A
bracket or
tournament bracket is a
tree diagram that represents the series of games played during a
knockout tournament. Different knockout tournament formats have different brackets; the simplest and most common is that of the
single-elimination tournament. The name "bracket" is
American English, derived from the resemblance of the links in the tree diagram to the
bracket punctuation symbol ] or [ (called a "square bracket" in
British English). The closest British term is
draw, although this implies an element of chance, whereas some brackets are determined entirely by
seeding.