Tournament formats – an overview

Updated and expanded: 2024-03-15

There are many different systems for organizing tournaments, each with its own advantages and drawbacks. Here, we provide a very basic introduction to the subject. If you are hungry for more, the Wikipedia article on tournament systems is a good place to start.

It can be quite a task to organize a tournament when there are many teams, or the format is complex. Fortunately for help we now have tournament software for PCs. See also our page of pre-calculated Round Robin schedules.

 

Basic types of tournaments

Tournament are usually characterized by the number of players on the teams and the way that the teams are created. Regarding the number of players, the basic formats are:

• Singles – one player per team. French: tête-à-tête (head-to-head)
• Doubles – two players per team. French: doublette
• Triples – three players per team. French: triplette

Regarding the way teams are created, the basic formats are:

• select — In a select tournament teams of two (or three) players enter, stay together, and compete as a team for the entire tournament.
• mêlée — In a mêlée tournament individual players enter and at the start of the competition are grouped into teams using some random selection method. The teams stay together for the entire tournament.
• panaché — In a panaché tournament individual players are randomly assigned to two-person teams, and after each game the teams are randomly reorganized so that in each game each player plays with a different partner. (For more information, see the discussion of panaché tournaments, below).
• Vauclusienne — In a Vauclusienne tournament all of the teams play with 6 boules, but a team may consist of one, two, or three players.

Some tournaments restrict the participants by gender, age, or experience.

• Men’s – all players on a team are men
• Women’s – all players on a team are women
• Mixed – each team has at least one man and one woman
• Juniors – usually children age 17 and under.
• Seniors – players older than 18
• Veterans – players older than a specified age, typically 60
• Espoirs – young adults between the ages of 18 and 23
• Masters – players with a record of skillful play

Re: age brackets— see THIS.

Re: masters tournaments— In France there are about 30 national and international competitions that are also used as qualifiers for the annual French Masters de Pétanque. Each year in these competitions, players accumulate “Masters qualification points”. At the end of the season, the top 3 players in this ranking are selected as team captains; the three team captains then go on to choose their teammates from among the other players ranked in the top 24. Once the teams have been set up, they go on to participate in the Masters of Pétanque tournament of the following year.

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Tournament formats

There are many different tournament formats, i.e. ways to determine which teams play which teams. Some of the most common are:

• round-robin
• snake
• single elimination
• double elimination
• swiss system
• poules, aka “barrage”
• leagues
• league and knockout

Competitions are often divided into two stages: qualifying rounds, or qualifiers, and finals. The qualifying rounds are used (a) to reduce the number of competitors to a manageable number for the finals, and (b) to rank competitors by skill level so that they can be seeded appropriately during the finals. Qualifying rounds are often in a swiss system or poules format, while final rounds are usually single-elimination.

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Panaché tournaments

First of all, let’s get the spelling right. The word that we want ends with an accented é— panaché. The French word panaché (ending with an accented é) means “mixed”, “variegated”, “motley”— une salade panachée is a mixed salad. The French word that we do not want is panache (ending with an unaccented e). That word refers to a plume (like a feather plume) and by extension means “flair”, “style”. The picture at the bottom of this page shows a “panache tournament”.

A panaché tournament is sometimes called a “super melée” or an “individual melée”. As with a melée, individual players are randomly assigned to teams of two or three players, but after each game the teams are randomly reorganized so that in each game each player plays with a different partner. Ideally each team is composed of two players, but if there is an odd number of competitors some of the teams may be composed of three players. (Another method for creating teams is to divide competitors into two groups: shooters and pointers. Teams are created using an algorithm that randomly pairs pointers with shooters.)

After each game, the teams report the results of the game (the scores of the two teams) to the control table. Based on those results, each player is given (a) one “win” if their team won the game; (b) a number of “differential points” (the number of points by which their team won or lost the game); and (c) a number of “scored points” (the number of points that their team scored in the game). For example, if Team A wins by 6 points with a final score of 13-7, then:

• Each player on Team A adds one win; players on Team B add zero wins.
• Each player on Team A adds 6 differential points; players on Team B add negative 6 (-6) differential points.
• Each player on Team A adds 13 scored points; players on Team B add 7 scored points.

At the end of the competition, players are ranked according to (a) their total wins, (b) their total differential points, and (c) their total scored points.

Panaché tournaments can be played either as stand-alone tournaments or as a qualifying round to identify the top 4 or 8 players, who are then grouped into doubles teams and play a single-elimination competition to determine the tournament winners. Other variations are of course possible.

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Single-elimination tournament

The simplest way to organize a tournament is as a single elimination, aka “knockout” or “sudden death”. The basic idea here is that winners play winners, and losers are immediately eliminated from the competition. The results are recorded in the familiar tree-shaped diagram.

If the competing teams are paired-up at random, it is possible that the two best teams will meet in the first round of the competition, with the result that the second-best team is eliminated in its first game. To avoid this problem, the competing teams need to be “seeded” or ranked before the start of the competition. If the teams are seeded, then the matchups can be arranged so that the teams that are seeded most highly will not meet each other before the final rounds of the competition. There are various ways to do the seeding. One way is for the tournament to include a preliminary stage called “the qualifiers” or “qualifying rounds” whose primary purpose is to produce the seeding.

Many players travel to tournaments for the opportunity to play against a new set of opponents. To accomodate such players it is really undesirable to use a format in which three-quarters of the participants have been knocked out of competition by the end of the second round. For such players, a better alternative to a single-elimination tournament is a double-elimination tournament.

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Double-elimination tournament

Some tournaments (such as the Petanque Amelia Island Open) include a “consolation” competition. In such tournaments, the winners of the first-round games go on to play in the main competition (the concours). The losers become the first-round teams in a “consolation” (consolante, or repechage) tournament. Thereafter, the main competition and the consolante are played, as it were, in separate and parallel universes. As teams are knocked out of the main competition, they move over and join the consolante. In some tournaments, two victors are declared at the end of the competition— the winner of the concours and the winner of the consolante. In other tournaments, the winner of the concours and the winner of the consolante play one final game against each other for the tournament championship.

Here is a diagram of game structure of a tournament with a consolante contest. It is from the Redwood Empire Boules Club Ledford House Bastille Day 2012 tournament. I’ve marked it with red arrows to show how the losers of games in the main competition move over to the consolante and play the winners of previous games in the consolante. After both sides of the tournament have been played, the winner of the main competition plays the winner of the consolante for the tournament championship.

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Round Robin

In a round-robin tournament, each competing team plays every other team, and no team ever plays the same team twice. To play a full Round Robin requires one fewer number of rounds than the number of teams. (That is, if there are 8 teams, a full Round Robin requires 7 rounds.) It is surprisingly difficult to calculate the team matchups for a round robin tournament. For that reason, there are a number of web sites that will calculate the matchups for you, or offer pre-calculated matchups for tournaments of different sizes. See our page of pre-calculated Round Robin schedules.

After the tournament, teams are ranked by number of wins, then by point differentials, then by total points scored.

A full Round Robin tournament format is not feasible for a competition in which there is a large number of competing teams. This is why many tournaments use a Snake format or a Swiss System format, rather than a full Round Robin.

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Snake (a partial Round Robin)

For a partial Round Robin, you can simply play as many rounds as you wish. If you don’t have a set of pre-calculated matchups, it is easy to create one using a “Snake” format. The Snake format is basically an “odds and evens” format— odd-numbered teams play even-numbered teams.

To start, count the teams and assign them numeric identifiers. If we have 8 teams, the teams’ numeric identifiers are: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Setting up the first round is easy. We lay out the odd-numbered teams across the first row. This is a header row, and will stay the same for all of the rounds of the competition.

Then, on the row for Round 1, we lay out the even numbers so that in Round 1: team 1 plays team 2; 3 plays 4; 5 plays 6; 7 plays 8.

Then for each subsequent round—

• Each odd-numbered team plays the next greater even number. So team 1 first plays team 2, then team 4, then team 6, then team 8.
   
• Each even-numbered team plays the next smaller odd number. So team 8 first plays team 7, then team 5, then team 3, then team 1.

You can see the pattern that this creates.

Sometime, when trying to find your next opponent, you run out of numbers. When that happens, you simply “wrap around” to find your opponent.

• When an odd-numbered team runs out of even-numbered opponents, it “wraps around” and plays the first even number. So team 3, after playing team 4, plays team 6, then team 8, and then wraps around to play the first even number, 2.
   
• When an even-numbered team runs out of odd-numbered opponents, it “wraps around” and plays the last odd number.

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The Swiss System

A Swiss System tournament is a round-robin-style tournament that has been modified to make it usable with a large number of competitors. In a Swiss System tournament, instead of each competitor playing every other competitor, each competitor plays only other competitors that have won a similar number of games. The matchups can’t be calculated in advance because the matchups for every round (except the first) depend on the results of the games in the preceeding round. The basic idea is simple, but (especially for large competitions) the processes for scoring and pairing up competitors can be complicated. Tournament organizers often use a computer program to help run a Swiss System tournament. For more information on the Swiss System, see our Swiss System page.

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Poules aka “barrage”

Large tournaments are often structured in three stages: swiss system, poules, and finals. Typically the swiss system rounds reduce the number of competitors to 16 and helps to seed those teams. Poules then reduce the number to 8 teams. The 8 teams that survive the poules are qualified to play in the finals.

In a poules format the competing teams are divided into groups called poules (See origin of the term “poules”.) Each poule contains 4 teams. The composition of the poules is based on the seeding of the teams. The first poule, for example, consists of the teams seeded 1, 9, 8, and 16.

A poule consists of three rounds of games.

1. First, team A plays team C, and team B plays team D, in the order in which they were seeded.
2. Second, the winners play winners and losers play losers. After this second round, there will be one team with 2 wins, one team with no wins, and two teams with 1 win each. The team with 2 wins is qualified to go on to the finals. The team with no wins is disqualified.
3. In the third round, the two teams with 1 win each, play a third game called the barrage. The winner of the barrage qualifies for the finals; the loser is disqualified.

After the barrage, one of the four teams will have won 100% of its games. One will have won 66% of its games. One will have won 33% of its games. And one will have won 0% of its games. The first two teams continue in the competition; the other two teams are eliminated.

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Leagues

As of April 2022, the English version of Articles 5 and 33 of the FIPJP rules incorrectly translates “poules” as “leagues”. For an explanation, see the discussion of league and knockout, below.

In most contexts outside of United Kingdom petanque, a “league” is a group of teams. The teams make arrangements to play each other in a series of games that are played over a period of several weeks or months (a “season”). Typically the teams in a league have something in common— they are all drawn from a specific club or state or province or country. The National League of American baseball, for example, is composed of 15 teams from different American cities— Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago, etc.

• Pre-season activities involve setting up the schedule of games. A season usually provides enough time for every team in the league to play every other team, so the schedule of games is usually based on a Round-Robin format.
   
• At the end of the season, the results of the games are totaled and the teams are ranked. The rankings are used to determine a winner for the season, or to pick teams to compete in a final play-off competition.

For more information, see the Wikipedia article on sports league.

In the USA at least, some petanque clubs organize an annual round of league play within the club. At the beginning of the season, teams sign up for league play. Over the course of several weeks the teams play scheduled games, usually in a round robin format. At the end of the season, the highest-ranking teams in the league play semi-finals games and a finals game to select the winning team of the competition.

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League and knockout

The phrase “league and knockout” is common in descriptions of British petanque competitions. In the UK and New Zealand, the terms “leagues”, “pools”, and even “barrage” do NOT refer to the kind of poules format used in France. Instead, they refer to a a tournament format organized around multiple small round-robin competitions.

In this format, the teams are divided up into multiple “leagues” or “pools”. Within each league, the teams then play a round-robin competition. A league typically contains four teams, but may contain more than four. If there are too many teams in a league for a full round-robin to be feasible, the teams may play only a partial round-robin.

At the completion of the round robin, usually the top two teams in each league qualify to advance to the next stage of the competition, the “knockout”.

The knockout is a single-elimination format that determines which team will be the ultimate victor in the competition. In the UK a typical announcement for a league and knockout tournament might look like this— “During the morning a round robin will be played in leagues. During the afternoon the top two in each league will play in a knock out competition.”

In the UK a tournament may include “consolages” or a “plate”. In the USA we call this a “consolante”. A consolante is a second competition, run in parallel with the main competition. When a team loses a game in the main competition, it moves over to the consolante competition. It continues to play there until it is knocked out or wins the consolante. At the end, the tournament has two winners – the winner of the main competition, and the winner of the consolante.

The bottom line is that, as Ray Ager has pointed out, in France they play poules; in the UK they play leagues. One result of this cultural difference can be found in the English version of the FIPJP rules, in Articles 5 and 33. Those articles translate the French word “poules” as “leagues”. Why didn’t the translator use the correct term, “poules”? Well, the lead translator is an English umpire, Mike Pegg. And the translation is into British English (as opposed to, say, American or Australian English). Suppose that you’re the translator. You are a British umpire. When you imagine your English-speaking readers, you imagine a bunch of players in Britain, where qualifying rounds are played in leagues, not poules. In that context, it probably makes sense to translate “poules” as “leagues”. The unfortunate side effect is that English-speaking players outside of the UK may be confused by the term “leagues”.

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A Vauclusienne tournament

In a Vauclusine tournament, all of the teams play with 6 boules, but a team may consist of one, two, or three players. So you may see a team of three playing against a team of two or even one. Or two against one; or one against one.

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FOOTNOTES

The origin of the word “poule”— used to refer to a ranking event— is obscure. The French term une poule (a hen) seems first to have been used in horse racing circles. “Poule” was used to refer to a young horse (a colt or filly), then to the trial races used to classify the colts and fillies. The idea of a “poule” as ​​a ranking event was then adopted in other sports. Jac Verheul reports that the poules format (in French: poules de quatre, groups of four) dates from the 1930s when it was used in the world of sport-boules and boule lyonnaise to refer to the preliminary rounds of a competition.

In English, the preferred spelling is “poule” although you sometimes see it spelled “pool”.

The French term barrage means “barrier” and carries the sense of blocking or barring off. It can be applied, for example, to dams designed to block or divert water. In sport, it is used to refer to an event designed to allow one team to go forward in a competition while blocking another team. The French tir de barrage (barrier fire) was the origin of the English word “barrage” meaning a blast of heavy artillery fire used to saturate an area in front of advancing troops.

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An old-fashioned panache tournament

This is what a “panache tournament” looks like. The knights are bedecked with magnificent spreads of feathers atop their helmets. These plumes, known as panaches, were common 16th-century tournament wear. Feathers indicated status, wealth, the colors of one’s family, and much more. For more information, see see THIS interesting story.

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