Your Guide to Hosting the Greatest Cornhole Tournament Ever!

There’s nothing that brings friends and family together like a good old-fashioned cornhole tournament. Cornhole is a staple of any backyard get-together or barbecue, but today we’re going to help you bring your cornhole game to the next level by organizing a cornhole tournament of epic proportions. This is no easy task, but rest assured. We’ve got you covered. 

At Cornhole Worldwide, we’ve hosted plenty of cornhole tournaments in our day, so we’re going to help you plan a tournament that will be talked about for years to come and will even rival some of the greatest tournaments that can be found in professional cornhole leagues.

Invite Your Friends, Family, and Neighbors

No cornhole tournament is complete without, well, cornhole players. This first step is where your expert recruiting skills need to come to life. If people are given the choice between doing things and not doing things, they will almost always choose not doing things. So, you have to recruit hard. Create flyers, craft a cornhole championship trophy, tout a cash prize, provide free beer; do whatever you have to do to get people there.

If there’s food and drinks, people will show. You just have to put in that effort. Round up your entire family to come and help prepare. Turn it into a potluck, so that there’s a variety of tasty morsels and dishes for people to snack on. 

Of course, pick a nice, warm sunny day. Don’t schedule your cornhole tournament on a rainy day or if there’s a lightning storm predicted to happen. The more people that are there, the more likely that this tournament will go down in the history books.

Round Up All the Necessary Equipment and Amenities

There is certain equipment that is necessary if you are planning on hosting a tournament. What’s a cornhole tournament without cornhole? What are people going to think if they show up to a cornhole tournament with grim expressions on their faces and a thirst for victory, and it turns out that you forgot the cornhole bags? You’ll be considered a failure. Possibly forever. These are important things to think about!

As long as you have several cornhole boards laid out in the yard and an ample number of bags, you should be okay. However, it’s not entirely that simple. What if people get tired? If you don’t have an adequate amount of seating to accommodate the massive amount of people coming to your tournament, then make sure that people bring their own foldable chairs. 

What if they get hot and thirsty? Are you going to have enough water bottles for everybody? You probably didn’t think you would have to worry about dehydration at your cornhole tournament, and yet, here you are. 

Hosting a cornhole tournament is no laughing matter. These are important considerations to make when planning a tournament for the ages. If you’ve been tirelessly pondering over the question of whether you should grill hotdogs, hamburgers, or brats, then the answer is all three. You don’t want to risk turning people away because their favorite barbecue staple isn’t present.

Determine Teams and Team Names

Once you have an optimal number of people committed to your cornhole tournament, you’re going to have to come up with teams and team names. This should be a collective effort, however. 

If people show up with their significant others, only to find out that they are paired with their neighbor whom they have a fence rivalry with, then they are probably not going to be very happy. You should let everybody pick their own teams, but there can be no more than two people per team. No exceptions!

Once the teams are determined, everyone needs to determine what their team name is. The name needs to be something creative and awe-inspiring, and it should reflect the personalities or character quirks of the pair. Something like the Galloping Gophers, the Harrowing Hedgehogs, or the Breezy Bananas. Check out this list of creative cornhole-themed names that we came up with if you are in need of some inspiration.

Create a Cornhole Tournament Bracket

Once the teams have been set and the people are feeling competitive and ready to rumble, you need to determine the layout of your cornhole bracket. This is no easy task, but, luckily, there are several bracket-creation apps and websites out there to help you along the way. We recommend this one from Challonge, as it’s simple and easy-to-use. 

It is here that you will face some important questions. Will your cornhole tournament be single elimination or double elimination? If you want your tournament to be remembered for being hardcore and edgy, then we recommend going with the single elimination layout. This will separate the pretenders from the contenders. 

However, if you want there to be a loser’s bracket and for everyone to get a chance at redemption, then go for the double elimination. The double elimination tournament is more difficult to manage, but we know you can do it. As long as you stay organized, orderly, and efficient, you’ll have no problem whatsoever.

We recommend doing a random seeding, as you likely won’t know the skill levels of the different teams. Plus, up to this point, people haven’t yet proved what seeding they deserve to be placed at. Let them do that at the cornhole boards.

So, there you have it! That’s everything you need to consider when planning and hosting an epic cornhole tournament. As long as you follow our instructions exactly, then you will have nothing to worry about. If you really want to spice up your tournament, you can require people to bring their own cornhole jerseys to really get into the spirit of the competition. 

In addition, you could also invest in some awesome cornhole boards from Cornhole Worldwide! We have a number of different themed cornhole sets, or you can customize one of your own. The possibilities are endless. Take your cornhole tournament to the next level with the help of Cornhole Worldwide!