How Compass brackets work
Compass is a 16-team format built from four linked brackets. Losing drops a team into a lower bracket rather than ending its event, so every team keeps playing and the format produces a full 1st-through-16th ranking.
The four brackets
Bracket | Decides | Who lands here |
|---|---|---|
Bracket 1 (Main Draw) | 1st–4th | All 16 teams start here |
Bracket 4 | 5th–8th | Losers of Bracket 1 quarterfinals |
Bracket 2 | 9th–12th | Losers of Bracket 1 first round |
Bracket 3 | 13th–16th | Losers of Bracket 2 first round |
The bracket numbers describe quality, not playing order. Bracket 4 decides 5th–8th because it collects teams that survived a round longer than the ones who fell into Bracket 2.
Once a team drops into a bracket, that bracket is single elimination for them — a second loss ends their run.
How teams move
Lose in Bracket 1 round 1 → drop to Bracket 2
Lose in Bracket 1 quarterfinals → drop to Bracket 4
Lose in Bracket 2 round 1 → drop to Bracket 3
Lose anywhere else → eliminated from that bracket
Because the first loss always lands you somewhere, every team is guaranteed at least 3 matches.
Every bracket has a bronze match
Each of the four brackets gets its own third-place match, fed automatically by that bracket's two semifinal losers. That is what produces a complete placement list rather than just a champion — each bracket resolves both of its places.
Sixteen slots, always
Compass is built for exactly 16 teams. With fewer, the remaining slots are filled with byes, which propagate through the brackets automatically — a team that would have played a bye advances without a match.
Seeding
How the 16 are seeded depends on which variant you are running:
Compass (standalone) — you set the seed order by hand before generating.
Round Robin to Compass — pool play runs first and the bracket seeds from pool standings. See How Round Robin to Bracket works.
Either way the placement rules are the same: top seeds are kept apart and byes go to the strongest seeds.