Tiebreaker
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In games and sports, a tiebreaker 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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[edit] In matches
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 football (soccer).
Penalty shootouts in football (soccer) usually occur in knock-out tournaments, such as cup competitions. When two teams are level at the end of extra time, each team gets to take five penalty kicks each. If the winner still hasn't been decided, the shootout goes into sudden death mode, where each team has one penalty each until a winner is decided. A tie is broken first by one 5 minute period. If a team has still yet to score then they go into another 5 minute period. If still after these 10 minutes no team has scored it goes into penalty kicks.
The match may instead be replayed in its entirety.
[edit] In tournaments
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.
[edit] In Field Target
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.
