Sixteen teams make the classic bracket: eight first-round games, quarterfinals, semifinals and a final, 15 games in all and no byes. On a wide screen the two halves flow in from the left and right towards the final in the middle, the same shape as the printed sheet.
Standard 16-team seeding
| Top half | Bottom half |
|---|---|
| 1 v 16 | 2 v 15 |
| 8 v 9 | 7 v 10 |
| 4 v 13 | 3 v 14 |
| 5 v 12 | 6 v 11 |
Each pair adds up to 17, so the strongest team meets the weakest. In the second round the winner of 1 v 16 plays the winner of 8 v 9, which is why the 8 v 9 game is often the closest of the first round.
Filling it in
Enter the teams in ranking order and click your way through: each click moves a team on, and a second click undoes it. Change a first-round pick later and the picks that team had won further on are cleared, so the bracket never shows a team in two places.
Printing a 16 team bracket
The landscape PDF puts the left and right halves on one page with the final and the champion box in the middle. The boxes are large enough to write in, which makes it a good poster for a club wall: print one with names, or tick Blank bracket for an empty template with seed numbers only.