We’ve had four days of action in Hamburg and a lot of great volleyball to enjoy. Pool play ends today and the women’s lucky losers round for eight of the third place finishers will wrap up the evening. There are a lot of questions about how the draw for the next round happens, but don’t worry, that is what the Beach Volley Blog does best. I’ve got you covered.

Digging into a very exciting document (read sarcasm here) called FIVB 2019 World Championships Event Specific Regulations answers all your burning questions. Since you probably don’t want to search the web for this document and then read it as much as I did, I’ll share what I’ve learned. At the bottom of this page is a bracket that captures this explanation.

Group Winners

Obviously the 12 group winners advance to the knockout stage. The fact you may not have known, however, is that their placement into the next round is not done by draw or related to their performance relative to other group winners. The placement into the knockout stage for group winners was set before the tournament started.

The arrangement should give an advantage to the four highest seeded teams entering the tournament. That is the top teams in pools A, B, C and D. The winners of these pools get to play one of the lucky losers in the first round, which means one of the four teams that had the worst pool play records remaining in the tournament. The winners of A, B, C and D also won’t have to face another group stage winner until the quarterfinals. That would be a pretty big advantage if the pools all worked out the way they were expected.

Rebecca and her partner Ana Patricia are taking care of business in group D. Photo by FIVB.

But if you’ve been watching the World Championships, you know that hasn’t been the case at all. In the case of the second seeded women’s team, Hermannova and Slukova of the Czech republic, they were a last minute scratch due to a very unfortunate broken toe. That meant that group B was suddenly wide open and it was the surprising and extremely impressive Latvian pair of Tina Graudina and Anastasija Kravcenoka that took advantage of the void and won all three group B matches. That means the team entering the tournament seeded 31st has the best path to the quarterfinals. The top seeds for the women’s side were Germans Sandra Ittlinger and Chantal Laboureur but they lost the group decider to Italians Marta Menegatti and Viktoria Orsi. Only Brazil’s Ana Patricia and Rebecca won one of the top four groups as expected.

Latvia’s Tina Graudina and Anastasija Kravcenoka are having all kinds of fun exceeding expectations in Hamburg. Photo by FIVB.

For the men’s top four seeds, things have gone according to plan so far. Mol & Sorum and Bryl & Fijalek still have their most difficult group matches today, so there could be a bit more craziness ahead. Cherif & Tijani and Krasilnikov & Stoyanovskiy took care of business in groups C and D.

Russia’s Viacheslav Krasilnikov cuts a shot past Austria’s Clemens Dopler in the group B decider. Photo by FIVB.

The other group winners will also be placed into predetermined slots on the bracket. Winners of groups E, F, G and H will get to play one of the top four finishing 3rd place teams while the winners of groups I, J, K and L will play against the four worst 2nd place finishers in the first round. The way the tournament is set up, all of the group winners from groups E through L will meet in the second round if the advance that far.

Winning a group is obviously the best way to start a tournament but there have been some unexpected results. That means that a good or bad draw could create an early matchup between teams we thought would meet in the finals. A team may have overachieved to win their group only to be drawn against Walsh Jennings and Sweat who finished third in their group.

*It is important to note that the draws are protected so that no teams that were in the same group will play against each other in the first round.

Group Runner’s Up

It’s with the second place finishers that we start to rely on the luck of the draw to see the path to a World Championships. The group runners up are divided into three groups of four to be drawn into the bracket. The groups are divided based on “match points” earned in pool play. Teams get 2 “match points” for a win and 1 point for a loss. Most second place teams will have five match points. To break any ties in match points, we move to the next factor, set ratio. Teams that won their matches 2 – 0 and lost 1 – 2 to get to five points would have a better set ratio than a team that won their matches 2 -1 and lost 0 – 2. If ties remain, we look at rally point ratios. This may explain why some teams were so ruthless when playing against lower seeds and beating them 21 – 2. It seemed cruel (and it was) but this is the World Championships after all and winning these kinds of tiebreakers can make a big difference down the road. The final tie breaker, if needed, is the pre tournament seeding.

Joy Stubbe of The Netherlands gets a big block and an even bigger victory over Australia’s Taliqua Clancy. Stubbe and VanIersel topped the group sending Clancy and Artacho to second and Walsh Jennings and Sweat to third in the women’s most exciting pool. Photo by FIVB.

The best four 2nd place teams based on the system described above will be drawn into matches against the 5th – 8th best 2nd place teams in the first round. The remaining 2nd place teams will be drawn into matches against the group winners from pools I, J, K and L. For the women that means a likely first round match up against a Brazilian, American or Canadian team. One second place men’s team will be drawn into a match against Evandro and Bruno. Congratulations on finishing second in your group, your reward is to try to pass Evandro’s serve! Not a huge prize for finishing second in your group.

Third Place Finishers

These teams are either thrilled to still be playing or really disappointed that they didn’t do much better in pool play. In any case, they are in third place and that means there is still a chance to turn things around. Using the same criteria of “match points” followed by set ratio and finally rally point ratio as described for the runner’s up, third place teams will be divided into two groups. The best four will advance directly to the first round and be drawn into matches against the winners of groups E, F, G and H. The lowest eight third place finishers will be ranked (using the same system again) from 1 to 8 for the ‘Lucky Losers’ round. The 1st ranked ‘Lucky Loser” plays the 8th ranked team, 2nd plays 7th, 3rd plays 6th and 4th plays 5th. The winner of each of those matches survives and gets to play the group winners from pools A – D.

Who is Going Home?

Losers of the Lucky Losers round are actually not lucky at all. They are finished and placed 33rd. Fourth place teams in every group placed 37th. They walk away with $4,800 and $3,400 per team respectively in addition to some world ranking / Olympic Qualification points.

Nick Lucena gets blocked by Ben Saxton (and this wasn’t the only time) in a match that saw Canada spin Group F into chaos. There is everything left to play for in the last matches for these teams. Photo by FIVB.

There are still more group matches to be played and mostly it will be the fourth seeded teams in every group that are making an early exit. The exception on the women’s side are the very disappointed Polish pair Kociolek and Wojtasik. When the Czech women withdrew, they were suddenly the top ranked team in Group B, but they couldn’t take advantage and fell all the way to fourth place and an early exit. There are two men’s groups (F and J) where every team has won one match and lost one match with one match to play. That means that some very good teams (Dalhausser/Lucena or Brouwer/Meeuwsen) are at huge risk of finishing fourth and some unexpected teams have a very real chance of coming out group winners. That’s why I love these kinds of tournaments.