Tiebreakers

In games and sports, a tiebreaker or tiebreak is used to determine a winner from among players or teams that are tied at the end of a contest, or a set of contests.

In some situations, the tiebreaker may consist of another round of play. For example, if contestants are tied at the end of a quiz game, they each might be asked one or more extra questions, and whoever correctly answers the most from that extra set is the winner. In many sports, teams that are tied at the end of a match compete in an additional period of play called "overtime" or "extra time". The extra round may also not follow the regular format, e.g. a tiebreak in tennis or a penalty shootout in association football.

In some sports, tournaments, and playoffs, the tiebreaker is a statistic that is compared to separate contestants who have the same win-loss record. Some competitions, such as the FIFA World Cup, the Euroleague, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League and the National Football League, have a whole set of tiebreaking rules in which a group of statistics between the tied teams are compared, one at a time, to determine the seeding in their respective knockout or playoff tournament.

The statistics that are compared may include total goals scored, the record between the two tied teams, and other factors. In many of these tiebreaking rules, if the teams remain tied after comparing all of these statistics, then the tie is broken at random using a coin toss or a drawing of lots. Swiss system tournaments use a variety of criteria not found in other types of tournament which exploit features specific to the Swiss system: see tie-breaking in Swiss system tournaments.

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