport, including football, this constitutes the sole ranking for the following season; the top teams from each division of the league are promoted to a higher division, while the bottom teams from a higher division are relegated to a lower one. This promotion and relegation occurs mainly in league tournaments, but also features in Davis Cup tennis, where each group is a single-elimination tournament: while the team which wins each round is the champion, the one which loses each round will be relegated. In many Sports leagues around the world (with North American and Australian professional leagues being the most notable exceptions promotion and relegation The hierarchy of divisions may be linear, or tree-like, as with the English football league pyramid. The English football league system, also known as the football pyramid, is a series of interconnected leagues for club football in England (although
Bridge tournaments
In contract bridge a "tournament" is a tournament in the first sense above, composed of multiple "events", which are tournaments in the second sense. Duplicate bridge is the most widely used variation of Contract bridge in club and tournament settings Contract bridge, usually known simply as bridge, is a trick-taking Card game of skill and chance (the relative proportions depending Some events may be single-elimination, double-elimination, or Swiss style. However, "Pair events" are the most widespread. Duplicate bridge is the most widely used variation of Contract bridge in club and tournament settings In these events, an identical deal (or board) is played in multiple rubbers. In Duplicate bridge, a board is a device used to pass a pre-dealt bridge hand from table to table keeping the cards belonging to each of the four players separate The North-South (NS) pair in one such rubber is measured not against the East-West (EW) pair in that same rubber, but rather against all the other NS pairs playing the same board in other rubbers. Thus pairs are rewarded for playing the same cards better than others have played them. Several systems provide a predetermined schedule of fixtures based on the number of pairs and boards to be played, to ensure a good mix of opponents, and that no pair plays the same board twice.
Poker tournaments
In poker tournaments, as players are eliminated, the number of tables is gradually reduced, with the remaining players redistributed among the remaining tables. A poker tournament is a Tournament in which the winners are decided by playing Poker, usually a particular style of poker Play continues until one player has won all of the chips in play. Finishing order is determined by the order in which players are eliminated: last player remaining gets 1st place, last player eliminated gets 2nd, previous player eliminated gets 3rd, etc.
In a "shootout" tournament, players do not change tables until every table has been reduced to one player.
Alternatives to tournament systems
While tournament structures attempt to provide an objective format for determining the best competitor in a game or sport, other methods exist.
- Challenge
- In this format, champions retain their title until they are defeated by an opponent, known as the challenger. This system is used in professional boxing. Boxing (sometimes also known as English boxing or pugilism) is a Combat sport in which two participants generally of similar weight, Prior to 1993, it was also used in the World Chess Championship. See also Development of the World Chess Championship The World Chess Championship is played to determine the World Champion in the Board game Chess The right to become a contender may be awarded through a tournament, as in chess, or through a ranking system: the ranking systems used by boxing's governing bodies are controversial and opaque. If the champion retires or dies, then the current top challenger may be declared champion or the title may be vacant until a match between two challengers is held. Prior to 1920, the reigning Wimbledon champion received a bye to the final; the official name of the FA Challenge Cup reflects a similar arrangement which applied only in that tournament's very early years. The Football Association Challenge Cup, commonly known as the FA Cup, is a knockout cup competition in English football, run by and named after The America's Cup is decided between the winners of separate champion and challenger tournaments, respectively for yachts from the country of the reigning champion, and of all other countries. The America’s Cup is the most prestigious Regatta and Match race in the sport of Sailing, and the oldest active Trophy in international The Ranfurly Shield in New Zealand rugby union is a challenge trophy between provincial teams, in which the holders of the Shield retain it until they are beaten by a challenging province. The Ranfurly Shield, colloquially known as the Log o' Wood, is perhaps the most prestigious trophy in New Zealand 's domestic Rugby union competition
- Ladder
- An extension of the challenge system. All competitors are ranked on a "ladder". New contestants join the bottom of the ladder. Any contestant can challenge a competitor ranked slightly higher; if the challenger wins the match (or the challenge is refused) they swap places on the ladder. Ladders are common in internal club competitions in individual sports, like squash and pool. Squash is a racquet sport that was formerly called squash racquets, a reference to the "squashable" soft ball used in the game (compared with the Another ladder system is to give competitors a certain number of ranking points at the start. If two competitors play each other, then the winner will gain a percentage of the loser's ranking points. In this way competitors that join later will generally start in the middle, since top competitors already have won ranking points and bottom competitors have lost them.
- Selection
- A champion may be selected by an authorised or self-appointed group, often after a vote. While common in non-competitive activities, ranging from science fairs to cinema's Oscars, this is rarely significant in sports and games. A science fair is generally a competition where contestants present their Science project results in the form of a report display board and models that they have created "The Oscar" redirects here for the film see The Oscar (film. Though unofficial, the polls run by the Associated Press and others were prestigious titles in American college football prior to the creation in 1998 of an official national championship. The Associated Press ( AP) is an American News agency. The AP is a Cooperative owned by its contributing Newspapers radio College football is American football played by teams of student athletes fielded by American universities, Colleges and military academies The polls remain as factors included in determining the two teams qualifying for the championship game.
See also
- Playoff format
- Apertura and Clausura
References
There are several different Playoff formats used in various levels of competition in Sports and Games Some of the most common are the single eliminationDictionary
tournament
-noun
- A series of games; either the same game played many times, or a succession of games related by a single theme; played competitively to determine a single winning team or individual.
Dapyx Software network: MP3 Explorer | Ebook Manager | Zenithic