Popular Cornhole Tournament Formats

November 8, 2023

Whether it’s a big fundraiser or just a small friendly competition in the backyard, we all agree that a cornhole tournament is always pretty awesome! Sure, the game may seem like a charming, sophisticated game, that is, until you either score or lose. That’s when the fun begins my friend.

When hosting a cornhole tournament, these are four most common tournament formats to determine a winner – Single Elimination, Double Elimination, Round Robin, or Playoffs.

Single Elimination

Teams are matched-up in a bracket format and any team to lose a game is eliminated. The winning teams continue playing until a winner is crowned.

This format is the fastest type of tournament and a good choice for a quick and dirty cornhole tournament. However, it may be difficult to attract players for this type of tournament, because many teams won’t want to risk the chance of driving to a tournament, losing one game and being knocked out. As a solution, games can be played as a 2 out of 3 format where teams are guaranteed to play at least two games.

Double Elimination

Teams are matched-up in a bracket format and any team that loses two games is eliminated. The winning teams continue to play until a winner is crowned. There are many creative ways to organize double elimination games. Here are two typical formats:

Format 1 – Two teams play each other and the winning team goes to the winning column and the losing team goes to the losing column. If the losing team loses one more game, they are eliminated.

Example: If you have twelve teams, have the teams play each other in the first round – Team 1 vs. Team 2, Team 3 vs. Team 4, and so on. The winners go to the winner’s column and the losers to the loser’s column. At the end of the first round you will have six winners and six losers. In the second round, reward the winning teams by matching-up the winning teams against the losing teams – Winning Team 1 vs. Losing Team 1, Winning Team 2 vs. Losing Team 2, and so on. Continue to play and eliminate teams with two losses. In the event that you have an odd number of teams playing, reward the team with highest winning point margin with a bye. (Two Game Guarantee)

Format 2 – Have two teams play 2 out of 3 games in a round. The first team to win two games goes to the winning column and the losing team goes to losing column. If the losing team loses one more round they are eliminated.

Example: If you have twelve teams, have the teams play 2 out of 3 in the first round – Team 1 vs. Team 2, Team 3 vs. Team 4, and so on. The winners go to the winner’s column and the losers to the loser’s column. At the end of the first round you will have six winners and six losers. In the second round, reward the winning teams by matching-up the winning teams against the losing teams – Winning Team 1 vs. Losing Team 1, Winning Team 2 vs. Losing Team 2, and so on. Continue to play 2 out of 3 games in each subsequent round and eliminate teams that have lost two rounds. In the event that you have an odd number of teams playing, reward the team with highest winning point margin with a bye. (Four Game Guarantee)

This tournament format attracts more players and provides teams with an opportunity to redeem themselves from a bad game or a bad round.

Round Robin

All teams play each other and the team with the most wins ultimately wins the tournament. You can choose whether the teams play each other once or twice. So, if you have 12 teams and they play each other once, each team will play 11 games. If they play each other twice, each team will play 22 games.

This is the easiest tournament to manage since you will only need to track wins and losses. You will not need to worry about tournament brackets, team seeding, or eliminating teams. Easy pezy and all the teams will play a lot of games.

Playoffs

A playoffs tournament is when the games are combined with a round robin and a single elimination tournament at the end. Teams play a round robin at first to obtain a “seeding” based on winning percentage. When the round robin format is over, an even number of teams are chosen to enter the playoffs round – the top 6 teams, 8 teams, 12 teams, etc. If the number of winning teams from the first round would not result in an even number of teams playing in the second round, then some teams will have to be given a bye in the first round. The playoffs are a single elimination round and the games are played until a winner is crowned.

Example: If you have 18 teams, the team with most wins in the round robin is the #1 seed, second most wins is the #2 seed, etc. The top 8 teams make the playoffs and the winning teams are rewarded by matching them up against the losing teams – #1 vs. #8, #2 vs. #7, #3 vs. #6, etc. The winning teams continue playing until a winner is crowned.

If you choose the top 12 teams to make the playoffs, the number of winning teams in the first round would not result in an even number of teams playing in the second round. Therefore, the top 4 teams will have a bye in the first round and the remaining teams will be matched-up based on their seeding – #5 vs. #12, #6 vs. #11, #7 vs. #10, etc.

We feel this is the best type of tournament and the best way to determine a true championship team. This can be one of the longest tournament formats. However, you’ll attract more players for this type of tourney because serious players will find these tournaments more rewarding.

Championship Game

Every tournament should have one final, magnificent championship game to crown the winner! If the tournament has a championship game, make it a big deal. Remove all the other playing fields and have one glorified championship field remain. Play the “Rocky” movie soundtrack as you announce the final teams. Yell out the Michael Buffer “Let’s get ready to rumble!” slogan and play the championship game!

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