Tiebreak

In general chess language, tiebreak can mean any procedure used to separate tied participants. Current regulations of the International Chess Federation (FIDE), however, make a technical distinction: a play-off resolves the tie through additional games, while Tie-Breaks are an ordered list of criteria that do not require additional games and are applied to tournament results or other specified data.

Common off-the-board criteria include:

• Direct encounter: compares the games played among the tied participants themselves.
• Buchholz: uses the scores of the opponents each participant faced.
• Sonneborn-Berger: weights opponents' scores according to the result achieved against each opponent.

The competition regulations specify the order of the criteria. The first is applied, and if some participants remain tied, the next is used for them, continuing as necessary. An event can also combine calculated criteria with a play-off. To understand a ranking, it is therefore not enough to know that a tiebreak exists; you need the published list and its order.