In two of my leagues, the top four teams go to the winner's bracket (just semi-finals and finals) while the next four teams go the the loser's bracket. (The remaining teams play totally meaningless round-robin games.)The team that wins the loser's bracket (fifth place) gets the same payout as the bottom team from the winner's bracket (fourth place) — each team gets half of its buy-in back.I was initially against that structure because fourth place is higher than fifth place, so fourth place should get a higher payout. But in fact, the team that ends up in fifth place almost always scores more points over the course of the whole season (including in the playoffs) than the team that ends up in fourth place. They usually have very similar records at the end of the regular season, but then the fourth-place team goes 0–2 from there while the fifth-place team goes 2–0. By the end of the playoffs, the fifth-place team's performance overall is generally more impressive. So I'm now in favor of the winner of the loser's bracket getting the same payout as the loser of the winner's bracket.