Groups to knockout

A real cup rarely takes a single slice of the table. The knockout stage's qualification can now combine tiers: all group winners, then all runners-up, then the best N third-placed sides — one spec, in that order. Unequal pools are normalised the fair way (results against the bottom side are dropped before thirds are compared).

Set it on the knockout stage as qualification: { combine: [...] } — each entry is a normal pick (take, topN or bestOfRank), resolved against the finished stage and concatenated. The same shape serves a cricket Super-Six, a hockey crossover, any pool→bracket sport. Pool picks match the pool key ("A"); the display name ("Pool A") also works.

Custom bracket order. By default the bracket seeds by the standard fold (1 meets 2 only in the final). When your competition publishes a fixed slot map — regional protection, third-place lookups — give the stage config a slotOrder: the round-one slots as seed numbers into the qualified list, null for a bye line. The engine validates the map (every seed exactly once) and generates that draw exactly.