(Main article: 2012 Major League Soccer season) The 2012 MLS Cup Playoffs was the seventeenth post-season tournament culminating the Major League Soccer regular season. The tournament began on October 31, and culminated on December 1, 2012 with MLS Cup 2012, the seventeenth league championship for MLS, won by the Los Angeles Galaxy 3-1 over Houston Dynamo. It was the second year that the playoffs included ten teams, and the first playoff series since 2006 in which teams could not cross conference brackets. The top five teams in both the Eastern and Western conferences of the league earned berths, with the top three clubs in each conference earning direct byes to the . The fourth and fifth-place finishers of both conferences played in a single-elimination play-in match.