Tournaments

If you have tired of single team full season replays, replaying the playoffs, or playing random games between two teams from your collection of season card sets, then setting up and playing small (or large) tournaments can be a fun alternative. I recently started playing seeded tournaments using the top 10 teams from each season I own (based on regular season wins). The #7 - #10 teams participate in an NBA-style play-in for the #7 and #8 spot in an 8-team single elimination tournament. I've been having a blast playing these tournaments!

One of the best things about tournaments, besides the how much fun they are to play, is the plethora of options you have when setting them up. From the number of teams that will participate to the format of the tournament, there are literally hundreds of combinations that will allow you to setup the perfect tournament for yourself.

For myself, I like to limit the total number of games it takes to complete my tournaments to a maximum of 9 or 10 games, with every team having a fighting chance of making it to the Championship game, which is why I prefer the combination of 10-teams in seeded single elimination tournaments. I also like to play a variety of teams in my tournaments, so the 10 teams participating may come from the top third, middle third, or bottom third of teams from a particular season set. For example, I'm currently playing with the latest 2022 season set. I want to see all 30 teams from the set in action, so I'm playing three 10-team single elimination tournaments: one with the bottom 10 teams (Division 3), one with the middle 10 teams (Division 2), and one with the top 10 teams (Division 1). I will have three champions, one from each "division," with all three tournaments completed in just a span of 27 total games played.

There is one big downside when setting up a tournament though. Creating the bracket! Depending on the format and number of teams you want to have for your tournament, it can be a real headache to figure out how to setup your bracket correctly. Fortunately, when I first started looking into playing tournaments, I did a little research and found an awesome website with a ton of fillable (and non-fillable) PDF brackets for just about any format and number of teams you could possibly imagine for a tournament. The site is PrintYourBrackets.com and here is the link to their page where you can access all of their pre-made brackets: https://www.printyourbrackets.com/fillable-tournament-brackets.html

If you've never setup and played a Strat-O-Matic basketball tournament, or found it too hard to come up with a bracket for the tournament format that you have envisioned, I highly recommend visiting the above website and giving tournament play a go!