The Poule system is a mixture of the Round robin and the Elimination systems. All entries are partitioned into groups of 4, the so called poules. In these groups, two rounds of a complete elimination system are played. After that, the so called "Barrage" is played, which is a match for the second ranking position: it is played between the loser of the final and the winner of the game between the losers.

The poule system ends in a unique ranking:

• the winner is the entry, who won both matches,
• the entry, which looses both matches is on rank 4, and
• positions 2 and 3 are ranked by the result of the "Barrage".

The following sample shows a single poule of a tennis tournament: