Scoring Your Games

Understanding the Head-to-Head Tiebreaker

Old World Rankings · Published 21 Jul 2026 · 4 min read

How the Head-to-Head tiebreaker works, what the H2H column means, and a worked example of a six-player tied group.

Sometimes the standings look wrong at first glance: a player sits above someone with more Tournament Points. When the event uses the Head-to-Head tiebreaker, that's usually the explanation. The players were tied, and their games against each other decided the order.

What Head-to-Head does

Head-to-Head only applies between players who are tied on every ranking metric above it in the event's tiebreaker order. It never compares just two players in isolation: everyone level on the earlier metrics forms one tied group, whether that's two players or six. Then we ask how each of them did against the others in that group.

Each player in the tied group gets a Head-to-Head score, which is their wins minus losses against the other tied players only. Beat someone in the group and it's +1. Lose to someone in the group and it's -1. Draws count for nothing either way, and games against anyone outside the group are ignored. The highest score ranks first. Players still level fall through to the next tiebreaker.

A worked example

Here's a real situation (names changed). Two players, both 3-1-1, and the one with fewer Tournament Points is ranked higher:

#	Player	Record	TP	H2H
4	Anna	3-1-1	56	+2
5	Ben	3-1-1	59	0

Anna and Ben weren't the whole story. This event ranked by W-L-D record first (win = 1, draw = ½), and six players sat level on 3.5 record points: five on 3-1-1 and one on 2-0-3. Those six formed a single tied group, so Head-to-Head applied to all of them before Tournament Points was consulted. Members of the group had played five games against each other over the event, and each player's net result from those games is their H2H score:

Player	Record	Pts	Direct results within the tied group	Net
Anna	3-1-1	3.5	beat Eli (R3), beat Dan (R4)	+2
Ben	3-1-1	3.5	drew Finn (R5)	0
Cara	2-0-3	3.5	drew Dan (R5)	0
Dan	3-1-1	3.5	beat Finn (R2), drew Cara (R5), lost to Anna (R4)	0
Eli	3-1-1	3.5	lost to Anna (R3)	-1
Finn	3-1-1	3.5	lost to Dan (R2), drew Ben (R5)	-1

Anna is the only player who beat other members of the group, so she takes the top spot outright. That includes finishing above Eli, whose 63 TP is the highest of the six. Ben, Cara and Dan are still level on 0, so their order falls to the next tiebreaker (Tournament Points), and the same happens for Eli and Finn at -1:

#	Player	H2H	Resolved by
4	Anna	+2	Head-to-Head
5	Ben	0	TP (59)
6	Cara	0	TP (56)
7	Dan	0	TP (54)
8	Eli	-1	TP (63)
9	Finn	-1	TP (55)

Reading the H2H column

A positive number means the player has won more than they've lost against the people they're currently tied with. Zero means they're level inside the group, either through draws or through wins cancelling out losses. A negative number means the group has the better of them so far. A dash means the player isn't tied with anyone at the moment, so there's nothing to compare.

The number is relative to the specific group the player is tied with right now, not a running total for the event. It can change from round to round as ties form and break, even in rounds where the player didn't face anyone from the group.

What about unbreakable circles?

If A beat B, B beat C, and C beat A, everyone in the circle nets to zero. Head-to-Head genuinely can't separate them, so the tie falls through to the next metric in the event's order, the same as any other unresolved tie.

For organisers

Head-to-Head is enabled and prioritised in your event's ranking configuration (Scoring, then Rankings). Its position in the order matters: placed after the W-L-D record, it resolves record ties before points do; placed after Tournament Points, it only applies to exact points ties. When enabled, the H2H column appears automatically on your standings table and the public results page.