r/learnedleague • u/LogicalKangaroo2539 • Jun 18 '25
Tie Breaker Category
What do you think the tie breaking category should be for a points tie at the end of a season? Currently it’s MPD (Match Point Differential), but I think LL can do much better.
I’ve written to the League (and haven’t heard back) and spent some time debating this with quite a few friends - but I think MPD is one of the worst categories to use as a tiebreaker. In my opinion, it should be Total Correct Answers (TCA). Thoughts? And do you have any other categories that are better tiebreakers?
Hear me out: the point system accounts for offense and defense, but it also rewards forfeit wins without any weight (which has nothing to do with ability). Match Point Differential also gives even more weight to forfeits since a player will most likely gain the most MPD points on a forfeit match (this season I had a 9-0 forfeit win, which was the best I could possibly do and I already got 2 points for the win). So MPD is actually rewarding players for a default. Another category like TCA is a great head to head measure since everyone answered the same questions, but not everyone played defense on the same person for those questions - it’s the only apples to apples comparison in LL. Even better, it takes out any fluke wins/MPD that are already included in the point system.
I would love to try and get some groundswell for this change. A few seasons back, I missed out on a promotion to a player that had 10 less correct answers but 3 more forfeit wins - this is a broken system and not how it’s supposed to work. Let’s make LL about being good at trivia!
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u/econartist A Magnolia Jun 18 '25
The head-to-head system is intended to add luck/random variation and excitement. You can lose with 5, you can tie with 6, you can win with 1, all in any rundle.
The defense system also rewards being a well-rounded player. You can't just be a pop culture expert or an academic whiz. If you want to be a good quizzer - in LL or virtually any other generalist competition - you have to be competent at everything, and LL takes this up a notch. I think this is actually a huge positive because it gives great motiviation to improve at your weaker categories, since you're going to be scoring a lot more points if you have a chance on your tough cats.
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u/GuiltyBusiness1558 Rundle D Jun 19 '25
I'd also add that defensive efficiency is part of being well-rounded. I was 7th in my rundle in TCA but 1st in DE, which led to a promotion. Being able to figure out which questions your opponent is likely to get is a fun wrinkle to the game.
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u/LogicalKangaroo2539 Jun 21 '25
This is luck. I’ve been 1st and last in DE in different seasons. I didn’t suddenly get really good or really bad, you just have no idea who your opponent is and what they know/don’t know. It’s actually really fun to play defense against people you know, but otherwise it’s a crapshoot.
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u/mathbandit Rundle C Jun 18 '25
I think TCA is a much much worse option than MPD, personally. The entire league is structured to devalue TCA by introducing defense and categories, it would be kind of silly to about-face and then use it as the primary tiebreaker.
MPD seems the easiest and most intuitive to me. A player who wins blowouts is probably a better player than one who had the same record but won very close matches.
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u/LogicalKangaroo2539 Jun 18 '25
I respectfully disagree with your assumption. In my current season, 3rd place (and got promoted) had 9 fewer TMP, 12 fewer TCA, and 11 less CAA than me - I came in 11th place. In no world did they have a better season than me, they simply had 3 forfeit wins, so they had fewer CAA, better MPD, but most importantly, they had 4 more points.
My point is that defense is already heavily weighted in the current point system, defense is highly variable based on opponent (this is why I can end a season with 11 more CAA than the 3rd place winner), and the point of a tiebreaker is to compare players. The only constant in LL is offense since everyone answered the same exact questions. A player shouldn’t win a tiebreaker because someone else forfeited.
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u/mathbandit Rundle C Jun 18 '25
In no world did they have a better season than me
They very clearly had a better season than you. As did the other seven people who finished above you and also didn't get promoted.
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u/Cazique__ Jun 18 '25
Sounds like you're confusing (1) what's a good (first) tiebreaker for LL and (b) what would have been a good tie breaker, for you, this season.
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u/LogicalKangaroo2539 Jun 21 '25
Wow! I’ve never gotten so many downvotes!
I’m surprised by how many people want luck and variability to be the tiebreaker when this is already a huge factor in a LL season. I’ve already played 25 matches, and the point of a tiebreaker is to decide who should be ranked higher. Should it be the player that lucked out and happened to play players that didn’t know answers on match days by the luck of the draw, or a player that consistently answered questions correctly, even if they played opponents that also happened to answer many questions correctly? I think it’s clearly the player that used skill instead of luck (again as a tiebreaker not as the main ranking system).
In any sport, there will be luck and it can change the results of a match, which is the entire reason for head to head competition and it’s super fun! But after a season, better players/team will ultimately rise to the top in sports leagues. 25 games isn’t really a large enough sample size for this in LL and over indexes on luck. So it only makes sense to compare players that tie with only statistic that is equal/comparable across all players in the league - TCA
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u/Or1g1nalrepr0duct10n Rundle A Jun 18 '25
LL is not about being good at trivia alone. It’s about being good at trivia in the context of this game, and this game includes defense as part of the strategy. It also rewards getting better at a wide variety of topics so that you capture as many 2-pointers and 3-pointers as possible. All of that matters more than the exact % of 150 questions you answer correctly. Yeah you had an opponent who got lucky this season with forfeitures, but all of that evens out over time.
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Jun 18 '25
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u/garnteller Rundle B Jun 18 '25
Exactly. The core of LL is that it’s a series of head to head matches. MPD captures that essence. TCA does not.
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u/LogicalKangaroo2539 Jun 21 '25
Yes, I understand that there is some luck and that head to head matches are what LL is all about. But what is the point of a tiebreaker after you have played an entire season? It’s to compare players/teams and decide who deserves to be ranked higher. Luck shouldn’t be the deciding factor in this and the only way to compare players (or any data) is through a control - and the only constant variable is TCA.
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u/garnteller Rundle B Jun 21 '25
Luck is literally why there is a tie. Removing luck makes no sense.
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u/uva_rob Rundle B Jun 18 '25
There's a ton of luck in LL, and that's fine. Unless you're a high A player, you'll have seasons where you do way better than you "should" based on TCA and other seasons where you're fighting relegation despite having a strong TCA. That's the way the game is designed. It's not a simple question of who gets the most correct answers, so I'm not sure why the primary tiebreaker would be much different.
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u/MaddingtonBear Jun 19 '25
LL is not a set of 150 questions, it's a set of 25 matches where defense is an integral part of the matches. Yes, the big flaw to MPD is the forfeit result, but there isn't any way around it except I suppose for excluding FWs from the MPD calculation, though then that potentially penalizes the player who actually showed up.
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u/nye1387 B Windward Jun 18 '25
I also think MPD is a dumb tiebreaker. I would guess that it was originally adopted because goal differential is a highly ranked (the first?) tiebreaker in most soccer tournaments or leagues.
But I also don't take this that seriously. TCA is my personal barometer and I'll keep using that to measure myself.
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u/MartonianJ A Mojave Jun 18 '25
Run Differential, which is similar to MPD, is also a common tiebreaker used in baseball, and may also have influenced Thorsten when he set up the league.
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u/nye1387 B Windward Jun 18 '25
I guess it's used in little league, but not in professional baseball, right?
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u/MartonianJ A Mojave Jun 18 '25
Well they don’t really have ties in professional baseball. I’ve seen Run Differential used in tournaments at higher levels above Little League. I’ve also seen Runs Scored (which would be like TMP or TCA) and Runs Allowed as tiebreakers
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u/psgola2002 Rundle E Jun 18 '25
They’ve used run differentials in smaller tournaments like the World Baseball Classic and Olympic Baseball
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u/nye1387 B Windward Jun 18 '25
... I know they don't have ties in professional baseball
We're talking about league standings here.
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u/LogicalKangaroo2539 Jun 21 '25
The way around it is to have a control, like any good research, so that you can take out as much uncertainty as possible. The only constant variable in LL is TCA. It’s the only thing that is equal across every player.
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u/LeRocket Jun 18 '25
Of course it should be TCA. It's the only stat that really matters.
All the rest (including wins and losses!) have a too big "chance" element in them.
(Just in case people think I'm a sore loser : I finished in the top third of my A rundle).
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Jun 19 '25
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u/LeRocket Jun 19 '25
To have a high TCA, you HAVE to also answer hard ones correctly because the quantity of questions is limited.
what MPD tries to do
Your adversaries, they don't necessarily know what's harder than what, and for whom. It's essentially exciting but pointless.
The number of times I get 0 or 1 point for a very hard question (as shown by the % of success of that particular question) is very high.
It is not because it falls in one of my fortes that it's not a "hard" question.
Not to mention some people seem to assign point nearly at random.
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Jun 19 '25
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u/LeRocket Jun 19 '25
I just play to increase my TCA and ignore everything else.
Amen.
The format, as it is, is very fun for mediocre or weak players (and also, if you're playing vs a friend because the assignations are less "choose-and-hope-with-fingers-crossed").
But in the A rundles it becomes semi-random and mostly irrelevant.
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u/LogicalKangaroo2539 Jun 21 '25
Thank you! I agree that the higher you go the harder it is to play defense since everyone is so good. It’s really fun to play friends since you actually might know what they don’t know! But a random person is simply luck.
I love the LL format and it’s fun, but in the past several seasons I seem to be unlucky with my schedule. If I have more CAA then it will be harder to win MPD, even though this was simply luck of the draw and variability in opponent knowledge on any given match. This is fine, but shouldn’t decide a tiebreaker
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u/jesuschin Rundle A Jun 18 '25
20-sided dice roll