This article explains the leaderboard's ranking and tiebreaker logic.
Tournament leaderboards are ordered following the tiered protocol below. The leaderboard is updated after every match score is submitted.
| Step | Criteria | Explanation and notes |
| 1 | Wins | Forfeit wins and bye wins are scored as a sweep win. |
| 2 | Head-to-head record |
The head-to-head tiebreaker compares all participants with an equal record. Participants are ranked based on their collective win-loss performance against the other tied participants. In the ranking calculation, a match-win earns points while a match-loss earns negative points. Bye-wins are not considered and a forfeit loss is weighted more heavily than a standard loss. For more info, see below. |
| 3 | Overall game win percentage | Winning a match 3-0 is better than 3-2. |
| 4 | Round differential ("+/-") |
Applicable competitions only: Total rounds won minus total rounds lost across all matches inside the same stage. A higher positive value is better. (e.g. 15 rounds won and 10 rounds lost will have a round differential of +5). |
| 5 | Opponents' game win percentage | It is better to beat an opponent who consistently won 3-0 than 3-2. |
| 6 | Forfeit losses | Fewer is better. |
| 7 | Bye wins | Fewer is better. |
| 8 | The number of wins earned before the first loss | More wins is better. |
| 9 | Opponent's game win percentage in the first loss | Higher opponent's game win percentage is better. |
Additional Details for the Head-to-head tiebreaking
Participants with a tied record will be ranked with alphabetical characters to designate their placement within the "bucket" of peers they were compared against, with earlier in the alphabet being higher.
Once the head-to-head tiebreaker has assigned point totals to all participants with an equal record, if there are any remaining ties, it will rerun comparing only the still-tied participants against each other. Once there are no more ties, or the remaining ties cannot be broken by this method of comparison, the leaderboard ranking will transition to the next criteria (overall game win percentage).
For a concrete example, assume there are six rosters with four wins and three losses. All six of these rosters are compared against the five others -- did they play against any of each other, and if so, points are awarded based on the outcomes. Let us assume the point totals are 5, 5, 2, 2, 2, and -4. The two rosters with five points are assigned to the "A" group, the three with two points the "B" group, and the negative score the "C" group.
The head-to-head algorithm will then re-run itself on each of the A and B groups individually. If the two rosters with 5 points never played each other, this step is complete, and the leaderboard proceeds to overall game win percentage to break the tie. Next, if any members of B-group did play each other and points could be assigned (e.g. 3, 1, and -2), they will receive a new ranking (in this case, BA, BB, and BC).
Frequently Asked Questions
If my roster beat another, how can we be ranked lower than them on the leaderboard?
In a smaller population tournament, head-to-head is often literally the comparison of two participants, and is easy to resolve. However, this becomes problematic when working with larger populations. For example, if Team A defeated Team B, Team B defeated Team C, and Team C defeated Team A... What happens next? Or, imagine an increasingly complex scenario with five participants such as A > B > C > A, also with D > E > B, and A > E. This is why we wrote our head-to-head algorithm.
Wow, head-to-head is so complicated. Isn't there a simpler solution?
Simpler solutions include limiting the number of participants in a tournament, assigning participants into using a specific match queue, or increasing the number of available tournament divisions to spread out the population. The first two solutions restrict schools' access to esports, so we are not pursuing them at this time. However, we will add additional divisions to popular tournaments in an effort to spread out participants and have fewer ties.
Why does the leaderboard change all the time?
The leaderboard is re-calculated for accuracy every time a score is updated.
Will we make the playoffs?
Your team administrator will be notified via email once the leaderboards are finalized and playoffs are seeded. It generally takes us a few days to resolve any pending match disputes, assign forfeits to un-played matches (HSEL, MSEL, and YWC), and then seed the playoff brackets.