Which Tournament Format Should You Run? A Plain Guide to the Five on RallyHub
Round robin, single elimination, double elimination, box league, or American mixer? A practical guide to picking the right tournament format for your group size, your day, and your vibe.
By Two brothers in Melbourne, co-founder of RallyHub.
We have already written about why running a tennis comp on RallyHub beats the usual death-by-spreadsheet. This post is the next question, the one that actually stalls most groups: which format do you pick? There are five on RallyHub, and choosing well is the difference between a great afternoon and half your players knocked out by 10am with nothing to do. Here is a plain guide to all five.
Round robin: everyone plays everyone
Every entry plays every other entry once, and the most points wins. Nobody goes home early, which is the whole appeal.
Best for smaller groups of four to eight who want maximum court time and do not care about a dramatic knockout finish. It is the fairest format because one bad match does not end your day, and it is the one we would default to for a casual Saturday with a fixed group.
Single elimination: lose once and you are out
The classic knockout bracket. One loss and you are done. It produces a clear winner fast and it has the most tension per match.
Best for larger fields of eight to thirty-two where you need a champion by the end of the day. The trade-off is real: half your players are out after one round, so it is the wrong call if the point of the day is for everyone to play a lot.
Double elimination: you have to lose twice
A winners bracket and a losers bracket. Lose once and you drop to the losers side rather than out, so it takes two losses to go home. The winners-bracket champion meets the losers-bracket champion in the grand final.
Best for a committed group of eight to sixteen with a full day to spend who want it competitive but fair. It is the format that protects you from one off match ruining everything, at the cost of more matches and a longer day.
Box league: a season, not an afternoon
This is the one we are quietly most pleased with, because it solves a problem the others do not. Players are split into boxes of four to six, each box is a mini round robin, and at the end of each cycle there is promotion and relegation between the tiers. It runs for weeks, not hours.
Best for a club or a regular group of six to thirty-plus that wants an ongoing ladder rather than a one-off. It is the structure that turns "we should run a comp" into a thing your club does every term, with something to climb toward each week.
American mixer: rotate partners, score as an individual
A doubles format where your partner changes every round but your score is yours alone. Games won, not match wins, count toward your individual total, so you play with and against most of the room over the session.
Best for eight to sixteen players when mixing the group matters more than crowning a serious champion. It is the most social format on the list and the best icebreaker for a group that does not all know each other yet.
What every format gives you
Whichever you pick, the running of it is the same and it is meant to be near zero admin:
- One-tap draw. Add your players, tap once, and the bracket or schedule builds itself.
- Live standings that recompute after every result, so there is no "who am I playing next" texting.
- A public share link at /t/{token} so people can follow the bracket without an account.
- A podium at the end, locked in, with the results feeding into every player's match history and XP. Tournament wins are not a silo, they count toward your real record.
- A fill-in board for mid-comp no-shows, plus optional buy-in tracking (RallyHub tracks the pot, it does not process the money).
One thing to know before you tap generate
The format locks once the draw is generated. That is deliberate, because re-seeding a comp mid-run is how arguments start. So have the format conversation first, get your player list right, and then generate. If you need to change it before any results are in, you can reset the draw and start again.
Where to find it
Start at /tournaments, read the deeper per-format notes on the formats guide, and build your first one at /tournaments/create. Our honest advice for a first-timer: run a round robin with six players to learn the flow, then graduate to a box league once your group is hooked.