Elimination Number
In certain sports, a magic number is a number used to indicate how close a front-running team is to clinching a division title and/or a playoff spot. It represents the total of additional wins by the front-running team or additional losses (or any combination thereof) by the rival teams after which it is mathematically impossible for the rival teams to capture the title in the remaining number of games, assuming some highly unlikely occurrence such as disqualification or expulsion from the competition or retroactive forfeiture of games does not occur. The widespread use of magic numbers is generally limited to sports where games only count in the standings when the result is a win and a loss. Magic numbers are not usually used in sports where teams can be credited in some manner for part-wins in case of results such as ties and overtime losses. It could also be referred to as the "clinching number". Teams other than the front-running team have what is called an elimination numbe ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sports
Sport is a physical activity or game, often competitive and organized, that maintains or improves physical ability and skills. Sport may provide enjoyment to participants and entertainment to spectators. The number of participants in a particular sport can vary from hundreds of people to a single individual. Sport competitions may use a team or single person format, and may be open, allowing a broad range of participants, or closed, restricting participation to specific groups or those invited. Competitions may allow a "tie" or "draw", in which there is no single winner; others provide tie-breaking methods to ensure there is only one winner. They also may be arranged in a tournament format, producing a champion. Many sports leagues make an annual champion by arranging games in a regular sports season, followed in some cases by playoffs. Sport is generally recognised as system of activities based in physical athleticism or physical dexterity, with major competi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tie (draw)
A draw or tie occurs in a competitive sport when the results are identical or inconclusive. Ties or draws are possible in some, but not all, sports and games. Such an outcome, sometimes referred to as deadlock, can also occur in other areas of life such as politics, business, and wherever there are different factions regarding an issue. Terminology The word ''tie'' is usually used in North American English, North America, whereas the word ''draw'' is usual elsewhere. Resolving ties or draws In instances where a winner must be determined, several methods are commonly used. Across various sports: * Some other measure may be used, such as aggregate point difference. * A game may continue on in extra time. To ensure a quick result, some form of sudden death (sport), sudden death rule may apply. * In some sports, a penalty shootout or bowl-out may occur. * A rematch may occur at a later date, especially if a winner must be selected (in a final). * The result might be decided by chance ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Overtime (sports)
Overtime (OT) or extra time (ET) is an additional period of play to bring a game to a decision and avoid declaring the match a tie or draw where the scores are the same. In some sports, this extra period is played only if the game is required to have a clear winner, as in single-elimination tournaments where only one team or players can advance to the next round or win the tournament and replays are not allowed. The rules of overtime or extra time vary between sports and even different competitions. Some may employ " sudden death", where the first player or team who scores immediately wins the game. In others, play continues until a specified time has elapsed, and only then is the winner declared. If the contest remains tied after the extra session, depending on the rules, the match may immediately end as a draw, additional periods may be played, or a different tiebreaking procedure such as a penalty shootout may be used instead. Association football Knock-out contests (inc ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Season (sport)
In an organized sports league, a typical season is the portion of one year in which regulated games of the sport are in session: for example, in Major League Baseball the season lasts approximately from the last week of March to the last week of September. In other team sports, like association football or basketball, it is generally from August or September to May although in some countries – such as Northern Europe, North America or East Asia – the season for oudoor summer sports starts in the spring and finishes in autumn, mainly due to weather conditions encountered during the winter. A year can often be broken up into several distinct sections (sometimes themselves called seasons). These are: a preseason, usually a series of exhibition games played for training purposes; a regular season, the main period of the league's competition; the postseason, a playoff tournament played against the league's top teams to determine the league's champion; and the offseason, the time whe ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball league composed of 30 teams, divided equally between the National League (baseball), National League (NL) and the American League (AL), with 29 in the United States and 1 in Canada. MLB is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada and is considered the premier professional baseball league in the world. Each team plays 162 games per season, with Opening Day traditionally held during the first week of April. Six teams in each league then advance to a four-round Major League Baseball postseason, postseason tournament in October, culminating in the World Series, a best-of-seven championship series between the two league champions first played in 1903. MLB is headquartered in Midtown Manhattan. Formed in 1876 and 1901, respectively, the NL and AL cemented their cooperation with the National Agreement in 1903, making MLB the oldest major professional sports league in the world. They remained le ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Division (sport)
In sports, a division is a group of teams who compete against each other for a championship. League system In sports using a league system (also known as a pyramid structure), a division consists of a group of teams who play a sport at a similar competitive level. Teams can move up to a higher division of play or drop down to a lower one via the process of promotion and relegation, based on their performance in the standings at the end of the season. The existence of divisions based on level of competition ensures that teams at one competitive level can play other teams at a similar competitive level, thus creating parity and more exciting matches. Franchise system In North America, where sports usually operate on a franchise system rather than a league system, a division is a group of teams within a league which is organized along geographical lines rather than competitive success. Teams based in cities that are in a particular region of the continent are grouped together in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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National Basketball Association
The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada). The NBA is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada and is considered the premier professional basketball league in the world. The league is headquartered in Midtown Manhattan. The NBA was created on August 3, 1949, with the merger of the Basketball Association of America (BAA) and the National Basketball League (United States), National Basketball League (NBL). The league later adopted the BAA's history and considers its founding on June 6, 1946, as its own. In 1976, the NBA and the American Basketball Association (ABA) ABA–NBA merger, merged, adding four franchises to the NBA. The NBA's regular season runs from October to April, with each team playing 82 games. The NBA playoffs, league's playoff tournament extends into June, culminating with the NBA Finals championship series. The ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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One-game Playoff
A one-game playoff, sometimes known as a pennant playoff, tiebreaker game or knockout game, is a tiebreaker in certain sports—usually but not always professional—to determine which of two teams, tied in the final standings, will qualify for a post-season tournament. Such a playoff is either a single game or a short series of games (such as best-2-of-3). This is distinguished from the more general usage of the term "playoff", which refers to the post-season tournament itself. Major League Baseball One-game playoffs were used in Major League Baseball (MLB) through the 2021 season. When two or more MLB teams were tied for a division championship or the wild card playoff berth (1995–2011, or starting in 2012, the second only) at the end of the regular season, a one-game playoff was used to determine the winner. If a tie were (from 1995 to 2011) a two-way tie for a division championship and both tied teams' have records higher than those records of the second-place teams in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Maximum Flow Problem
In Optimization (mathematics), optimization theory, maximum flow problems involve finding a feasible flow through a flow network that obtains the maximum possible flow rate. The maximum flow problem can be seen as a special case of more complex network flow problems, such as the circulation problem. The maximum value of an s-t flow (i.e., flow from Glossary of graph theory#Direction, source s to Glossary of graph theory#Direction, sink t) is equal to the minimum capacity of an Cut (graph theory), s-t cut (i.e., cut severing s from t) in the network, as stated in the max-flow min-cut theorem. History The maximum flow problem was first formulated in 1954 by Ted Harris (mathematician), T. E. Harris and F. S. Ross as a simplified model of Soviet railway traffic flow. In 1955, Lester R. Ford, Jr. and D. R. Fulkerson, Delbert R. Fulkerson created the first known algorithm, the Ford–Fulkerson algorithm.Ford, L.R., Jr.; Fulkerson, D.R., ''Flows in Networks'', Princeton University Press ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Promotion And Relegation
Promotion and relegation is used by sports leagues as a process where teams can move up and down among divisions in a league system, based on their performance over a season. Leagues that use promotion and relegation systems are sometimes called open leagues. In a system of promotion and relegation, the best-ranked team(s) in a lower division are ''promoted'' to a higher division for the next season, and the worst-ranked team(s) in the higher division are ''relegated'' to the lower division for the next season. During the season, teams that are high enough in the league table that they would qualify for promotion are sometimes said to be in the ''promotion zone'', and those at the bottom are in the ''relegation zone'' (colloquially the ''drop zone'' or ''facing the drop''). These can also involve being in zones where promotion and relegation is not automatic but subject to a playoff, such as in the EFL Championship where teams 3rd to 6th enter a playoff for promotion to the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Double Round Robin
A round-robin tournament or all-play-all tournament is a competition format in which each contestant meets every other participant, usually in turn.''Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged'' (1971, G. & C. Merriam Co), p.1980. A round-robin contrasts with an elimination tournament, wherein participants are eliminated after a certain number of wins or losses. Terminology The term ''round-robin'' is derived from the French term ('ribbon'). Over time, the term became idiomized to ''robin''. In a ''single round-robin'' schedule, each participant plays every other participant once. If each participant plays all others twice, this is frequently called a ''double round-robin''. The term is rarely used when all participants play one another more than twice, and is never used when one participant plays others an unequal number of times, as is the case in almost all of the major North American professional sports leagues. In the United Kingdom, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Goal Difference
Goal difference, goal differential or points difference is a form of tiebreaker used to rank sport teams which finish on equal points in a league competition. Either "goal difference" or "points difference" is used, depending on whether matches are scored by goals (as in ice hockey and association football) or by points (as in rugby union and basketball). Goal difference is calculated as the number of goals scored in all league matches minus the number of goals conceded, and is sometimes known simply as plus–minus. Goal difference was first introduced as a tiebreaker in association football, at the 1970 FIFA World Cup, and was adopted by the Football League in England five years later. It has since spread to many other competitions, where it is typically used as either the first or, after tying teams' head-to-head records, second tiebreaker. Goal difference is zero sum, in that a gain for one team (+1) is exactly balanced by the loss for their opponent (–1). Therefore, the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |