Round robin to bracket

[aprens]

An example tournament has two stages, groups play + bracket play. When the groups stage ends, the x top of each group go to bracket stage. In the brackets stage there are two basics rules:


Brackets must be optimized such that players from same groups meet as late as possible and such higher seeds meet late as well.


For example, if we have 6 groups and top 2 each group advance to bracket:

If i put the teams i get the matches, but i dont know how get the correct order for put then in the bracket.



1A 1B 1C 1D 1E 1F 2A 2B 2C 2D 2E 2F BYE BYE BYE BYE



1A vs BYE

1B vs BYE

1C vs BYE

1D vs BYE

1E vs 2F

1F vs 2E

2A vs 2D

2B vs 2C







Another example with 4 groups of 8 teams and all teams advance to bracket:



I apply the snake pattern:



1A 1B 1C 1D 2D 2C 2B 2A 3A 3B 3C 3D 4D 4C 4B 4A 5D 5C 5B 5A 6A 6B 6C 6D 7D 7C 7B 7A 8A 8B 8C 8D



Matches:



1A vs 8D

1B vs 8C

1C vs 8B
...




Any ideas how put matches in correct orden in the bracket?

Thanks.

[Ian Wakeling]

This is not my area of expertise as I have never designed knockout tournaments, but my instinct is to design it without byes first, and then assign some of the pools to be byes afterwards.  That way it should be easy to ensure that the top half of the bracket contains one member from each pool, and the bottom half contains the same, so two teams from the same pool can only meet in the final.  As I said, I am not the right person to ask. Haven't there been football (soccer) tournaments with 6 pools of 4, so somebody must have considered fairness in this context.