The playoffs, play-offs, postseason or finals of a sports league are a competition played after the regular season by the top competitors to determine the league champion or a similar accolade. Depending on the league, the playoffs may be either a single game, a series of games, or a tournament, and may use a single-elimination system or one of several other different playoff formats. Playoff, in regard to international fixtures, is to qualify or progress to the next round of a competition or tournament.
A tournament is a competition involving at least three competitors, all participating in a sport or game. More specifically, the term may be used in either of two overlapping senses:
- One or more competitions held at a single venue and concentrated into a relatively short time interval.
- A competition involving a number of matches, each involving a subset of the competitors, with the overall tournament winner determined based on the combined results of these individual matches. These are common in those sports and games where each match must involve a small number of competitors: often precisely two, as in most team sports, racket sports and combat sports, many card games and board games, and many forms of competitive debating. Such tournaments allow large numbers to compete against each other in spite of the restriction on numbers in a single match.
Throughout its history, the National Football League (NFL) and other rival American football leagues have used several different formats to determine their league champions, including a period of inter-league matchups to determine a true national champion.
A single-elimination, knockout, or sudden-death tournament is a type of elimination tournament where the loser of each match-up is immediately eliminated from the tournament. Each winner will play another in the next round, until the final match-up, whose winner becomes the tournament champion(s). Each match-up may be a single match or several, for example two-legged ties in European sports or best-of series in North American pro sports. Defeated competitors may play no further part after losing, or may participate in "consolation" or "classification" matches against other losers to determine the lower final rankings; for example, a third place playoff between losing semi-finalists. In a shootout poker tournament, there are more than two players competing at each table, and sometimes more than one progresses to the next round. Some competitions are held with a pure single-elimination tournament system. Others have many phases, with the last being a single-elimination final stage, often called playoffs.
A Swiss-system tournament is a non-eliminating tournament format that features a fixed number of rounds of competition, but considerably fewer than for a round-robin tournament; thus each competitor does not play all the other competitors. Competitors meet one-on-one in each round and are paired using a set of rules designed to ensure that each competitor plays opponents with a similar running score, but does not play the same opponent more than once. The winner is the competitor with the highest aggregate points earned in all rounds. With an even number of participants, all competitors play in each round.
The National Football League (NFL) playoffs is the single-elimination tournament to determine the annual league champion. The four-round tournament is held after the league's regular season. Since the 2020 season, seven teams from each of the league's two conferences qualify for the playoffs based on regular season winning percentage, with a tie-breaking procedure if required. The top team in each conference receives a first-round bye, automatically advancing to the next round. The tournament culminates in the Super Bowl, the league's championship game, competed between teams from each conference.
There are a number of formats used in various levels of competition in sports and games to determine an overall champion. Some of the most common are the single elimination, the best-of- series, the total points series more commonly known as on aggregate, and the round-robin tournament.
A wild card is a tournament or playoff berth awarded to a team or individual that does not directly qualify. In some events, wildcards are chosen freely by the organizers. Other events have fixed rules. Some North American professional sports leagues compare the records of teams which did not qualify directly by winning a division or conference.
The Page playoff system is a playoff format used primarily in softball and curling at the championship level, and the Indian Premier League and Pakistan Super League cricket tournaments. Teams are seeded using a round-robin tournament and the top four play a mix of a single-elimination and double-elimination tournament to determine the winner. It is identical to a four-team McIntyre system playoff, first used by the WANFL, SANFL and VFL in Australia in 1931, originally called the Page–McIntyre system, after the VFL delegate, the Richmond Football Club's Secretary, Percy "Pip" Page, who had advocated its use. A form has been adopted in the Canadian Premier League national soccer competition.
In sports, a bye is the preferential status of a player or team that is automatically advanced to the next round of a tournament without having to play an opponent in an early round.
In a group tournament, unlike a knockout tournament, there is no scheduled decisive final match. Instead, all the competitors are ranked by examining the results of all the matches played in the tournament. Typically, points are awarded for each match, with competitors ranked based either on total number of points or average points per match. A special type of group tournament is the Round-robin tournament, in which each player plays against every other player.
The Stanley Cup playoffs is the annual elimination tournament to determine the winner of the Stanley Cup, and the league champion of the National Hockey League (NHL). The four-round, best-of-seven tournament is held after the NHL's regular season. Eight teams from each of the league's two conferences qualify for the playoffs based on regular season points totals. The final round is commonly known as the Stanley Cup Finals, which matches the two conference champions.
The National Basketball Association (NBA) playoffs is the annual elimination tournament held to determine the league champion. The four-round, best-of-seven tournament is held after the league's regular season and its preliminary postseason tournament, the NBA play-in tournament. Six teams from each of the two conferences automatically advance to the playoffs based on regular season winning percentage, while those teams finishing seven through 10 from each conference compete in the play-in tournament to determine the final two playoff seeds.
The Northern and Southern Cups are the two major regional quidditch tournaments of the United Kingdom. Organised by QuadballUK, the tournaments serve both as qualification prerequisites for other tournaments, such as the European Quidditch Cup and the British Quidditch Cup alongside being their own stand alone tournaments. Regionals are often considered the most important tournaments of the year after the British Quidditch Cup and they serve as qualifiers for the latter tournament. Those teams that fail to qualify for BQC each season compete in the Development Cup instead. From 2021 onwards the tournaments have been held as a series of one-day fixtures exclusively for university teams with the equivalent Community League tournament held for community teams.
The World Chess960 Championship is a match or tournament held to determine a world champion in Chess960, a popular chess variant in which the positions of pieces on the players' home ranks are randomized with certain constraints. Prior to 2019 FIDE did not recognize a Chess960 world champion or sponsor regular tournaments in the format, but the Chess Classic at Mainz and other non-FIDE affiliated organizations have hosted high-profile Chess960 tournaments and matches. Time controls for Chess960 are non-standardized, and usually conform to the wishes of the tournament sponsor or organizer. As a result, Chess960 championships have been held with irregular time controls ranging from rapid (Mainz) to blitz and bullet.
ESL Pro League Season 7 is a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament run by ESL. It is the seventh season of the ESL Pro League. Teams from two continents, North America and Europe will compete in fourteen team leagues to attempt to qualify for the Finals. For the first time, the EPL finals returned to a location that had already hosted an EPL final as ESL decided to head back to Dallas and will host the finals at the Verizon Theatre. The regular season started on February 13, 2018, and ended on April 26, 2018. Europe's season started with Astralis overrunning Team LDLC.com. North America's season kicked off with the Season 6 champion SK Gaming edging out the Season 4 champion Cloud9. South America's season began with Dereguedere tying with W7M Gaming. Asia-Pacific's season started with B.O.O.T-dream[S]cape defeating Grayhound Gaming. Asia-Pacific's season ended with MVP PK defeating Grayhound Gaming in three maps to take first seed in the APAC region. South America's season will end with Team Wild taking on W7M Gaming. Europe's season ended with HellRaisers defeating North to take the last European spot in the finals. North America's season ended with Ghost Gaming defeating compLexity Gaming.
The FIDE World Fischer Random Chess Championship 2019 (WFRCC) was the first world championship in Fischer random chess officially recognized by the international chess federation FIDE. Previous unofficial championships had been held, with the most recent winner being Magnus Carlsen in 2018. The competition started on April 28, 2019, with the first qualifying tournaments, which took place online and were open to all interested participants; and continued with further rounds up to the quarter-finals, which were also online. The semi-finals and final were played over the board between October 27 to November 2, 2019, in the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter in Bærum, Norway. The winner of the final was Wesley So, defeating Magnus Carlsen 13.5–2.5, to become the first FIDE world champion in Fischer random chess. Over the course of the competition, various time controls were applied, with longer games being weighted more heavily.
Hans Moke Niemann is an American chess grandmaster and Twitch streamer. He first entered the top 100 junior players list on March 1, 2019, and became a FIDE grandmaster on January 22, 2021. In July 2021, he won the World Open chess tournament in Philadelphia. He had a peak global ranking of No. 16 in September 2024.
The FIDE World Fischer Random Chess Championship 2022 (WFRCC) was the second official world championship in Fischer Random Chess. The competition followed a similar format to the first championship in 2019, with qualifying stages open to all interested participants taking place online on chess.com and Lichess, and four qualified players joined four invited players in the over-the-board final, which took place at the Berjaya Reykjavik Natura Hotel in Reykjavík, Iceland from 25 to 30 October 2022.
The Champions Chess Tour (CCT) 2023 was a fast chess tournament circuit that was organized in 2023 by Chess.com. The tour started on 6 February 2023 and ended on 16 December 2023. It involved six online chess tournaments and an over-the-board final round, featuring some of the world's top players who played for a prize money pool of US$2 million.
