Written by Merritt
Smogon Bracketmaker Guide
The Smogon Bracketmaker is a tool maintained by the site to make sure tournament generation is done correctly and transparently. If you're hosting a tournament on the site you will generally be expected to use the bracketmaker to create rounds. This guide outlines everything in the bracketmaker, how to use it successfully, and some common pitfalls.
Please make sure to read this guide thoroughly to avoid issues that can manifest many rounds down the line.
Access to the Bracketmaker
There are two larger pieces to the bracketmaker: bracket creation and the list of created brackets. Bracket creation is not available to all users but anybody can see the list of brackets that have been made recently.
Bracket creation can be accessed by clicking on the "New bracket" link at the top of the bracketmaker page or following this link: https://www.smogon.com/tools/bracketmaker/new . Access to bracket creation is gated to Smogon badgeholders or people who have been given specific access for their tournaments in order to prevent flooding or trolling. If you're hosting a one off tournament and do not fall into one of these categories, then you can ask any badgeholder to generate the bracket for you - or if you expect to be hosting multiple tournaments then it may be appropriate to ask a member of the Tournament Oversight team to give you the approved host access.
The list of brackets can be found at this link: https://www.smogon.com/tools/bracketmaker and is accessible to everybody. In order to remain transparent about bracket creation, here anybody can see a list of brackets created over the past few weeks, what tour they're listed as being for, and who created them. The next few paragraphs will go over what a bracket looks like - if some terminology used is confusing then it may be covered in the "Using the Bracketmaker" section.
Brackets are listed in creation order with the most recent at the top and furthest back at the bottom. The hyperlink at the top of each box is the name of the tournament or round that the bracket creator assigned to it, the number in parenthesis next to it is the number of participants (including byes!), and on the next line is a link to the bracket creator's smogon profile and the time that bracket was created. Clicking on the tournament name hyperlink will show you the created bracket and some additional information.
Notice below the general bracket information is the "Pairing mode", which refers to the style used to create the bracket. For most tournaments this will be "Strict2^n", which automatically creates a bracket of the next 2^n number of pairings (2/4/8/16/32/64 etc) and fills any empty spaces with byes. You may occasionally see "PairAll", which is used for nonstandard bracket sizes like in Swiss tournaments, and on rare occasion going forward "Include3*2^n" which allows for bracket sizes that would result in a Round Robin in finals.
Below that are the pairings for the tournament, or the initial matchups for that round. This is who plays each other for that round of the tournament and is fully randomized from the input given. Byes are always listed as the righthand pair towards the bottom of the matchups and are distinguished as "Bye" followed with a number. A bye is a non-existent "player" used to fill up the bracket size to ensure an evenly sized tournament, and are not actual players. These generally only show up in very early rounds of a tournament, and may be replaced with late signups in Round 1. Any players who are in red text were entered freeform by the bracket creator and was not checked to make sure it lines up with a site username. These are generally used for extension pairings. These freeform entries are randomized exactly the same as standard user entries.
Underneath the pairings are the Subs. For tournaments which do not fill up to the next size via byes (which should be very uncommon now), there may be an excess of players in Round 1 who are eligible to be substituted in. This list of substitutes is in order of signups, and players who are substituted in will be done from the top down. Subs should be empty in any round after Round 1, and are only applicable to a limited number of tournaments currently.
That is everything to do with checking created brackets. Hosts may find reason to refer back to the original bracket for ease of searching included players, and anybody can look at recent tournaments to make sure no pairings were altered between the bracketmaker and the posted round and that the round was not created multiple times in order to fish for specific matchups.
Using the Bracketmaker
When you go to create a new bracket, you'll be shown the following page:
Let's go through the fields from top to bottom.
Pairing Mode
There are a couple different options that the bracketmaker will support. All options are randomized (the bracketmaker does not support seeded or otherwise non-randomized options for bracket creation), but the final output may vary depending on what method is chosen here. The vast majority of the time, you can leave this on the Normal (default) option and it will create the correct bracket for you, one with nobody on the initial substitute list and with only two people in the finals, if potentially quite a few byes.
For special cases, click the pairing mode to bring up Advanced options.
After selecting Advanced it will bring up a warning and allow you to select from other options.
Again, in most cases you will not need to use any of these options. These exist for specific purposes and using them incorrectly can lead to your tour experiencing problems.
Let's go through the advanced options.
Once you've filled out all the necessary fields and (if applicable) chosen the pairing mode, all you have to do is click the Create button. At this point a bracket will be generated and you'll be automatically sent to the bracket viewing page for your recently created round.
Here you can copy the matchups - everything below the header "Pairings" and above the header "Subs" and paste it directly into your next round post. The bracket is formatted so that all the normal inputs will have the players already set up to be tagged, so now you'll want to review the freeform options, if any, that are in red text to make sure that those are also set up to tag the relevant players. At this point you're done with the bracketmaker, and can go into the rest of hosting.
Double Elimination
If you are hosting a double elimination tournament then you should read and understand the why for this statement: Double Elimination tournaments might not have the losers bracket play in Round 2. The circumstances for this are whenever the number of byes in the tournament are equal or greater than 25% of the total number of entries in the bracket.
To determine if you will need to have a Losers Round 2, then check how many participants your original bracket was generated for (it's the number in parentheses next to the tournament name, see below) and divide that by 4. If the number of byes you have at the end of Round 1, after replacing Round 1 byes with late signups, is the same or greater than that number, then you don't need to have a Losers Round 2. To give an example, if you have a 64 participant Round 1 and at the end of the round you have 18 byes, then you do not need to have a Losers Round 2 because 64 / 4 = 16 and 18 is more than 16.
If the above math confused you then another way to do it is to create the Losers Round 2 bracket and see the bracket size (the number in parentheses, as above). That number should be exactly half of the number the Round 1 bracket had - if Round 1 was a (64) then Losers Round 2 should be (32). If it's a quarter (1/4th) of the Round 1 bracket size (e.g. Round 1 was (64) and Losers Round 2 is (16)) then you do not need to run a Losers Round 2 and can discard the bracket you created.
If you're fundamentally opposed to doing math, then you can cross check in a couple ways when you generate your two Round 2 brackets, one for winners and one for losers. First and easiest is that your Winners Round 2 and Losers Round 2 brackets must be the same size. Check the number in parenthesis next to the bracket name - if they're not the same number then you don't need a Losers Round 2 and can discard that bracket you generated. The second way is to make sure you have the exact same number of byes in Losers Round 2 as you did at the end of Round 1 - if you had 18 byes at the end of the first round then the last pair for the Losers Round 2 bracket should be against Bye 18. If that's not the case, you probably don't need a Losers Round 2 bracket and can discard the one you've created.
A deeper explanation for why this happens is in the hide below.
If you do not have losers bracket play in Round 2 for this reason, then in Round 3 where only the losers bracket plays you should create the bracket by taking all the players who lost for whatever reason in Round 1, and everybody who lost in Winners Round 2 (the only Round 2 bracket in this case), and create a bracket with these two groups combined. There may still be a few byes in this bracket, but this will be the last round of the tour that has byes unless somebody is banned mid-tour.
Common Mistakes
A few common errors that have been noticed over the years are below. This list will be added to as more mistakes happen.
Suddenly having byes appear in a round after Round 1: First, if this is a double elimination tournament, see the above section - you may not have a problem. Otherwise, double check what your player input was. Do a line count on how many players you entered, is it exactly half as many players were in the previous round, or are there extras or less than you should have? You might want to recreate your list of players from the previous round thread to be sure you've done things right. If a bye appears and somebody was banned from the forums, then that's probably the replacement for that player - make sure that the banned user isn't in the bracket along with the bye and, if not, you're fine.
Incorrectly substituting players in for byes: Replace a bye slot at random. Unlike the sub list, you want to do a random pick for who late signups are going to play against, don't go straight down the line of byes to avoid late signups picking who they want to play against in Round 1. Using the !pick or !roll (if doing multiple at once) command on PS! is recommended so that you can be verified to not rig the substitutions. If you lack the ability to use public commands on PS!, then you can either get voice on the Smogtours server or ask somebody with roomvoice (a + next to their name) or higher to do it for you.
How to handle an initial Subs list: These are players who will replace somebody who is currently in the tournament. Find people who give their opponent the win, drop out, or are entirely inactive (give a warning first in this case) and replace them with the players on the Subs list, going from top to bottom. People who sign up after Round 1 starts go to the bottom of the substitute list. Do not pair the people on the Subs list against each other, do not pair them against people who sign up after Round 1 begins, do not pair them against byes. All of these will result in your bracket having significant problems down the road.
If you ever have questions about how to use the bracketmaker, or aren't completely sure about what you're about to do, then please reach out to a Tournament Director or other experienced host for assistance. Consider also joining the hosting discord to easily connect with other hosts for advice. It becomes much harder to fix things after a mistake has been made and a few rounds down the line than it is to figure out what's gone wrong before a round is posted. Also, if there's anything you want to see added to this guide, or general bracketmaker suggestions, please reach out to me and I'll see what can be done. Thank you for your contribution to Smogon Tournaments!
Smogon Bracketmaker Guide
The Smogon Bracketmaker is a tool maintained by the site to make sure tournament generation is done correctly and transparently. If you're hosting a tournament on the site you will generally be expected to use the bracketmaker to create rounds. This guide outlines everything in the bracketmaker, how to use it successfully, and some common pitfalls.
Please make sure to read this guide thoroughly to avoid issues that can manifest many rounds down the line.
Access to the Bracketmaker
There are two larger pieces to the bracketmaker: bracket creation and the list of created brackets. Bracket creation is not available to all users but anybody can see the list of brackets that have been made recently.
Bracket creation can be accessed by clicking on the "New bracket" link at the top of the bracketmaker page or following this link: https://www.smogon.com/tools/bracketmaker/new . Access to bracket creation is gated to Smogon badgeholders or people who have been given specific access for their tournaments in order to prevent flooding or trolling. If you're hosting a one off tournament and do not fall into one of these categories, then you can ask any badgeholder to generate the bracket for you - or if you expect to be hosting multiple tournaments then it may be appropriate to ask a member of the Tournament Oversight team to give you the approved host access.
The list of brackets can be found at this link: https://www.smogon.com/tools/bracketmaker and is accessible to everybody. In order to remain transparent about bracket creation, here anybody can see a list of brackets created over the past few weeks, what tour they're listed as being for, and who created them. The next few paragraphs will go over what a bracket looks like - if some terminology used is confusing then it may be covered in the "Using the Bracketmaker" section.
Brackets are listed in creation order with the most recent at the top and furthest back at the bottom. The hyperlink at the top of each box is the name of the tournament or round that the bracket creator assigned to it, the number in parenthesis next to it is the number of participants (including byes!), and on the next line is a link to the bracket creator's smogon profile and the time that bracket was created. Clicking on the tournament name hyperlink will show you the created bracket and some additional information.
Notice below the general bracket information is the "Pairing mode", which refers to the style used to create the bracket. For most tournaments this will be "Strict2^n", which automatically creates a bracket of the next 2^n number of pairings (2/4/8/16/32/64 etc) and fills any empty spaces with byes. You may occasionally see "PairAll", which is used for nonstandard bracket sizes like in Swiss tournaments, and on rare occasion going forward "Include3*2^n" which allows for bracket sizes that would result in a Round Robin in finals.
Below that are the pairings for the tournament, or the initial matchups for that round. This is who plays each other for that round of the tournament and is fully randomized from the input given. Byes are always listed as the righthand pair towards the bottom of the matchups and are distinguished as "Bye" followed with a number. A bye is a non-existent "player" used to fill up the bracket size to ensure an evenly sized tournament, and are not actual players. These generally only show up in very early rounds of a tournament, and may be replaced with late signups in Round 1. Any players who are in red text were entered freeform by the bracket creator and was not checked to make sure it lines up with a site username. These are generally used for extension pairings. These freeform entries are randomized exactly the same as standard user entries.
Underneath the pairings are the Subs. For tournaments which do not fill up to the next size via byes (which should be very uncommon now), there may be an excess of players in Round 1 who are eligible to be substituted in. This list of substitutes is in order of signups, and players who are substituted in will be done from the top down. Subs should be empty in any round after Round 1, and are only applicable to a limited number of tournaments currently.
That is everything to do with checking created brackets. Hosts may find reason to refer back to the original bracket for ease of searching included players, and anybody can look at recent tournaments to make sure no pairings were altered between the bracketmaker and the posted round and that the round was not created multiple times in order to fish for specific matchups.
Using the Bracketmaker
When you go to create a new bracket, you'll be shown the following page:
Let's go through the fields from top to bottom.
- Name - What the bracket is being created for. The general format is to put the name of the tour, followed by the round, then any necessary specifics afterwards. For example "SM OU Spring Seasonal VI - Round 3 Losers Bracket". You want this to be clear and easily findable in the list of created brackets in case anybody needs to refer back to it. If you need to generate a bracket again due to making a mistake, then it's a good idea to note that here (e.g. "SM OU Spring Seasonal VI - Round 3 Losers Bracket w/ correct pairing mode")
- Add users from thread URL (optional) - This is only used for ROUND 1 of a tournament. When creating the first round, you can copy a link to the signups thread and paste it here. When creating a bracket like this the bracketmaker will grab all unique users who posted in the thread after the original post (so it excludes the user who posted the signups OP once but will include them if they posted a second time) and generate the bracket with those users. Multiple signups will result in a single entry, so when creating Round 1 using this can save you a lot of time. Note that because it pulls everybody who posted in a thread, people who wanted to revert their signup need all of their posts in the thread deleted and people who post things that aren't signups will also be pulled in.
- Additional users to add - Unless you're generating the round by pulling from a thread URL, all players who are going to be included in the bracket you're creating need to be entered here. Separation of usernames is by line and they need to match with the forum username, but it is not case sensitive. There are very few occasions where you will want to add additional users and also grab participants from the signups thread so in round 1 creation this will usually be blank. If you try to include a user that doesn't exist or has changed their name, you'll get the below error and will need to go back and fix these entries - this can be useful for finding name changes as well.
- Additional free-form entries to pair with - There are cases where you may want to have "participants" which don't match to a single Smogon username, which is required for the "Additional users to add" section, and this section allows for any input. In most cases this will be used for extensions. Keep in mind that while the former two ways to add players to the bracket will generate an output that has the @ to tag players, freeform entries will provide an exactly matching output. If you're doing an extension, a format like
is recommended (or "Loser", in the case of double elimination tournaments) since this means that the generated bracket will also tag these users. In the final bracket, all free-form entries will be in red to make them easier to spot. Try not to use freeform entries for normal players, as the matching username check is good to make sure everybody gets tagged.Code:
(Winner of @PLAYER1 vs @Player2)
- Pairing mode - This will get its own section but this determines the structure of the bracket you're going to create.
- Randomize signups beyond 5/8 *size - Primarily a legacy option now, but in cases where a tournament with an initial substitute list is going to be generated, you should be creating Round 1 via the signups URL and checking this box. This will make it so only the first 5/8ths of signups are guaranteed to be in with the last 3/8ths being randomized to determine who is on the initial substitute list (note that the substitute list is still in signup order), so that timezones have less effect on the bracket.
Pairing Mode
There are a couple different options that the bracketmaker will support. All options are randomized (the bracketmaker does not support seeded or otherwise non-randomized options for bracket creation), but the final output may vary depending on what method is chosen here. The vast majority of the time, you can leave this on the Normal (default) option and it will create the correct bracket for you, one with nobody on the initial substitute list and with only two people in the finals, if potentially quite a few byes.
For special cases, click the pairing mode to bring up Advanced options.
After selecting Advanced it will bring up a warning and allow you to select from other options.
Again, in most cases you will not need to use any of these options. These exist for specific purposes and using them incorrectly can lead to your tour experiencing problems.
Let's go through the advanced options.
- Include 3*2^n (legacy) - As stated, this is primarily a legacy option for tournaments that were ongoing as of the change to remove Round Robin finals from official tournaments. This option will instead allow for tournaments of 3*2^n sizes (12/24/48/96/192 etc) to be generated under the line of logic explained in this Tournament Policy post. If used for Round 1 creation, it can lead to users being on an initial substitute list, depending on the number of signups.
- Strict2^n, rounding down - This option will still force the bracket to be an evenly sized bracket (2^n, so 4/8/16/32/64/128 etc) but instead of using byes to fill the tournament up to the next size it will instead cut people until it has the right number for the next size down and put excess users on the subs list. There are no explicit use cases for this option, and it mostly exists for edge cases with explicit approval from the Tournament Director team in officials or at the informed discretion of the person hosting the tournament for unofficials. Basically, this exists in case it's needed, not because you're expected to use it.
- Pair all - Does exactly what it says, it will pair every single user directly, resulting in a maximum of 1 bye if there's an odd number of players. This exists for Swiss purposes, which has an extremely non-standard bracket which does not need to have a 2^n or 3*2^n format. This should NEVER be used for normal tournaments, as it will usually result in late round byes, poorly sized brackets, and will generally make your life very difficult towards the end of the tournament. If you're using this mode then you should have planned out how the tournament will look in pretty much every round - if you haven't planned ahead then you shouldn't be using this option.
Once you've filled out all the necessary fields and (if applicable) chosen the pairing mode, all you have to do is click the Create button. At this point a bracket will be generated and you'll be automatically sent to the bracket viewing page for your recently created round.
Here you can copy the matchups - everything below the header "Pairings" and above the header "Subs" and paste it directly into your next round post. The bracket is formatted so that all the normal inputs will have the players already set up to be tagged, so now you'll want to review the freeform options, if any, that are in red text to make sure that those are also set up to tag the relevant players. At this point you're done with the bracketmaker, and can go into the rest of hosting.
Double Elimination
If you are hosting a double elimination tournament then you should read and understand the why for this statement: Double Elimination tournaments might not have the losers bracket play in Round 2. The circumstances for this are whenever the number of byes in the tournament are equal or greater than 25% of the total number of entries in the bracket.
To determine if you will need to have a Losers Round 2, then check how many participants your original bracket was generated for (it's the number in parentheses next to the tournament name, see below) and divide that by 4. If the number of byes you have at the end of Round 1, after replacing Round 1 byes with late signups, is the same or greater than that number, then you don't need to have a Losers Round 2. To give an example, if you have a 64 participant Round 1 and at the end of the round you have 18 byes, then you do not need to have a Losers Round 2 because 64 / 4 = 16 and 18 is more than 16.
If the above math confused you then another way to do it is to create the Losers Round 2 bracket and see the bracket size (the number in parentheses, as above). That number should be exactly half of the number the Round 1 bracket had - if Round 1 was a (64) then Losers Round 2 should be (32). If it's a quarter (1/4th) of the Round 1 bracket size (e.g. Round 1 was (64) and Losers Round 2 is (16)) then you do not need to run a Losers Round 2 and can discard the bracket you created.
If you're fundamentally opposed to doing math, then you can cross check in a couple ways when you generate your two Round 2 brackets, one for winners and one for losers. First and easiest is that your Winners Round 2 and Losers Round 2 brackets must be the same size. Check the number in parenthesis next to the bracket name - if they're not the same number then you don't need a Losers Round 2 and can discard that bracket you generated. The second way is to make sure you have the exact same number of byes in Losers Round 2 as you did at the end of Round 1 - if you had 18 byes at the end of the first round then the last pair for the Losers Round 2 bracket should be against Bye 18. If that's not the case, you probably don't need a Losers Round 2 bracket and can discard the one you've created.
A deeper explanation for why this happens is in the hide below.
In Round 1 of a double elimination tournament, the bracket will be generated as normal using the default pairing option, and will create an evenly sized (2^n) bracket that probably includes at least a few byes. From that, exactly half of the participants will move to winners bracket (everybody who won a game, won an activity decision or coinflip, or got paired against a bye) and half the matchups will move to losers bracket. This is made up of the people who lost their pairing, by game or by activity decision, but also includes every single bye. This means that Round 2 Losers bracket will have half the number of matchups that Round 1 did (because it's only got half the participants), but it'll have exactly the same number of byes that Round 1 did - if Round 1 had 14 byes then Losers Round 2 will also have 14 byes. If this isn't the case then something's almost certainly gone wrong.
This results in having a doubled bye percentage in Losers Round 2 compared to Round 1 - if byes made up 14 percent of Round 1 then 28% of the Losers Round 2 will be byes. If you had 2 byes in a bracket of 32 participants (1/16th of the bracket is byes or 6.25%) then Losers Round 2 will have 2 byes and 14 people who played and lost in the previous round, for 2 byes in a bracket of 16 participants, or 1/8th (12.5%) of the bracket being byes.
If a bracket is 50% or more byes, then what that actually means is that byes outnumber the players. Since we prioritize player vs bye pairings and actively prevent bye vs bye pairings, this means that everybody will be paired against a bye and automatically advance, since byes do not get replaced by new signups after the first round. Nobody has to play in this case. Since we've established how the bye% doubles from Round 1 to Losers Round 2, if the first round is made up of 25% or more byes, then LR2 will have 50%+ byes, and nobody has to play to get to Losers Round 3.
This results in having a doubled bye percentage in Losers Round 2 compared to Round 1 - if byes made up 14 percent of Round 1 then 28% of the Losers Round 2 will be byes. If you had 2 byes in a bracket of 32 participants (1/16th of the bracket is byes or 6.25%) then Losers Round 2 will have 2 byes and 14 people who played and lost in the previous round, for 2 byes in a bracket of 16 participants, or 1/8th (12.5%) of the bracket being byes.
If a bracket is 50% or more byes, then what that actually means is that byes outnumber the players. Since we prioritize player vs bye pairings and actively prevent bye vs bye pairings, this means that everybody will be paired against a bye and automatically advance, since byes do not get replaced by new signups after the first round. Nobody has to play in this case. Since we've established how the bye% doubles from Round 1 to Losers Round 2, if the first round is made up of 25% or more byes, then LR2 will have 50%+ byes, and nobody has to play to get to Losers Round 3.
If you do not have losers bracket play in Round 2 for this reason, then in Round 3 where only the losers bracket plays you should create the bracket by taking all the players who lost for whatever reason in Round 1, and everybody who lost in Winners Round 2 (the only Round 2 bracket in this case), and create a bracket with these two groups combined. There may still be a few byes in this bracket, but this will be the last round of the tour that has byes unless somebody is banned mid-tour.
Common Mistakes
A few common errors that have been noticed over the years are below. This list will be added to as more mistakes happen.
Suddenly having byes appear in a round after Round 1: First, if this is a double elimination tournament, see the above section - you may not have a problem. Otherwise, double check what your player input was. Do a line count on how many players you entered, is it exactly half as many players were in the previous round, or are there extras or less than you should have? You might want to recreate your list of players from the previous round thread to be sure you've done things right. If a bye appears and somebody was banned from the forums, then that's probably the replacement for that player - make sure that the banned user isn't in the bracket along with the bye and, if not, you're fine.
Incorrectly substituting players in for byes: Replace a bye slot at random. Unlike the sub list, you want to do a random pick for who late signups are going to play against, don't go straight down the line of byes to avoid late signups picking who they want to play against in Round 1. Using the !pick or !roll (if doing multiple at once) command on PS! is recommended so that you can be verified to not rig the substitutions. If you lack the ability to use public commands on PS!, then you can either get voice on the Smogtours server or ask somebody with roomvoice (a + next to their name) or higher to do it for you.
How to handle an initial Subs list: These are players who will replace somebody who is currently in the tournament. Find people who give their opponent the win, drop out, or are entirely inactive (give a warning first in this case) and replace them with the players on the Subs list, going from top to bottom. People who sign up after Round 1 starts go to the bottom of the substitute list. Do not pair the people on the Subs list against each other, do not pair them against people who sign up after Round 1 begins, do not pair them against byes. All of these will result in your bracket having significant problems down the road.
If you ever have questions about how to use the bracketmaker, or aren't completely sure about what you're about to do, then please reach out to a Tournament Director or other experienced host for assistance. Consider also joining the hosting discord to easily connect with other hosts for advice. It becomes much harder to fix things after a mistake has been made and a few rounds down the line than it is to figure out what's gone wrong before a round is posted. Also, if there's anything you want to see added to this guide, or general bracketmaker suggestions, please reach out to me and I'll see what can be done. Thank you for your contribution to Smogon Tournaments!
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