Single elimination does NOT mean you only play 1 game per round!
Single elimination means that if you lose, you're out. There is no second chance like in double elimination. It doesn't, however, say anything about the amount of games per round, that can be anything, 1 game, best of 3, best of 5, best of 999, etc.
Here's a little overview of some typical brackets, not to be confused with Tournament Types. Those are, for example: doubles, assassin, large-team, international, 1 v 1, etc.
- Standard Single Elimination: The winners in any given round go through to the next round, the losers are out of the tournament. For example: If you start with 16 players in round 1, 8 players will go to round 2, 4 players will go to round 3 and 2 players will play the final (16 > 8 > 4 > 2).
- Standard Double Elimination: The winners in any given round go through to the next round, the losers go to a separate bracket and get another chance. The winner of that separate bracket plays against the winner of the original bracket for the tournament win, because every player needs to lose twice to be eliminated. Only the winner will have not lost a round or once at the most.
Not to be confused with a format where the losers of the first round go the a separate bracket (also known as the losers round). Typically the winner of that separate bracket wins a prize (GA Medal, for example), or, sometimes the winner of that separate bracket gets a change to play the winner of the original bracket for the tournament win.
- Round Robin: Here the participating players or teams play each other once or twice (home and away). There is usually a scoring system in place to see who comes out as the winner of the tournament.
- Wind Mill: Here players or teams rotate in groups where they play each other. Again, there is a scoring system in place to decide who goes to the next round and/or who wins the tournament.
- Brackets based on sports championships: For example the Football (Soccer) World Cup format or the American Football League (NFL) format. Usually players or teams play in groups in a round robin format, after which the group winners go a knock-out or play-off phase, which is typically a single elimination bracket. Basically these formats are some combination of the above mentioned bracket formats.
Note that none of these brackets or formats define the actual amount of games played between players and/or teams, per round or in total.
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