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.
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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.
There is no tie-break in Australian football: both teams earn two points, instead of four for a win and nil for a loss.
In association football contests, there are three methods of deciding a winner. The usual method is Normal Extra Time, where each team will play two 15-minute periods of extra time. The team who leads at the end of 30 minutes wins the tie. If, at the end of extra time, no winner can be decided, the match goes to a penalty shootout. Occasionally, in matches such as the Community Shield in England, the match can go straight to a penalty shootout after 90 minutes' play has been completed. Alternatively, in tournaments such as the English FA Cup, the match is replayed in its entirety, going through the aforementioned stages of extra time and penalties if the second match is drawn. This method is not used in the semi-finals or final.
If a baseball game is tied at the end of the usual nine innings, the game continues into extra innings until an inning ends with one team ahead. Although games are occasionally ended as ties on account of weather or darkness (the latter happened much more often before lights were installed on most professional baseball fields in the 1940s), and some leagues (including Nippon Professional Baseball) allow only a limited number of extra innings before a game ends as a tie, professional baseball in the United States has no such limit. The longest Major League game in history (on May 1, 1920) lasted 26 innings, and a minor-league game in 1981 lasted 33 innings. In some venues, including international baseball, an extra inning may begin with a runner already on base, in order to increase the chances of a resolution.
In professional American football, if both teams are tied at the end of regulation, an overtime period of 15 minutes is played under "sudden death" rules (first team to score under any legal means, touchdown (offensive or defensive), field goal or safety, wins). If neither team scores before the 15 minute limit, the game is considered a draw and ends, and counts as a "half-win" in the standings.
In sports including baseball, American football, and basketball, the "regular season" consisting of several months may end with one or more teams tied for a spot in the playoffs. In this case, a one-game playoff (or occasionally a best-of-three series) may be played to break the tie. Some leagues use a tie breaking system to determine who finishes ahead based on things like goals, record between the two teams, and other factors.
In some sports and tournaments, the tiebreaker is a statistic that is compared to separate contestants who have the same win-loss record, particularly for the purpose of awarding prizes to the top players. Some competitions, such as the FIFA World Cup, the Euroleague 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 tournament. 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.
Field Target — a precision air rifle shooting sport — uses either a sudden-death or shot count tiebreaker. The sudden-death tiebreaker (usually used to determine a single place such as 3rd when 3 awards are to be given or between two shooters) consists of each tied shooter (order dictated or decided by coin-toss or other technique) shoots at a target (typically a difficult shot such as ½" at 35 yards). If all shooters in the tie fail, then the target is moved closer. If one shooter hits, then the next shooter(s) who miss are out of the competition. If a round is complete with multiple ties remaining, the target is moved out (made more difficult) and the same procedure is repeated until only one shooter remains. This procedure can then be repeated to determine further placings among the losers of the previous round.
In cases where multiple places are to be determined (as in five people tied for first place), one approach is to have each shooter make several shots (n-1 or more with n being the number of tied shooters). If all shooters miss all shots, the target is moved-in (made easier); similarly, if all shooters hit on all shots, the target is moved-out (made more difficult). If some variation in hits exists after a round, the top score gets the highest placing while those with identical scores can have a sudden-death shootout or a repeat of the multiple shot shootout (typically with a more difficult target) to determine other placings.