Standings and tiebreakers
Standings are computed, never typed. Every time a result is saved, the affected group's table is recalculated and the public site follows. What you control is the sport, which decides the scoring and the ranking ladder.
When you apply a format, each group's table is created straight away with a row of zeros for every team, so it lists the whole group before the first result is in.
What a win is worth
| Sport | Win | Draw | Loss |
|---|---|---|---|
| Football, futsal | 3 | 1 | 0 |
| Handball | 2 | 1 | 0 |
| Basketball, volleyball, padel (pairs) | 2 | — | 1 |
| Padel (club teams) | 2 | 1 | 0 |
| Ice hockey | 3 | 1 | 0 |
| Taekwondo, judo, generic individual | 1 | — | 0 |
| Generic team sport | 3 | 1 | 0 |
A dash means the sport cannot draw: basketball plays overtime, a padel match is best-of-three, a combat bout goes to golden point. FairGame refuses a level score on those rather than letting an impossible result into the table. In basketball, volleyball and padel pairs a defeat still earns 1 point.
Ice hockey is the exception worth reading twice. It uses the IIHF four-bucket formula: a regulation win is 3, a win after overtime or game-winning shots is 2, a loss after overtime or GWS is 1, and a regulation loss 0. The table gains columns for the after-regulation results. If your tournament runs without overtime and lets group games stand tied, the formula degrades to a plain 3–1–0 and the extra columns simply stay empty — you do not have to configure anything.
How a tie is broken
Each sport declares a ladder. The comparison walks it from the top and stops at the first difference.
| Sport | Ladder |
|---|---|
| Football, generic team sport | Points → goal difference → goals for → head-to-head → mini-table |
| Handball, padel (club teams) | Points → difference → scored |
| Futsal | Points → goal difference → goals for → head-to-head → mini-table |
| Ice hockey | Points → head-to-head → mini-table → goal difference → goals for → regulation wins |
| Basketball, volleyball, padel (pairs), taekwondo, judo, generic individual | Points → wins → difference → scored |
Choosing your own order. A tournament can replace its sport's ladder under Settings → Schedule & format → Tiebreakers: keep the sport default, put head-to-head first (the FIFA and UEFA order) or set a custom order, such as goal difference then head-to-head. Points always come first. See tournament settings.
Two rungs need the matches themselves rather than the table row:
- Head-to-head — the result played between exactly the two tied competitors.
- Mini-table (sub-group) — a table over only the games among the tied competitors, ranked points, then difference, then scored. This is what IIHF applies whenever three or more are level.
Both are honoured wherever a group is ranked: every table, the knockout draw, and a bracket drawn before the groups finished, whose group places are filled in the moment a group's last match is saved, and filled again when a result in that group is corrected.
If teams are level on every step of the ladder, they are listed alphabetically by name. The tables and the knockout bracket all use this order, so the team shown first in a group is always the one the bracket advances as its winner. There is not yet a way to record a drawing of lots or a committee decision instead.
The column labels follow the sport: GF / GA / GD where the score unit is goals, PF / PA / Diff where it is points, SW / SL / Diff where it is sets.
When the margin is capped
A tournament can count its published-margin cap in the standings, for rules where goals beyond the margin do not count. Each match then counts at most the cap towards goals for, goals against and goal difference — in the table, in head-to-head and the mini-table, and in the knockout draw. Points, wins and draws do not change: a capped win is still a win.
Swiss and adaptive pools
A pre-drawn Swiss pool is not a round-robin: teams play only some of the field, so two teams on the same points may have had very different opponents. Its table ranks by:
- points;
- Opponents' points (the SOS column, for strength of schedule) — the sum of the current points of everyone a team has played. Each scored meeting counts once; a bye adds zero;
- the sport's remaining tiebreaks from the ladder above, without head-to-head and the mini-table, which a partial schedule cannot support.
Because the tiebreak uses opponents' current points, correcting a result anywhere in the pool can reorder teams that are level on points.
An adaptive pool is ranked by skill rating rather than points, with a Skill column beside the points. Each round pairs teams of similar skill, so points depend on who a team happened to meet; the rating weighs every result by the strength of the opponent. The public table says so under it.
Both orders apply everywhere the table appears: the public site, the Groups page and the control room.
Walkovers
A result saved with Walkover switched on — a match one team did not play — counts in the table like any other result. It is left out of skill ratings, and so out of adaptive pairing. See correcting a result.
Drawn group matches
Some sports' full format always produces a winner, so FairGame refuses a level result when a match is completed. Short recreational formats do draw — one timed set, a single short game — and Settings → Schedule & format → Allow drawn group matches lets a group match stand level in that case. The draw then counts as a draw: worth more than a defeat, less than a win.
Knockout and placement matches are unaffected. They still need a winner to send someone through.
When the table looks wrong
Almost always one of these:
- A result is missing. An unplayed match is not a 0–0. Check the group's fixtures before the arithmetic.
- A team was moved after fixtures existed. Dragging a team to another group on Organize groups deletes the matches it already had, after asking first — see categories and groups.
- Goal difference does not match the scorelines above it. That is a published-margin cap set to Only shorten the published score, not an error — the table counts real goals while the scorelines are printed to the cap. If your rules say goals beyond the margin do not count, count the cap in the standings instead.
- A knockout tie was never settled. A level knockout blocks its next round: the bracket shows Level — record the shootout and will not advance until the tiebreak tally is entered.
See also troubleshooting.