# Last One Standing

**Last One Standing** is a survival format. Every participant starts with a number of lives, every lost match
costs one, and whoever has no lives left is out. The last one standing wins. Use it for evenings where an
early exit is part of the fun, or as a fast way to find a winner among many players without a long table.

## How it works

1. You set the **Number of Lives**, default 3. That is the number of losses a participant can afford: with 3 lives the third loss puts you out.
2. Kickertool draws a round. Winners keep their lives, losers lose one. Participants with zero lives no longer appear in the draw. The table shows **Lives Left**, which is lives minus lost matches.
3. As soon as every match of the round has a result, the next round is drawn automatically. There is no **New Round** button.
4. The stage ends when one participant is left. Their opponents rank by how long they lasted.

## The table

Columns in sorting order:

1. **Lives Left**
2. **Last Round Played**: who dropped out later ranks higher.
3. **Encounters Difference**, **Set Difference**, **Goal Difference**.

## Singles or teams

The entry type decides how the mode plays:

- **MonsterDYP**: individual players who get a new partner every round, drawn with the same criteria as in [MonsterDYP](/kickertool/modes/monster-dyp/): no bye twice in a row, no repeated partners as long as possible, few repeated opponents. Lives are per player: both players of a losing team lose one. When fewer than four players are left, they play one against one, every pairing once, until one player remains.
- **Single**, **Doubles** or **Team Name**: fixed entries that play against each other. Round 1 pairs the first half of the field against the second half. Later rounds search for the pairing with the fewest repeated opponents and, among those, the most even matches by standing. With an odd number of remaining participants one gets a bye and keeps their lives.

## Options

- **Number of Lives**: 1 makes it a single elimination without a bracket, 2 or 3 give everybody a real second chance. More lives mean more rounds: as a rule of thumb, expect the number of lives times log₂ of the field size, so 3 lives with 16 players is about 12 rounds.
- **Randomize entries before tournament start**: on by default.
- **Draw**, **Points for Win**, **Points for Draw**, **Play with Multiple Encounters**. Points do not decide the ranking here, only lives and the last round played.

## Players who come and go

- **Late check-in** is possible while the stage runs. A newcomer gets as many lives as the current average of the participants still in the game, rounded. Example: 3 lives configured, the remaining players have 2, 2 and 1 lives left, the newcomer starts with 2. So nobody can outlast everyone just by arriving late.
- **Pause** a participant who takes a break. Paused participants keep their lives and are skipped in the draw. **Unpause** brings them back in the next round.
- **Remove from Tournament** takes a participant out for good.

## Running the stage

- The latest round is shown on top of the round list.
- You can remove the latest round as long as it has no results.

## Next steps

For a survival-free variant of the same evening see [MonsterDYP](/kickertool/modes/monster-dyp/).