12 team double elimination bracket is neat for short tournaments. Learn here why.

12 team double elimination bracket

There’s something about the 12 team double elimination bracket that makes it one of our favorites (besides the 16 team version). This number of teams is perfect for small leagues, fantasy leagues, and tennis tournaments because it allows seeding. It’s also easier to keep track of every match because of the neat manner it’s carried out. 

This bracket caps at a 23-games max, with 11 games per side and 1 extra game in certain cases. Since seeding is sometimes needed for organizational matters, this one can be a bit tricky to pull out. It’s always easier to assign the seeding using a rank system if it has been used in the qualification phase. If not, random draw it is, even though it’s the recipe for a less balanced tourney. 

There’s always the possibility of that extra match, which takes place only if winners’ bracket finalist loses against losers’ bracket finalist in their first match.

Why should you use a 12 team double elimination bracket?

As we said, this is one of the easiest ways of organizing a tourney with 12 teams because it’s very neat. It’s much easier to apply this system if it’s a random tournament with no ranked classification, like in chess, pool, card games, and dominoes.

Download a printable 12 team D.E. bracket here

Download here the best brackets in three different formats. Each one of them can help you keep track of ongoing tournaments or organizing your own. Another plus is that you can take them anywhere if you load them in your mobile devices, where using apps you can also edit them on the go.

• JPG, so it’s easy to visualize it in any phone or media device.
• XLSX, so you can edit it easily using Microsoft Excel. This way you can add names, icons, and logos.
•  PDF, which is easy to print and convenient to visualize.