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Swiss Tie Breaker Formats

Tie breaker options and explanations

Anthony avatar
Written by Anthony
Updated over 3 years ago

Our Swiss brackets have two options for breaking ties for standings.  If you'd like your tournament to use the same tiebreaker system as the Hearthstone Championship Tour, select HCT. Otherwise, select Default to use the system popularized by Magic the Gathering and Pokémon.

Here is a breakdown on how those two systems calculate ties.

Default Tie Breaker

Sorting Order

  1. The Players Opponent's Match Win Percentage

  2. The Players Game Win Percentage

  3. The Players Oponent's Opponent's Match Win Percentage

Opponent’s match-win percentage

A player’s match-win percentage is that player’s accumulated match points divided by the total match points possible in those rounds. If this number is lower than 0.33, use 0.33 instead. The minimum match-win percentage of 0.33 limits the effect low performances have when calculating and comparing opponents’ match-win percentage.

Game-win percentage

Similar to the match-win percentage, a player’s game-win percentage is the total number of game points he or she earned divided by the total game points possible (generally, 3 times the number of games played). Again, use 0.33 if the actual game-win percentage is lower than that.

HCT Tie Breaker

Sorting Order

  1. Win/Loss Sum

  2. First Tiebreaker Sum

  3. Timing

Tiebreaker #1 (T1): Win/Loss Sum

Tiebreaker #1 represents the performance of opponents that a player has played over the course of the tournament. Players that played against stronger opponents will be ranked higher within the tournament. The formula to calculate the number is: Total the number of points each opponent contributes.

Opponents contribute +1 point for each win they accumulate throughout the tournament and -1 for each loss they accumulate throughout the tournament. Each single opponent may never contribute less than -3 points to a player’s first tiebreaker. A bye does not contribute any points towards a player’s tiebreaker.

Tiebreaker #2 (T2): First Tiebreaker Sum

Tiebreaker #2 represents the performance of the opponents that all of a player’s opponents played. Players that played against opponents who consistently played against stronger opponents throughout the tournament will be ranked higher. The formula to calculate the number is:

Total the sum of Tiebreaker #1 (T1) for all opponents that player played.

Tiebreaker #3 (T3): Timing

Tiebreaker #3 represents the importance of the rounds in which you lost. Players losing in later rounds will be ranked higher within the tournament. The formula to calculate this number is:

The sum of the squares of the rounds in which you lost.

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