Group tournament ranking system

Examples with unequal numbers of matches include the 1895 County Championship in English cricket, and the U.S. National Football League prior to 1972, when tie games were excluded from the winning percentage used for regular-season standings.

For example, in rugby union, bonus points may be awarded for scoring a certain number of tries in a match, usually four, or for losing by a relatively small margin, usually 7 (the value of a converted try) or less.

Official listings while a tournament is in progress may need to take account of competitors having played differing fractions of their schedules.

The games behind figure used unofficially in Major League Baseball occasionally gives a different ordering from the official "winning percentage".

In the National Hockey League (and various minor hockey leagues), where regular season games tied after three periods go into a five-minute sudden-death overtime period and then a shootout if needed, the following method is used: Most European ice hockey leagues including the KHL, was well as the North American PWHL, use an alteration to the NHL method that does not encourage regulation draws by awarding more combined points than regulation decisions.

This system was also used at the 2010 Winter Olympics in the preliminary round-robin games:[17] When competitors are level on points, there is usually some tiebreaker criterion.

If there are more than two tied competitors in a 2-competitor game, the play-off may be a round-robin or knockout tournament, as in the 1992–93 League of Ireland.