Which table tennis format should your event use?

Ask an organiser what format their tournament uses and the answer is usually a single word: knockout, or groups. That answers half the question. The other half — how long is one match — moves the schedule at least as much, and it is the half most people leave on the default.

Match format is the length of one contest: how many games, and to how many points. Competition format is how many contests each entrant plays: the shape of the draw. They multiply, and the product is your day.

The distinctive thing about table tennis is how much room the first decision has. Most racket sports fix the match length in the rulebook and let you vary only the draw. Table tennis fixes the game and leaves the number of games open.

ITTF 2.12.1: a match shall consist of the best of any odd number of games. That is the whole rule. Not "best of five or seven", not "as specified by the organising committee" — any odd number.

The game itself is fixed. 2.11.1: a game is won by the first to 11 points, unless both reach 10, when the game goes to whoever first leads by two. There is no cap: 10-all can run to 15-13 if it wants, and the expedite system rather than a hard ceiling is what stops it running forever.

Match format	Games to win	Typical length	Where it fits
Best of 1	1	6–10 min	Rotation events, club nights, huge fields
Best of 3	2	12–18 min	Group stages, early rounds, one-evening tournaments
Best of 5	3	20–30 min	The club standard and the ITTF individual default
Best of 7	4	30–45 min	Finals, team fixtures, matches worth the time

The useful consequence is that you can mix. Nothing in 2.12.1 says every round must use the same number of games. Groups at best of three, the bracket at best of five, the final at best of seven is a completely legal and very well-behaved shape: the early volume is cheap and the matches that matter get length.

JudgeMate offers 1, 2 or 3 games to win, which covers best of one, three and five. Best of seven would need a fourth value we do not currently offer — worth knowing before you promise it in the entry form.

The sanctioned distance is 11 and has been since 2001, when the ITTF cut the game from 21. Alongside the distance, the service rotation changed: it moved from every five points to every two, and the single-point alternation from 20-all to 10-all (2.13.3).

JudgeMate lets you set 11, 15, 21 or 25 points per game. Only 11 is sanctioned today, so the longer distances are house formats and this guide will not pretend otherwise. What changed on 2 August 2026 is that they now behave coherently. Every threshold that depends on the distance moves with it:

Points per game	Single-point service from	Change of ends in the deciding game
11	10-all	5
15	14-all	7
21	20-all	10
25	24-all	12

Before that fix, setting 21 gave you a game to 21 with the single-point service change still firing at 10-all — halfway through the game — and the change of ends still at 5. The scoreboard said 21 and played something else. It does not any more.

One thing that does not change with the distance is the service rotation itself. It stays at every two points at any distance. The pre-2001 game to 21 used every five, but that rule is withdrawn, and inventing a rotation no federation publishes would be worse than leaving the modern one in place.

The competition format multiplies against whatever match length you chose.

Shape	Matches	Minimum per entrant
Knockout, n entries	n − 1	1
Knockout with consolation round, 32	47	2
Round robin, n entries	n(n−1)/2	n − 1
Groups of 4 (g groups)	6g	3
Groups of 4 → knockout	6g + (2g − 1)	3

A round robin grows quadratically and gets away from you fast: eight entries is 28 matches, twelve is 66, sixteen is 120. That growth is why groups exist. Eight groups of four cost 48 matches and give every entrant three, where a single round robin of 32 would cost 496.

What the regulations expect. ITTF 3.7.4.4 puts individual events proper on a knockout basis and reserves the group format for team events and for the qualifying rounds of individual events. A club tournament is not bound by that, but the shape it describes — groups to qualify, bracket to decide — is exactly the compromise most club organisers arrive at independently.

One ordering rule is worth borrowing verbatim. 3.7.5.5: the last match of a group should be between the players ranked first and second in the group when one qualifies, or second and third when two do. It costs nothing to arrange and it puts the decisive match at the end of the session rather than in the middle of it.

Table tennis has the most developed team formats of any racket sport, and both are named in the regulations (ITTF 3.7.6).

Swaythling Cup system — best of five matches, five singles, three players per team. Order of play: A v X, B v Y, C v Z, A v Y, B v X.

Corbillon Cup system — best of five matches, four singles and one doubles, two to four players per team. Order of play: A v X, B v Y, doubles, A v Y, B v X.

Both stop as soon as one team reaches three wins, so a 3-0 fixture plays three matches and a 3-2 plays five. That is the property that makes them so schedulable: the ceiling is five matches and the floor is three.

What JudgeMate can and cannot do here, plainly. The draw treats a table tennis side as one player or one pair. It has no notion of a fixture that bundles several individual matches into one team result, so a Swaythling or Corbillon tie is not something the bracket will score for you. You can run every individual match on the platform and keep the team scoreline yourself, but the tie is not the unit the draw understands.

Work backwards from the hours you have. Tables times hours times the matches-per-hour rate for your chosen length is the number of matches your day can hold. Then find a shape that fits under it.

If you have	And you want	Use
One evening, 16 entries, 4 tables	Everyone plays several times	4 groups of 4 at best of 3, then a knockout of 8
One day, 32 entries, 6 tables	A proper champion	8 groups of 4 at best of 5, then a knockout of 16
One morning, 24 entries, 4 tables	A result before lunch	Knockout of 32 with byes, best of 3, consolation round
A club night, 12 players, 3 tables	Play, not administration	Rotation format at one game to 11

The two levers that actually work when the day slips are shortening the match format and asking players to agree to expedite early. Adding tables mid-event never happens, and telling umpires to hurry does not survive contact with a close game.