What pool play is
The field is split into pools. Each pool plays a round robin, so every team in it plays every other team in it once. Standings sort each pool. Then the top teams from every pool are seeded into one elimination bracket, the playoff, which decides the champion. A round robin with one pool and no playoff is the simplest version; a 16-team event with four pools of 4 and an 8-team playoff is the classic.
The point is guaranteed games. In a single elimination bracket, half the field plays once. In pool play, a team in a pool of 4 plays exactly 3 games before the playoff, and knows it from the moment the pools are posted.
How the pools are made
Seed the teams, then deal them into pools in snake order: seed 1 to Pool A, seed 2 to Pool B, seed 3 to Pool C, then seed 4 back to Pool C, seed 5 to Pool B, seed 6 to Pool A, and so on. The top seeds end up in different pools and each pool gets a similar spread of strength. TourneyPage does this from the order you give it, and you can drag a team to another pool before the first score.
With 12 teams the builder allows three pools of 4, two pools of 6, or four pools of 3; it suggests three pools of 4. Pools hold 3 to 10 teams, up to 8pools, and when the count doesn't divide evenly the extra team goes to the last pool.
The pool schedule
Each pool plays the standard round robin rotation: no team plays twice in a round, every pairing happens once, and with an odd pool one team sits out each round so that everyone sits out exactly once. A pool of 4 is 6 games in 3 rounds; a pool of 5 is 10 games in 5 rounds; a pool of 6 is 15 games in 5 rounds. Pools run side by side, so with enough fields a whole round of the tournament plays at once.
TourneyPage numbers every game in play order across the pools and shows the next games at the top of the page. It doesn't schedule times or fields for you; you type the times and courts you decide on, and they show next to each game.
Standings and tiebreakers
Win percentage first (a tie in a game counts half, and ties are allowed). When teams are level, TourneyPage goes down the list: head-to-head, then point differential, then points allowed. Sports scored in sets, like volleyball and pickleball, use set percentage in place of point differential. The organizer can reorder the tiebreakers, and the table shows which one placed a team when it mattered. If nothing separates two teams, the page says so and the organizer decides.
Head-to-head is first because it answers the question parents ask: "we beat them, why are they ahead?" Point differential comes next because it rewards playing out every game, and points allowed last because it separates teams without encouraging anyone to run up a score.
Seeding the playoff
The usual rule is the top 2from each pool. Pool winners take the top seeds, ordered against each other by the same tiebreakers; runners-up fill the seeds after them. Byes go to the top seeds when the playoff isn't a power of two. Then the engine looks at the first round and, where the bracket allows it, swaps teams within a tier so that two teams from the same pool don't meet again straight away.
With three pools of 4 and the top 2 advancing, 12 teams make a 6-team playoff: 5 games, 2 byes for the two best pool winners, and a champion after 3 rounds. The builder also allows the top 1, the top 3 or 4, everyone, or no playoff at all, and the playoff can be double elimination. In TourneyPage the bracket builds itself the moment the last pool game is final.
How many games everyone gets
Pool games are each pool's size times one less, divided by two, added up. Every team is sure of its pool's games; the longest road is a team from the biggest pool that goes all the way through the playoff. For 12 teams:
- Three pools of 4: 18 pool games plus a 6-team playoff of 5, 23 in all. Each team plays 3 to 6.
- Two pools of 6: 30 pool games plus a 4-team playoff of 3, 33 in all. Each team plays 5 to 7.
- Four pools of 3: 12 pool games plus a 8-team playoff of 7, 19 in all. Each team plays 2 to 5.
Every size has its own page with the same numbers for each split, and the reference page compares every format from 2 to 32 teams.
Choosing a split
Fewer, bigger pools mean more guaranteed games and a longer day. More, smaller pools mean fewer pool games and a bigger playoff. Pools of 4 are the sweet spot for most one-day events: 3 games each in 3 rounds. Pools of 3 only promise 2 games; pools of 5 and 6 are for two-day events or small fields with lots of courts. If the count leaves one pool bigger than the rest, that pool plays a round longer, which is fine as long as the playoff waits for it.
Count your fields. A pool round needs as many fields as there are games in it to run at once; with fewer, the round takes two waves. The calculator on each size page does the arithmetic for your game length and field count.
Running it on the day
Post the pools and the full schedule before the first game, with the playoff rule on it, so nobody argues about who advances at 3 p.m. Enter scores as games end, not in batches, so the standings are current when the last pool game finishes. Decide the tiebreaker order in advance and print it. When the pools end, read the playoff seeds off the standings and start the bracket.
On a TourneyPage, the scores come in from a phone or a helper's link, the standings and cutoff line update as they do, and the playoff seeds itself when the last pool game is final. Families follow it on their phones with no app or account. Single-pool round robin schedules are a separate set of pages.