How Bracket Polls Work

A bracket poll turns your choices into a head-to-head tournament. Voters pick a winner in each matchup, the winners move on to the next round, and the field narrows until one champion is left. Here is how it all works from start to finish.

Building a bracket

Name it and add participants

Give your bracket a title, then add your participants. You can enter up to 32, and each one can be plain text, an image, or both. As you fill in the last slot a new one appears on its own, so you never run out of room.

Byes for uneven fields

Brackets work best with a power of two: 2, 4, 8, 16, or 32 participants. If your count lands in between, Polltab fills the empty spots with byes so the bracket stays balanced and every real participant gets a fair path forward.

Set the round schedule

Each round has its own end date and time. Round one opens the moment you create the bracket, and every round after it runs until the date you set. Rounds must be at least three minutes apart so there is always time for votes to land before the next round begins.

How voting works

Only the active round is open for voting. Voters tap a competitor in each live matchup and confirm their pick. The same voting security options as a regular poll apply to the whole bracket:

Unlimited. Anyone can vote as many times as they like.
Cookie-based. One vote per browser, tracked with a cookie.
IP-specific. One vote per IP address.

You can also require a CAPTCHA before each vote to cut down on spam, and choose to hide vote counts while a round is active so the running tally does not sway voters. For more on how votes are validated, read our guide to voting security.

How winners advance

When a round's end time passes, Polltab closes that round and moves each matchup's winner into the next round automatically. The winner is simply the competitor with the most votes. You do not need to do anything; the next round opens with the advancing competitors already in place.

How are ties broken?

If two competitors finish a round with the exact same number of votes, Polltab breaks the tie with a random coin flip. One of the two is chosen at random and advances to the next round. Each tied competitor has an equal 50/50 chance, and the outcome is final once the round closes.

Note: Because a tie is decided at random, the competitor that advances on a tie can be either side. The fairest way to avoid a coin flip is to keep voting open long enough for a clear winner to emerge.

Live results and the champion

Results update in real time as votes come in, so you can watch each matchup tighten or pull away live. The full bracket view shows every round at once, and once the final round closes the winner is crowned as the champion.

Ready to run your own tournament? Create a bracket poll, or contact us if you have a question.