Single elimination versus second-chance structures
A single-elimination bracket is brutal and simple: lose once and you are out. With 8 teams, you have 3 rounds, and one team goes home after each round until one remains. The winner is guaranteed strongest, but teams might have been robbed by unfortunate seeding or one bad game. Double-elimination brackets give every team a second chance through a losers' bracket, requiring twice as many matches to determine a winner. A team must lose twice to be eliminated, and any team can theoretically win from the losers' bracket.
Round-robin as the fairness trade-off
Round-robin tournaments have every team play every other team once, making the final ranking a true ranking of aggregate performance. With 8 teams, each plays 7 matches (28 total). No lucky draw, no one-match elimination. The downside: round-robin requires 7-8 weeks and is too slow for live events. Most sports use round-robin for league play (over months) and single-elimination for playoffs (decisive, TV-friendly). Esports tournaments often use round-robin groups with single-elimination playoffs, hybrid structures that balance fairness and speed.