Fixtures, Byes and Seeding

Having seen the three types of tournaments, we now turn to how their fixtures are actually drawn. In sport, a fixture is the programme that lists which team (Team A) will play whom (Team B), at which venue and at what time.

Common definitions of a fixture include: a sports event or its date; a sports match arranged for a particular time and place; and the arrangement of teams in a systematic order, in various groups, for competitive play. In practice a tie, fixture or heat may involve several progressive matches. In athletics and swimming these rounds are called Heats, while in tennis, badminton and similar games we usually speak of Ties or Fixtures. Whatever the sport, an unbiased draw of fixtures is the first step towards a well-run tournament. Two terms are central to drawing fixtures: the bye and the seed.

Bye. A bye means that a team is not required to play in the primary (first) round and moves straight into the next round. A bye is allotted through a random lottery so that no team is unfairly favoured. The organising committee gives byes for one of several reasons:

• Uneven number of teams - in a knock-out the number of teams should ideally be a power of two (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 ...), and in a league an odd number of teams needs a bye in each round.
• Separate pooling of previous winners, so that last year's top teams are not bunched together and the competition stays even.
• To avoid overloading a team, so that no team has to play more matches on a single day than its rivals.

A bye is also described as the position of a competitor who is not paired with an opponent, usually in the first round, and who is advanced to the next round without playing. …