| Bracket A |
|---|
| Team 1 |
| Team 2 |
| Team 3 |
| Bracket B |
|---|
| Team 4 |
| Team 5 |
| Team 6 |
Not quite. It can create some scheduling issues (especially if the majority of divisions are 6 teams). With 3 teams playing each other, the fundamental issue is that one of the teams has a longer gap between their games (team 4 in the example below). That gap only gets longer if a coach or a field is not available.
| 9am | 10am | 11am | 12pm | 1pm | 2pm | 3pm | 4pm | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Field 1 | ||||||||
| Field 2 | ||||||||
| Field 3 | Team 4 vs 5 | Team 5 vs 6 | Team 6 vs 4 |
If the majority of your divisions are 6 teams, 2 brackets, you'll end up with something like this. (If you don't create schedules every day, it's hard to follow. But imagine you're playing tetris, and you need to fit the 3 game blocks on the fields as they're dropping). You'll basically run out of your field space in the middle of the day. Then you'll need to make a tough choice. Either give some teams a very long gap between games (think 9am and 5pm games). Or you'll have an unhappy ref assignor and plenty of wasted field space. Some tournaments don't seem to mind the extra long gap between games. But some tournaments I work with don't want anything more than a 3 slot gap.
| 9am | 10am | 11am | 12pm | 1pm | 2pm | 3pm | 4pm | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Field 1 | 14 vs 15 | 16 vs 17 | 15 vs 13 | 17 vs 18 | ||||
| Field 2 | 13 vs 14 | 7 vs 8 | 11 vs 12 | 8 vs 9 | 12 vs 10 | 18 vs 16 | ||
| Field 3 | 4 vs 5 | 10 vs 11 | 5 vs 6 | 1 vs 2 | 6 vs 4 | 2 vs 3 | 9 vs 7 | 3 vs 1 |
If in your market people don't like long gaps, you can avoid this problem and still have semi-finals on Sunday. Here's an alternative format to consider. Put all 6 teams in the same bracket.
| Bracket A |
|---|
| Team 1 |
| Team 2 |
| Team 3 |
| Team 4 |
| Team 5 |
| Team 6 |
Then generate games like this. Everyone gets a one game gap.
| 9am | 10am | 11am | 12pm | 1pm | 2pm | 3pm | 4pm | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Field 1 | 1 vs 4 | 1 vs 5 | ||||||
| Field 2 | 2 vs 5 | 2 vs 6 | ||||||
| Field 3 | 3 vs 6 | 3 vs 4 |
Or a 2 game rest if that's what you prefer. This format gives you more flexibility to resolve coaching conflicts, while keeping the gap reasonable for teams.
| 9am | 10am | 11am | 12pm | 1pm | 2pm | 3pm | 4pm | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Field 1 | 1 vs 4 | 1 vs 5 | ||||||
| Field 2 | 2 vs 5 | 2 vs 6 | ||||||
| Field 3 | 3 vs 6 | 3 vs 4 |
Everyone gets two games on Saturday. On Sunday, the top 4 teams can move to semifinals and the bottom two can play a consolation game. Pretty much what you were doing before.
But is it fair?
One time when I proposed this alternative, the push back was - 3 teams in a bracket is more "fair". My take. Yes 3 teams in a bracket can seem more fair, if we assume you got the bracketing surgically accurate. But say if you put #1, #3 and #4 ranked teams in one bracket and #2, #5 and #6 in the other bracket, that's not particularly fair to #4. When designing brackets, you don't have perfect information so it's totally possible to get bracketing itself "unfair". Even if we concede the point that 3 teams in a bracket is more "fair", you have that on one side of the balance. On the other side you have more reasonable gaps for the teams and fewer outstanding coaching conflicts. What would you choose?
PS: In this post I specifically wanted to address a particular format that I come across. It's actually much more common for tournaments to have two brackets of 3, and then play only crossover games. Crossover games do not have the same problem as 3 teams playing against each other