Another form of a shootout tournament is a Heads-Up tournament, also called a 1-on-1 tournament. This is a tournament where players are matched in pairs, and play a ‘bracket’ tournament until there is only one player left. Just as in other shootout tournaments late registration is not allowed in Heads-Up tournaments. For most heads-up multi-table tournaments, the time limit for unregistration is five minutes (as opposed to two minutes in most other tournaments). Please check the Tournament Info window for details regarding unregistration from any one specific tournament.

There may not always be a number divisible by the power of two (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64) registered for a particular Heads-Up tournament, which is necessary to fill a heads-up bracket. When this happens, not all players will be able to play the first round – they will receive ‘byes’.

For example, if 10 players enter a Heads-Up tournament, there would be more than 8 but fewer than 16 players. In order to play the tournament out properly, the tournament will first need to be brought down to 8 players. In order to get the number down from 10 to 8 players, 4 players will play (thus eliminating two) and 6 players will get a ‘bye’ and are automatically in the quarter-finals.

We offer Heads-Up tournaments with byes and without byes. This is clearly marked if you click the ‘Tournament Info’ button in the tournament lobby. If a tournament does not allow ‘byes’, the last players to register may have their buy-ins returned in order to get the event to a starting total of players which is a power of two (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 etc). In the above example (with 10 players entered) the last two players to register would not get to play, as 8 is the nearest power of two which is less than 10.