Knockout tournament
In a knockout tournament, entrants are placed into a bracket and each pairing is a match or a short series, so every loss ends a player's event and the survivors meet again until one remains.
Also called: knockout
A knockout bracket halves the field in each stage. In a field of 128 the first stage has 64 matches and the final has one. Each pairing is usually a mini match of two or more games, and if the match is level the tie is settled by faster play-off games according to the event's rules. FIDE's Play-Off and Tie-Break Regulations expect each event to say how its play-offs work, including whether the format is a round robin or a knockout, the time limits and the color method.
The format is exciting for spectators, because every match matters, but it is harsh on a strong player who has one bad day. It also needs an entry that is close to a power of two, or byes in the first stage.
The Handbook's direct-title table shows how seriously FIDE takes it, listing results such as reaching the last 16 of the World Cup, a knockout, as a route to a title. See match play, tiebreak and round robin to compare formats.
Compare it with Seeding. Seeding is the ordering of players before a tournament starts, usually by rating, which decides how pairings are made in the early rounds and who meets whom in a bracket.
Also worth reading is Armageddon. Armageddon is a sudden death tiebreak game in which White receives more time than Black, but Black wins the game if it ends in a draw, so that exactly one player can come out ahead.
Rating and title terms like "Knockout tournament" matter once you know your next step, and the improvement plans by rating band set out a weekly routine for each rating range.
Related terms
Match play is a format in which two players, or two teams, play a fixed set of games against each other and the side with the better total result wins the match.
A tiebreak is a rule that ranks players who finish on the same score, either by a calculation from the results or by extra games, so that the final standings can be published.
A round-robin tournament schedules each participant against every other participant exactly once from a fixed table, so the standings involve no pairing choices and an even field of n players needs n minus 1 rounds.
In a Swiss-system tournament the number of rounds is announced in advance, nobody is knocked out, and every round pairs players who have scored about the same so far, never matching the same two players twice.
Armageddon is a sudden death tiebreak game in which White receives more time than Black, but Black wins the game if it ends in a draw, so that exactly one player can come out ahead.
Guides that go further
What a rating measures, how FIDE, Lichess, US Chess and chess.com compute theirs, and why the numbers differ.
How the Candidate Master, FIDE Master, International Master and Grandmaster titles are earned, with every Handbook clause.
The Handbook rules for a first FIDE rating: five rated games, the 1400 floor, the two 1800 draws and a worked example.
Sources
- FIDE Handbook C.07 Play-Off and Tie-Break Regulations, effective 1 March 2026, Clause 3.1, read Oct 21, 2026.
- FIDE Handbook B.01 FIDE Title Regulations, effective 1 January 2024, Clause 1.4.2, read Oct 21, 2026.
- FIDE Handbook B.01 Table for Direct Titles, effective 1 January 2026, Direct titles table, World Cup rows, read Oct 21, 2026.
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