Organising a competition: knock-out, league, ladder and club night
How to choose a format when you have few courts or many players, with byes, seeds and a way to count matches.
Why the format matters
The same group of players can have a very different day depending on the format. The BWF Level 1 Coaches' Manual (2nd edition, 2017) describes several formats for clubs and schools (knock-out, league, ladder, pyramid, club night). This lesson explains them in plain words. It is about organising play, not about the Laws of Badminton, which stay the same.
Knock-out
You lose, you are out. It is useful when you have many entries and little time, but many players get very few games. It is simplest with 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 or 128 entries, drawn at random.
- Byes: with another number of entries, some players skip the first round. The manual's example: 14 entries need 2 first-round byes to reach 16.
- Seeds: the best players, judged by earlier results, are placed in separate parts of the draw, so they do not meet before the later rounds if they keep winning.
- Match numbers: numbering each match helps whoever schedules the courts.
League (round-robin)
Everybody plays everybody, so every player has the same number of matches. The cost is the number of matches: the manual's table gives, for example, 10 matches for 5 players, 28 for 8 and 45 for 10. These numbers follow a simple rule that we checked: with n players, there are n × (n − 1) ÷ 2 matches. For a tie on matches won, agree beforehand how to separate players: games difference, points difference, or the result of the match between the tied players.
Ladder and pyramid
In a ladder, players are ranked and a lower-ranked player may challenge the player above. If the challenger wins, they swap places. In a pyramid, there are more players at each lower level; you can challenge someone on your level (the winner moves up) or someone above you (the winner takes the place). Both formats run over weeks, between normal sessions.
Club night
The manual describes a pegboard: arrivals place a peg on the bottom row in order of arrival; the first player on the row picks three others to form a match, and the four go on court 1. The process continues until every court and the waiting courts are filled. When a match ends, the four players put their pegs at the end of the row and the waiting group takes the free court. It works for singles or doubles and for any number of courts.
Mistakes to avoid
- Choosing a league for many players and not enough time: count the matches first.
- Not telling players how ties are broken before the first match.
- Seeding with no result to justify it.
General practice advice: play within your limits and stop if something hurts.