A bye, in sports and other competitive activities, most commonly refers to the practice of allowing a player or team to advance to the next round of a playoff tournament without playing. This is generally the result of having a number of entrants in the competition that is not a power of two (i.e., not 2, 4, 8, 16, etc.); any such tournament must eventually arrive, through elimination, at an odd number of participants at some point, thus necessitating the bye. In large tournaments, sometimes the best-ranked players or teams get a bye in the first round(s), to reward them with less risk of elimination, as well as on the basis (particularly in seeded tournaments) that they would be most likely to eliminate the worst seeds anyway. Byes can be applied equally to single-person competitions and team sports, and well as to single-game eliminations and best-of series eliminations.
In round-robin tournament competitions where there are an odd number of competitors each round, usually just one would get a bye. Thus during no round would all teams be able to play. However, by the completion of the tournament each team would have played the same number of games as well as having sat out for the same number of rounds during the tournament. In a Swiss-system tournament with an odd number of players, one will get a bye each round, but not all players will get a bye.
There are multiple ways or reasons to get byes such as random chance, the opponent is unable to participate, the team gets it due to positive or negative past history, the team is handicapped etc..
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In leagues such as Australia's National Rugby League (NRL) where competition points are used to determine standings, the bye also garners points (in the NRL's case, two, equivalent to a win). During the 2002-2006 seasons inclusive when 15 teams were in the competition, the bye was required each round due to the uneven number of teams competing. A standard round would consist of seven matches leaving one team out; that team would have to serve its bye (two per season) in that round. During the representative time of the season (such as the State of Origin), three teams would receive byes, mainly to those clubs that have the most players involved in the representative match (such as the Brisbane Broncos and Melbourne Storm), in the round preceding the representative fixture.
From the 2007 season onwards, there were sixteen teams competing in the NRL, meaning only one bye would be allocated to each team, also mainly around the representative part of the season. This became an issue after many high-profile players became injured as a result of player burn-out close to the finals. This was rectified in the following season, where the two-bye system and 26-round format returned (the 2007 season featured only 25 rounds). The two byes would be allocated to teams that, again, have the most players involved in a representative fixture. Two competition points are automatically attained from the bye, but the only team not to receive any competition points from a bye were the Melbourne Storm who were banned from receiving competition points from Round 7 of the 2010 season onwards due to their salary cap breach.
The Australian Football League also had byes during periods in which the competition consisted of an odd number of teams (such as prior to the admission of the Fremantle Dockers in 1995, and the 2011 admission of the Gold Coast Suns). In an unusual application of the bye, the AFL finals system employs byes even though the finals consist of eight teams (a power of two). The first round of the finals is not a strict elimination round and uses two byes to reward the top four qualifiers for their performance (the byes are earned in matches between those teams). After the second round, four teams remain and the system returns to standard single-elimination.
For the 2011 season, the bye would be required in each round, due to the uneven number of teams competing, but with the addition of the Greater Western Sydney Football Club in 2012 the bye will no longer be required each round. Each club would receive two byes during the season, at random rounds throughout the season. In 2011, the bye has proven to be a sticking point for many clubs; as of Round 17, 2011, only seven teams (West Coast (twice), Geelong, Hawthorn, St Kilda (twice) and Collingwood, Melbourne and Fremantle) have won the week after serving a bye.