Tournament in the context of StarCraft (video game)

In sports, an open tournament, or open competition, indicates anyone may enter the tournament or competition, especially without regard to their professional or amateur status. First used in golf, the term is now used in many different sports and in varying contexts, not always in reference to the amateur or professional status of the players. For example, it might indicate that the competition is "open" to international players. An open competition contrasts with closed and invitational competitions.

The term "open" is not always absolute. Minimum performance standards, or eligibility criteria, vary by sport and by individual tournament rules. For example, qualifier entrants to the 2025 U.S. Open golf tournament must have a USGA official handicap of 0.4 or less. Open competitions are also found outside of sports, such as open architectural design competitions.

Sport is a physical activity or game, often competitive and organized, that maintains or improves physical ability and skills. Sport may provide enjoyment to participants and entertainment to spectators. The number of participants in a particular sport can vary from hundreds of people to a single individual.

Sport competitions may use a team or single person format, and may be open, allowing a broad range of participants, or closed, restricting participation to specific groups or those invited. Competitions may allow a "tie" or "draw", in which there is no single winner; others provide tie-breaking methods to ensure there is only one winner. They also may be arranged in a tournament format, producing a champion. Many sports leagues make an annual champion by arranging games in a regular sports season, followed in some cases by playoffs.

The Playoffs (in United States and Canada), Play-offs, Climax (in Japan) or Finals Series (in Australia and New Zealand) of a sports league are a competition played after the regular season by the top competitors to determine the league champion or a similar accolade. Depending on the league, the playoffs may be either a single game, a series of games, or a tournament, and may use a single-elimination system or one of several other different playoff formats. Playoff, in regard to international fixtures, is to qualify or progress to the next round of a competition or tournament.

In team sports in the U.S. and Canada, the vast distances and consequent burdens on cross-country travel have led to regional divisions of teams. Generally, during the regular season, teams play more games in their division than outside it, but the league's best teams might not play against each other in the regular season. Therefore, in the postseason a playoff series is organized. Any group-winning team is eligible to participate, and as playoffs became more popular they were expanded to include second- or even lower-placed teams – the term "wild card" refers to these teams.

The International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF; French: Fédération internationale de hockey sur glace; German: Internationale Eishockey-Föderation) is a worldwide governing body for ice hockey. It is based in Zurich, Switzerland, and has 84 member countries.

The IIHF maintains the IIHF World Ranking based on international ice hockey tournaments. Rules of play for IIHF events differ from hockey in North America and the rules of the National Hockey League (NHL). Decisions of the IIHF can be appealed through the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland. The IIHF maintains its own hall of fame for international ice hockey. The IIHF Hall of Fame was founded in 1997, and has been located within the Hockey Hall of Fame since 1998.

Cartel theory is usually understood as the doctrine of economic cartels. However, since the concept of 'cartel' does not have to be limited to the field of the economy, doctrines on non-economic cartels are conceivable in principle. Such exist already in the form of the state cartel theory and the cartel party theory. For the pre-modern cartels, which existed as rules for tournaments, duels and court games or in the form of inter-state fairness agreements, there was no scientific theory. Such has developed since the 1880s for the scope of the economy, driven by the need to understand and classify the mass emergence of entrepreneurial cartels. Within the economic cartel theory, one can distinguish a classical and a modern phase. The break between the two was set through the enforcement of a general cartel ban after Second World War by the US government.

Ivanhoe: A Romance (/ˈaɪvənhoʊ/ EYE-vən-hoh) by Walter Scott is a historical novel published in three volumes, in December 1819, as one of the Waverley novels. It marked a shift away from Scott's prior practice of setting stories in Scotland and in the more recent past. It became one of Scott's best-known and most influential novels.

Set in England in the Middle Ages, with colourful descriptions of a tournament, outlaws, a witch trial, and divisions between Jews and Christians, Normans and Saxons, the novel was credited by many, including Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin, with inspiring increased interest in chivalric romance and medievalism. As John Henry Newman put it, Scott "had first turned men's minds in the direction of the Middle Ages". It was also credited with influencing contemporary popular perceptions of historical figures such as King Richard the Lionheart, Prince John, and Robin Hood.

A wild card (also wildcard or wild-card and also known as an at-large berth or at-large bid) is an invitation to a tournament or a playoff berth awarded to a team or individual that does not qualify via an automatic bid. In some events, wildcards are chosen freely by the organizers. Other events have fixed rules. Some North American professional sports leagues compare the records of teams which did not qualify directly by winning a division or conference.

The Stanley Cup playoffs (French: Les séries éliminatoires de la Coupe Stanley) is the annual elimination tournament to determine the winner of the Stanley Cup, and the league champion of the National Hockey League (NHL). The four-round, best-of-seven tournament is held after the NHL's regular season. Eight teams from each of the league's two conferences qualify for the playoffs based on regular season points totals. The final round is known as the Stanley Cup Final, which matches the two conference champions.

The NHL is the only one of the big four major leagues in Canada and the United States to refer to its playoffs by the name of its championship trophy, a tradition which has arisen because the Stanley Cup is North America's oldest professional sports trophy, dating back more than two decades before the establishment of the NHL. Originally inscribed the Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup, the trophy was donated in 1892 by Lord Stanley of Preston, then–Governor General of Canada, initially as a "challenge trophy" for Canada's top-ranking amateur ice hockey club. From 1893 when the first Cup was awarded to 1914, the champions held onto the Cup until they either lost their league title to another club, or a champion from another league issued a formal challenge and defeated the reigning Cup champion in a final game to claim their win. Professional teams then first became eligible to challenge for the Stanley Cup in 1906. Starting in 1915, the Cup was officially contested between the champion of the National Hockey Association (NHA) and the champion of the Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA). After a series of league mergers and folds, including the 1917 establishment of the NHL as a successor to the NHA, the Stanley Cup became the championship trophy of the NHL prior to the 1926–27 season.

The International Basketball Federation (FIBA /ˈfiːbə/ FEE-bə; French: Fédération Internationale de Basketball) is an association of national organizations which governs the sport of basketball worldwide. FIBA defines the rules of basketball, specifies the equipment and facilities required, organizes international competitions, regulates the transfer of athletes across countries, and controls the appointment of international referees. A total of 212 national federations are members, organized since 1989 into five zones: Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania.

FIBA organizes both the men's and women's FIBA World Olympic Qualifying Tournament and the Summer Olympics Basketball Tournament, which are sanctioned by the IOC. The FIBA Basketball World Cup is a world tournament for men's national teams held every four years. Teams compete for the Naismith Trophy, named in honor of basketball's Canadian-American creator James Naismith. The tournament structure is similar but not identical to that of the FIFA World Cup in association football; these tournaments occurred in the same year from 1970 through 2014, but starting in 2019, the Basketball World Cup moved to the year following the FIFA World Cup. A parallel event for women's teams, the FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup, is also held quadrennial; from 1986 through 2014, it was held in the same year as the men's event but in a different country.

U.S. Open or US Open are open championship sporting tournaments that are hosted in the United States and in which anyone, especially amateur and professional, or American and non-American, may compete. The term may also be applied to non-sporting events, such as competitive gaming.

This article lists English football clubs whose men's sides have won competitive honours run by official governing bodies. Friendly competitions and matches organized between clubs are not included. The football associations FIFA and UEFA run international and European competitions; while The Football Association, and its mostly self-governing subsidiary bodies the English Football League and Premier League, run national competitions.

England's first competition organised by a national body, the FA Cup, began in the 1871–72 season, making it one of the oldest football competitions in the world. Arsenal hold the record number of wins, with 14. League football began in the next decade with the founding of The Football League in 1888–89. The name First Division was adopted in 1892, when The Football League gained a second division. The First Division remained the highest division of the English league system until 1992, when the Premier League was founded. Manchester United and Liverpool have won the most top division titles overall, with 20 each. The English equivalent of the super cup began in 1898 with the inauguration of the Sheriff of London Charity Shield, pitting the best professional and amateur sides of the year against each other. The trophy would develop into the FA Charity Shield in 1908, which was later renamed the FA Community Shield in 2002. Manchester United also hold the record here, with 21 wins. The Football League created its own knockout competition in 1960, the League Cup. Its current record is ten wins, held by Liverpool. The Anglo-Italian League Cup was created in 1969 to match English cup winners against the winners of the Coppa Italia, but was permanently disbanded in 1976. In 1985, the Full Members' Cup and Football League Super Cup were created as substitutes for UEFA competitions after UEFA banned English clubs for a number of years following the Heysel Stadium disaster. They finished in 1992 and 1986, respectively. The Football League Centenary Trophy marked The Football League's 100th birthday, in the 1988–89 season.

A poker tournament is a tournament where players compete by playing poker. It can feature as few as two players playing on a single table (called a "heads-up" tournament), and as many as tens of thousands of players playing on thousands of tables. The winner of the tournament is usually the person who wins every poker chip in the game and the others are awarded places based on the time of their elimination. To facilitate this, in most tournaments, blinds rise over the duration of the tournament. Unlike in a ring game (or cash game), a player's chips in a tournament cannot be cashed out for money and serve only to determine the player's placing.

The 1982 FIFA World Cup was the 12th FIFA World Cup, a quadrennial football tournament for men's senior national teams, and was played in Spain from 13 June to 11 July 1982. The tournament was won by Italy, who defeated West Germany 3–1 in the final held in the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium in Madrid. It was Italy's third World Cup title, but their first since 1938. The defending champions, Argentina, were eliminated in the second round (finishing third and last in their group). Algeria, Cameroon, Honduras, Kuwait and New Zealand made their first appearances in the finals.

The tournament featured the first penalty shootout in World Cup competition. This was the third and last World Cup to feature two rounds of group stages. It was also the third time (after 1934 and 1966) that all four semi-finalists were European.

The Major League Baseball (MLB) postseason is the annual playoff elimination tournament held to determine the champion of MLB in the United States and Canada. Since 2022, the postseason for each league—American and National—consists of two best-of-three Wild Card Series contested by the lowest-seeded division winner and the three wild card teams, two best-of-five Division Series (LDS) featuring the wild-card winners and the two highest-seeded division winners, and finally the best-of-seven League Championship Series (LCS). The winners of the American League Championship Series (ALCS) and the National League Championship Series (NLCS) play each other in the best-of-seven World Series. The postseason tournament takes place after the conclusion of MLB's regular season and takes approximately one month to complete. The only exception to any of the rules above would be the 2020 MLB season in which 16 teams qualified for the postseason.