6 team bracket maker
6-Team Bracket, Byes Included
Six slots, with the two byes already sitting on seeds 1 and 2 where they belong. Type the names in seeding order, choose single or double elimination, and the draw is built: 4 v 5 and 3 v 6 in round one, the top two waiting in the semifinals.
- Byes placed on the top seeds, not on whoever was typed last
- Five matches single elimination, ten double
- Live bracket link, free, no account needed
6-team bracket2 byes · 5 matches
- bye
- bye
- v 6
- v 5
- v 4
- v 3
Format
Seeding
Free, no account needed. Blank slots become “Team 1”, “Team 2”… and you can rename them in the editor.
Where the byes go
Six teams, eight slots, two byes
A knockout bracket halves the field every round, so it only comes out even with 2, 4, 8, 16 or 32 entrants. Six is the first size in everyday use that does not fit. The draw is built for eight, the bottom two seeds are missing, and the two teams that were due to play them get a free pass into the semifinals.
- Seed 1Bye. Would have played seed 8, who does not exist.
- Seed 2Bye. Would have played seed 7, who does not exist.
- Seed 4 v Seed 5Round one. Winner meets seed 1 in the semifinals.
- Seed 3 v Seed 6Round one. Winner meets seed 2 in the semifinals.
The builder above places the byes this way whenever six names go in. If you ask for a random draw, the shuffle decides who lands in slots 1 and 2, and those two get the byes instead.
What round one means with six
The part people get wrong when they draw it on a whiteboard.
Two matches, not three
With six teams it looks like round one should be three games. It is two. The third pair is 1 and 2 against nobody, which is the bye. A hand-drawn bracket that pairs 1 v 6, 2 v 5, 3 v 4 has no byes but also no proper second round: three winners cannot make a semifinal.
The top seeds wait
Seeds 1 and 2 do not play until the semifinals. Tell them: an idle first round is a surprise if they turned up warmed up. On one court, play 4 v 5 then 3 v 6 and go straight into the semis.
Five matches to a champion
Two in round one, two semifinals, one final. Add a third-place match between the semifinal losers if the podium matters, and it is six.
6 team double elimination
Six is the most-searched size for double elimination, and it is a good fit: ten matches is an afternoon, and the losers bracket fixes the thing people dislike about six-team knockouts, which is that the two round-one losers go home after one game. Here everyone plays at least twice, and the byes still belong to seeds 1 and 2.
Switch the format above to “Double elim” and the losers bracket and grand final are wired in automatically.
| Stage | Who plays | Then |
|---|---|---|
| Winners round 1 | 3 v 6, 4 v 5 | Seeds 1 and 2 on byes |
| Winners semifinals | 1 v (4/5), 2 v (3/6) | Losers drop to the losers bracket |
| Losers round 1 | loser of 3/6 v loser of 4/5 | Loser is out |
| Losers round 2 | two semifinal losers v the survivor | Plays down to one |
| Winners final | the two semifinal winners | Loser drops down one last time |
| Losers final | losers survivor v winners-final loser | Winner reaches the grand final |
| Grand final | undefeated v once-beaten | Ten matches so far, eleven with a reset |
Frequently Asked Questions
A bracket needs a power-of-two number of slots, so six teams play in an eight-slot draw with two empty places. Those two empties are byes: the teams paired with them, seeds 1 and 2, skip straight to the semifinals. Round one is just two matches, 4 v 5 and 3 v 6. The winners join the top two seeds in the semifinals, and the bracket runs normally from there.
Because of who they would have played. Standard seeding pairs seed 1 with seed 8 and seed 2 with seed 7. In a six-team field seeds 7 and 8 do not exist, so their opponents have nobody to play and advance unplayed. It is the same reason byes are a reward for seeding: the stronger you are rated, the weaker the opponent you were due, and the more likely that opponent is a blank.
Five: two first-round matches, two semifinals and a final. Byes are not games. The count is always one fewer than the number of entrants, because each match eliminates exactly one team.
The winners bracket is the same six-team draw with two byes. The losers of 3 v 6 and 4 v 5 drop into the losers bracket and play each other; the two semifinal losers drop in next; and the losers bracket plays down to one survivor who meets the undefeated winners-bracket champion in the grand final. Ten matches in total, eleven with a bracket reset. Everyone plays at least twice.
Two matches and two teams waiting. Seed 3 plays seed 6 and seed 4 plays seed 5, while seeds 1 and 2 watch. If that idle time bothers you, schedule the round-one matches back to back on one court and start the semifinals immediately, or run a round robin instead so nobody sits out.
Not as a knockout bracket, but a round robin gives every team five games and no byes: fifteen matches in all, standings decide the winner. Many six-team events run the round robin first and then send the top four into a bracket, which has no byes because four is a power of two.
Same shape, three byes. Leave one slot blank here and seeds 1, 2 and 3 start in the semifinals while 4 plays 5 in the only first-round match. Whoever wins that has to beat three seeded teams in a row, which is why five is the size most likely to send people to a round robin.
Different number of teams?
The full bracket maker takes 2 to 64 entrants and puts the byes in the right place every time.
More Bracket Tools
The same free bracket maker, set up for the size or the job you came for.