A bye is a special privilege given to a team or an individual in the initial rounds because of which it gets exempted from playing in the first round and directly enters the second round. In knock-out (single-elimination) tournaments, if the number of participants is not a power of two (e.g. 16 or 32), one of the methods used to make a working bracket are byes which automatically move certain participants into a later round without requiring them to compete in an earlier one. Although it may not be necessary based on the format of the tournament, other types of eliminator tournaments may also include a bye for other reasons, such as to reward the best ranked participant(s).

In round-robin tournaments where there are an odd number of competitors, usually one gets a bye in each round, as it is impossible for all competitors to play in the same round. However, over the whole tournament, each team plays the same number of games as well as sitting out for the same number of rounds during the tournament.

Is having a bye in a BJJ competition an advantage?

The results are in: a competitor with a bye has massively decreased chances of advancing to the next round.

JiuJitsu.net ran the results of the 2016 world championships.

Methods:

All blue-brown belt adult male matches at the 2016 IBJJF world championships were 1 competitor advanced by default via bye or pre-match DQ to face an opponent who had won a competition match were used in this data set.

Black belts were excluded as top athletes are intentionally given a bye as determined in the IBJJF coaches bracket meeting prior to bracketing black belt athletes.