He then protected all cells except the team name entry cells so no one could accidentally break the bracket mid-tournament. The next morning, Mark printed 8 copies of the Excel sheet (legal size, landscape). He taped two sheets together to make one giant bracket. The teams loved it. No byes were unfair. Every loss had a path.
He had two bad options: turn away 4 teams (and face their wrath) or run a 32-team bracket with 12 “ghost” byes (and confuse everyone). Then he remembered: Excel doesn’t care about ugly numbers. Excel cares about logic. 20 team double elimination bracket excel
He labeled columns: A: Game # | B: Round | C: Winner’s Bracket Matchup | D: Loser Goes To... He then protected all cells except the team
For the actual working Excel layout, search for “20 team double elimination bracket Excel template” — but now you understand the logic behind it. A 20-team bracket isn’t perfectly symmetrical, but with careful byes and a separate losers bracket sheet, Excel handles it beautifully. Mark’s tournament ran smoothly, and he became the local hero of bracketology. The teams loved it
6 losers from WB Round 1 play in 3 games. LB2: 3 winners from LB1 + 8 losers from WB Round 2 = 11 teams? That doesn’t work (odd number). This is the trap.
Mark added a checkbox in Excel: Linked to a formula: =IF(LBWinner = WBChampion, “Tournament Over”, “Game 39 needed”)