Tie-breaking methods

To draw or tie is to finish a competition with identical or inconclusive results. Draw is usually used in the United Kingdom, Ireland and the Commonwealth of Nations (except in Canada) and it is usually used for sports such as association football and Australian rules football. In cricket, a draw and a tie are two different things.

Ties or draws are possible in some, but not all, sports and games. Such an outcome, sometimes referred to as deadlock, can occur in politics, business, and wherever there are different factions regarding an issue.

In instances where a winner must be determined, several methods are commonly used. Across various sports:

The rules governing the resolution of drawn matches are rarely uniform across an entire sport, and are usually specified by the rules of the competition.

In other areas, such as in a vote, there may be a method to break the tie. Having an odd number of voters is one solution—after the election of the Doge of Venice by a committee of 40 was deadlocked in a tie, the number of electors was increased to 41—but may not always be successful, for example, if a member is absent or abstains. In many cases one member of an assembly may by convention not normally vote, but will exercise a casting vote in case of deadlock. Sometimes some method of random choice, such as tossing a coin, may be resorted to even in a formal vote.

Tie games, which were commonplace in the National Football League (NFL) through the 1960s, have become exceedingly rare with the introduction of sudden death overtime, which first applied to the regular season in 1974. The first game this new rule applied to ended in a tie between the Denver Broncos and Pittsburgh Steelers. The most recent NFL tie happened on 30 October 2016, when a game between the Washington Redskins and the Cincinnati Bengals ended in a 27-27 tie.

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