Tournament Formats Guide

This guide is for coaches and team captains. It explains how each competition format on the League Platform gives your team its matches, how byes and standings work in that format, and what happens if your team misses a week. For the steps of a single match, from getting ready to reporting the score, see the Match Week Guide.

Your league's rulebook is the final word on dates, times, byes, standings and playoffs. Each section below says which part of the rulebook to check.

1. Which Format Is My Competition?

Every regular-season competition uses one of three formats. Your rulebook's Match Assignment section names it, and the table below lists this season's leagues.

Time trial and build challenge titles, such as Mario Kart Time Trials, iRacing and Minecraft, have no opponent at all. See Leaderboard Competitions.

2. Weekly Queue

Each week your team opts in to play by joining that week's queue. Most leagues run it as a ladder: you play one match a week, and you're paired with a team whose rating is close to yours.

2.1 How a week works

1. The queue opens. In most leagues it opens Thursday at 12:00 AM and closes Monday at 12:00 PM, in the league's time zone. The FAQ question How does the weekly queue work? lists every league's times.

2. You join it for each entry that will play that week.

3. The queue closes, and the entries in it are paired. In most leagues, league admins make the pairings after the Monday deadline. Some queues pair automatically the moment they close: TEL's, TexSEF Junior Varsity and Middle School, and every Late Queue.

4. You get an inbox notification with your match, and the match is played at your title's default match day and time.

2.2 Join the queue

1. Open the competition page and select the Bracket tab.

2. At the top of the bracket you'll see the queue band. While the queue is open, it reads Queue Open with a Closes in countdown.

3. If you run more than one entry in this competition, use the picker next to Join Queue to choose which entry to queue. Each entry in the picker shows Ready or how many issues it has.

4. Select Join Queue. The Confirm Your Play Time dialog shows the match time and checks your starters: All starters are available at this time means go; You Have Busy Starters pre-fills substitutes for anyone who already has another match then; Not Enough Starters blocks the join until the roster changes. Select Confirm and Join, and the band changes to In Queue, the button becomes Leave Queue, and the match time is reserved for your starters (Time Reserved, plus Subs Playing where subs fill in).

5. Repeat for every entry your school has playing this week. Each entry joins the queue separately.

Only a Team Captain or a Coach on the team can join the queue for an entry. A Player can't. If Join Queue is greyed out, the band says why, for example a player who still needs a game account linked or a roster below the minimum.

Once the queue closes, Leave Queue goes away and the band reads Match Assignments Pending until your match is made. Everyone still in the queue at that moment is paired or gets a bye, so leave before the deadline if your entry can't play. To leave after the close, open a support ticket from the competition page.

When no queue is open, the band reads Queue Closed and counts down with "Next window opens in". View Schedule opens the competition calendar with every queue window on it.

2.3 Late Queues and match-day queues

Most leagues also run a short Late Queue on match day for entries that missed the weekly one; TEL doesn't. Join it with the same Join Queue button. It pairs the entries in it automatically when it closes, and an entry left without an opponent gets a bye. The FAQ question How does the weekly queue work? lists each league's Late Queue times.

An entry the weekly queue couldn't pair is moved into the Late Queue automatically and shows a Held chip. It's paired first when the Late Queue closes. Leaving it means no match and no bye that week.

TexSEF Junior Varsity and Middle School have no weekend queue at all. They run two 15-minute queues on match day, ahead of the 4:00 and 5:00 PM CT matches, and both pair automatically when they close.

2.4 Pairing

Entries are paired by rating, so as the season goes on you meet opponents of similar strength. Your rating starts at 1500 and goes up when you win and down when you lose: about 15 points against an evenly rated opponent, more for beating a higher-rated one and less for beating a lower-rated one.

2.5 Byes

An entry left without an opponent gets a bye. Byes go to the entry with the fewest byes so far, then the lowest rating. A bye shows as a completed match marked Bye. It adds a win to your record but doesn't change your rating, so it only affects your place in the standings when two entries have the same rating. An entry with a bye generally doesn't get a second match that week, though your league may make an exception.

A week your entry didn't join the queue isn't a bye. It's a week with no match.

2.6 Standings

Standings rank entries by rating. Your rulebook's Standings and Tiebreakers sections say how ties are broken and how many entries reach the playoffs.

2.7 Missing a week

An entry that doesn't join the queue gets no match that week, and that isn't a forfeit. Most leagues do count missed weeks toward playoff eligibility, so join every week your entry can play. If you missed the queue, join the Late Queue where your league runs one, or open a support ticket from the competition page.

3. Weekly Queue with Availability

This format works like the Weekly Queue, with one difference: there's no fixed match day per title. When you join the queue, you also paint the times your team can play that week, and your match time is set from the hours both teams have open. USAEL Open uses it.

3.1 Join with your availability

1. Open the competition's Bracket tab and select Join Queue.

2. Set Your Availability opens: "Paint the times you can play during this window. Saving joins the queue."

3. Paint the hours your team is free on the week's play days, then select Save and Join.

You can't join without painting at least some time. The Availability Calendar Guide shows how to save your usual times so this takes a few seconds each week.

3.2 Pairing, byes and standings

Pairing, byes and standings work as in Pairing, Byes and Standings above, with one addition: you're only paired with an entry whose painted times overlap yours. If no other entry's times overlap yours, you get a bye. Paint as many hours as your team can genuinely play.

4. Round Robin

In a round robin, the whole regular-season schedule is set before Week 1. There's no queue and nothing to join: your entry has a match every week it's scheduled, at your title's default match day and time.

4.1 Your schedule

League Officials generate the schedule once registration closes and post it on the competition's Bracket tab. Every entry in a group plays every other entry in that group. Where the season has more weeks than a group needs to play everyone once, entries meet more than once. Where a school has more than one entry in the same group, leagues try to keep them apart, and schedule them early in the season when they can't.

You can see every week's opponent from the start: on the Matches tab (choose Mine), on your school page's Matches tab, and on the Schedule page in the left navigation.

4.2 Byes

In a group with an odd number of entries, one entry sits out each week. Your rulebook's Byes section says how that week is scored. In GIAA, the week counts as a win: the entry gets a completed match marked Bye on its match day.

4.3 Standings

Standings rank entries by win-loss record: match wins first, then fewest match losses. Your rulebook's Tiebreakers section orders entries with the same record.

4.4 If you can't play

A scheduled round robin match has to be played. A match that isn't played and reported by your league's deadline is recorded as a forfeit for the team responsible, and forfeits count against playoff eligibility. If the default time doesn't work, agree on a new one with the other team (see Rescheduling). If your entry can't play at all that week, use Forfeit Match on the match page rather than not showing up.

5. Leaderboard Competitions

Time trial and build challenge titles have no queue and no opponent. Players submit their result with Submit Score on the competition's Bracket tab during each round's window. The FAQ question How do time trial and build challenge titles work? covers them.

6. Playoffs and Championships

After the regular season, most leagues seed their top entries into a playoff bracket or a championship event. Your rulebook says how many entries advance, how they're seeded, which matches count against eligibility, and whether the event is online or in person.