Tie-Breaker Policy

NAQT has a specific policy on what tie-breakers may be used to differentiate teams with identical records, either for the purpose of rebracketing during a tournament or determining the championship or the final order-of-finish. These rules apply only to Official Events, though other events are encouraged to adopt them as well.

Unless a tournament is using some variant of power-matching, rebracketing and final results should be decided on the basis of won-lost records. Tie-breakers are applied to distinguish between teams with identical won-lost records, but neither statistics-based nor head-to-head-based tie-breakers may be used. Common examples of statistics-based tie-breakers (none of which may be used) are total points scored, total point differential, points per tossup heard, and so forth.

Note that if a tournament is broken into playoff brackets, that division takes precedence over won-lost record--it is impossible for a team from a lower bracket to finish higher than one from a higher bracket based solely on performance within those brackets. Additional games between the teams could be used to justify such a result.

If ties must be broken (as is the case in rebracketing or determining the championship, but not necessarily for reporting overall results for lower-finishing teams), they must be played off, at the buzzer. It is permissible to use statistics-based tie-breakers to determine the order in which teams play. Tie-breaker games must be played according to normal rules (in particular, they must include bonuses and involve only two teams at one time).

For example, if a twelve-team tournament is rebracketed into an upper six teams and a bottom six teams and the sixth-place and seventh-place teams are tied at 6-5 after a full round robin, they should play a whole or half game (at the tournament director's discretion) to determine who advances to the upper bracket. If teams five, six, and seven are tied at 5-6, however, statistics may be used to determine which two play each other for the "privilege" of playing the third team for the remaining spot in the upper bracket. If the fifth and sixth place teams were tied, however, no tie-breaker would be necessary since both were destined for the same bracket. After the rebracketing, regardless of overall record, the lower-bracket teams must receive lower placement than the higher-bracket teams (unless further games between them are scheduled).

Tournament hosts must be aware of the possible ways in which their chosen format might require tie-breaker games and plan their schedule accordingly. Tournament directors can use tie-breakers as short as eight questions to break ties in this fashion if time or questions are limited, though whole or half games (18 minutes or 9 minutes) are preferred.

The only exception to this policy is if the schedule, either by design or as a result of earlier tie-breakers or mistakes, already requires all of the questions provided by NAQT for the tournament. Only in that case will NAQT condone the use of statistics-based (not head-to-head-based) tie-breakers to determine rebracketing (but not final results). If statistics-based tie-breakers must be used in this case, the statistic used must be points scored per tossup heard.

If a tournament uses a format that is strongly dependent on strength-of-schedule factors (such as most power-matching formulas) so that rankings are not primarily determined by won-lost records, this policy does not apply; it is assumed that the strength-of-schedule factors will sufficiently differentiate between teams with identical records.