A tournament is an organized competition between at least two competing teams, each of which is involved in a game or sport. More specifically, the word can be used in both of two overlapping senses:
o Sports tournaments. There are various sports tournaments, such as wrestling tournaments, basketball tournaments, golf tournaments, football tournaments, tennis tournaments and soccer tournaments. In most cases, a sports tournament refers to a competition between competing teams within a particular sport. Competitions may also involve other types of teams. For instance, a running track tournament refers to track matches and involves a specific amount of laps for the winner. Basketball games refer to both point-taking situations and shooting competitions, and so on.
o Official tournaments. There are several official tournaments which exist, such as the World Poker Tour, the Ultimate Golf tournament, and the Tour de France bicycle race. Other official championships include the Masters tournament, the European tournament, and the Olympic Games. The latter two tournaments have total number of teams participating, while the former only have qualifying rounds for each team.
o Byes. A bye is the last stage of a tournament, consisting of the winning team, the runners-up and the losers’ final round. The byes have total number of players participating. Usually, this stage is not played on the weekends.
o Combo tournaments. A combo tournament refers to a tournament in which the four teams actually compete against each other. This scenario is quite common in high level freeroll, low stakes and spin tournaments. Usually, a tournament using this format requires fewer matches to complete than a normal tournament, as the number of participating teams is generally lower, resulting in shorter turnaround times for the matches.
o Knock out. In the knockout stage, the tournament winner must first eliminate all the teams before proceeding to the final round. Sometimes, it might even require a team with the fastest winnings to eliminate a weaker team, provided that team can beat the remaining opponents and still stay in the tournament.
o Inter-league tournament. Inter-league tournaments occur when two teams from one league clash in an effort to qualify for another league tournament. There are usually a large number of inter-league tournaments in each major league. Some years there are even World Series of Poker tournaments held between the top two finishers in the same league. There are also several college bowl games that feature inter-conference matches.
o National tournament. A national tournament involves a set number of teams from across the country. The purpose of this type of tournament is to encourage the attendance of people from different parts of the country. The tournament may be held in place of a regular season college bowl game or a bowl game between two teams.
o Championship game. Most leagues have championship tournaments with the first round typically being determined by the conference title. The championship game tends to get more television viewing than the other first rounds, so this is usually a good time to generate interest for a championship game.