Each option in How will they play? carries the Croquet England regulation its rule is written in, and the list runs in regulation order — F1 to F8 — so the formats come in the same sequence here as in the book. Section F of Croquet England's Regulations for Tournaments is where each one is written out in full; the picker links to it.
What differs between them
- Knockout (Reg F1) — half the field is eliminated each round; without a plate, a first-round loser plays one game. Plates and placement brackets change that.
- Blocks (Reg F2) — everyone in a block of N plays N−1 games; the count is fixed and the whole order of play can be printed before the event. A block of N costs N×(N−1)÷2 games of lawn time.
- Swiss — N rounds (Reg F3) — everyone plays exactly N games, but each round's pairings depend on the results so far, so the order of play can't be printed in advance.
- Progressive Swiss (Reg F4) — a knockout, plus a Swiss its losers enter as they go out, plus a knockout off that Swiss. The Swiss standings count the main draw's games too, which is what makes a small consolation rankable. Built in one pass — see Progressive Swiss.
- Flexible Swiss (Reg F5) — no fixed rounds and no fixed game count; pairings are made live from the console whenever a lawn frees. A Minimum games setting defines eligibility to win.
- Burridge Swiss (Reg F8) — Swiss qualifying that feeds a knockout at a set number of wins. The tool tracks qualification and the regulation's legality checks as you set rounds and targets. The option appears only when it's enabled for your account.
The mechanics of setting each one up are on Format.
Fitting it to your lawns
An event is a budget: lawns × hours ÷ minutes per game. The split picker does the block arithmetic for you — the ★ marks the split the tool recommends (block sizes closest to 7) — and generating the schedule reports anything that didn't fit the lawns and days you've given it.
What follows block play
Then what? — block standings decide, or a knockout follows. A knockout adds games beyond the block count (up to log₂ of the draw per qualifier), and the wizard's plate and placement options set what non-qualifiers play.
A straight knockout is asked the same question differently: its whole field is in the draw, so what it settles is whether a beaten player has anything else to play. A consolation event alongside builds a second competition next to it — a Swiss or Flexible Swiss with its own standings — which changes the arithmetic: a 20-player single elimination is 19 games, and a consolation beside it is as many more as its players ask for.
Splitting one field into two competitions (a Championship and a First Flight) is done on Format ▸ Competitions, with auto-assignment by rating.
A knockout and a Swiss that share a field
Where the consolation counts the main draw's results in its own standings, the format has a name — Regulation F4, a Progressive Swiss — and a player's record follows them across. That changes the arithmetic of the consolation's standings rather than its game count: in a twenty-player event a consolation cannot rank anyone on three or four games of its own, and carrying the main draw's games in gives every player five to seven. There is a one-pass build for the whole shape, including a knockout off the Swiss for the top few on that combined record, on Progressive Swiss.
Related
- Format — setting whichever you choose.
- Progressive Swiss — a main knockout, a consolation Swiss and its knockout, built in one pass.
- Schedule — where the plan meets the lawns and days.