Cornhole tournament bracket
A single-elimination cornhole tournament always takes one game fewer than it has teams, so eight teams play 7 games and sixteen play 15. Where the entry is not a power of two, the gap up to the next power of two becomes first-round byes, and those go to the top seeds. The printable below carries blank 8-team and 16-team draws and a five-team round robin on one page.
The printable
- Cornhole tournament bracket + round robin (PDF): Blank 8-team and 16-team single-elimination draws and a five-team round robin on one US Letter page. Free to print and share.
How many games each format takes
Single elimination removes exactly one team per game and ends with one team standing, so a draw of N teams is N minus 1 games however the bracket is arranged. It is the fastest format to run, and the one where a good team can be knocked out in its first game and have nothing else to play.
A round robin instead pairs every team with every other team once, which comes to N times N minus 1, divided by two. Everyone gets the same number of games and the table is fairer, but it grows fast: five teams is 10 games and eight teams is 28.
Double elimination sits between the two. Every team has to lose twice, so it runs to 2N minus 2 games, or 2N minus 1 when the team coming up through the losers bracket wins the first final and forces a decider.
| Teams | Single elim. games | Rounds | First-round byes | Round robin games | Double elim. games |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 6 | 6–7 |
| 5 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 10 | 8–9 |
| 6 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 15 | 10–11 |
| 8 | 7 | 3 | 0 | 28 | 14–15 |
| 10 | 9 | 4 | 6 | 45 | 18–19 |
| 12 | 11 | 4 | 4 | 66 | 22–23 |
| 16 | 15 | 4 | 0 | 120 | 30–31 |
| 20 | 19 | 5 | 12 | 190 | 38–39 |
| 24 | 23 | 5 | 8 | 276 | 46–47 |
| 32 | 31 | 5 | 0 | 496 | 62–63 |
Byes and seeding
A bracket has to be a power of two to run without gaps, so an entry of 12 teams is drawn as a 16-team bracket with four byes. Those byes go to the four highest seeds, which is the reason seeding is worth doing rather than drawing names from a hat: an unseeded bye is a free win handed to a random team.
Where there is no ranking to seed from, a short round robin first and a bracket afterwards seeds itself, and it also means nobody drives to a park and plays one game.
- Count the teams, round up to 4, 8, 16 or 32, and the difference is your byes.
- Give byes to the top seeds in order, never at random.
- Put seed 1 at the top of the draw and seed 2 at the bottom, so they can only meet in the final.
- Play every game to 21 by cancellation scoring, the same rules as any other match.
Common questions
How many games are in a cornhole tournament?
- In single elimination it is one fewer than the number of teams, because each game removes exactly one team and one is left at the end: 7 games for 8 teams, 15 for 16, 31 for 32. A round robin is much larger, at N times N minus 1 divided by two, so 8 teams play 28 games.
How do byes work in a cornhole bracket?
- A bracket holds a power-of-two number of teams, so any entry that is not 4, 8, 16 or 32 leaves empty slots. Each empty slot is a bye: that team sits out the first round and comes in at round two. Award byes to the highest seeds, because a bye is effectively a free win.
What size bracket do I need for 12 teams?
- A 16-team bracket with four byes. Twelve teams play 11 games across 4 rounds in single elimination, with the top four seeds skipping the first round.
Is round robin or single elimination better for cornhole?
- Round robin if the day is about everyone playing, single elimination if it is about finishing on time. The usual compromise is pool play into a bracket: short round-robin pools produce the seeding, then the top teams from each pool go into a single-elimination draw.
How long does a cornhole tournament take?
- Work from rounds rather than games, since games within a round run at the same time. An 8-team single-elimination draw is 3 rounds and a 16-team draw is 4. Neither rule book sets a game length, so any estimate is planning practice rather than regulation, but at a quarter of an hour a game and enough boards to run a whole round at once, both draws finish inside an hour and a half.