The Page playoff system is a

playoff format There are a number of formats used in various levels of competition in sports and games to determine an overall champion. Some of the most common are the ''single elimination'', the ''best-of-'' series, the ''total points series'' more commonly kn ...

used primarily in

softball Softball is a game similar to baseball played with a larger ball on a smaller field. Softball is played competitively at club levels, the college level, and the professional level. The game was first created in 1887 in Chicago by George Hanc ...

and

curling Curling is a sport in which players slide stones on a sheet of ice toward a target area which is segmented into four concentric circles. It is related to bowls, boules, and shuffleboard. Two teams, each with four players, take turns sliding ...

at the championship level, the

Indian Premier League The Indian Premier League (IPL), also known as TATA IPL for sponsorship reasons, is a men's T20 franchise cricket league of India. It is annually contested by ten teams based out of seven Indian cities and three Indian states. The leagu ...

and

Pakistan Super League The Pakistan Super League (PSL) is a professional Twenty20 cricket league contested during February and March of every year by six teams representing six cities of Pakistan. The league was founded on 9 September 2015 with five teams by the Paki ...

cricket tournaments. Teams are

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ed using a

round-robin tournament A round-robin tournament (or all-go-away-tournament) is a competition Competition is a rivalry where two or more parties strive for a common goal which cannot be shared: where one's gain is the other's loss (an example of which is a zero ...

and the top four play a mix of a

single-elimination A single-elimination, knockout, or sudden death tournament is a type of elimination tournament where the loser of each match-up is immediately eliminated from the tournament. Each winner will play another in the next round, until the final matc ...

and

double-elimination tournament A double-elimination tournament is a type of elimination tournament competition in which a participant ceases to be eligible to win the tournament's championship upon having lost ''two'' games or matches. It stands in contrast to a single-elimina ...

to determine the winner. It is identical to a four-team

McIntyre System The McIntyre System, or systems as there have been five of them, is a playoff system that gives an advantage to teams or competitors qualifying higher. The systems were developed by Ken McIntyre, an Australian lawyer, historian and English lect ...

playoff, first used by the

WANFL The West Australian Football League (WAFL) is an Australian rules football league based in Perth, Western Australia. The league currently consists of ten teams, which play each other in a 20-round season usually lasting from March to September ...

SANFL The South Australian National Football League, or SANFL ( or ''S-A-N-F-L''), is an Australian rules football league based in the Australian state of South Australia. It is also the state's governing body for the sport. Originally formed as the ...

and VFL in Australia in 1931, originally called the

Page–McIntyre system The McIntyre System, or systems as there have been five of them, is a playoff system that gives an advantage to teams or competitors qualifying higher. The systems were developed by Ken McIntyre, an Australian lawyer, historian and English lect ...

, after the VFL delegate, the

Richmond Football Club The Richmond Football Club, nicknamed the Tigers, is an Australian rules football team playing in the Australian Football League (AFL). Between its inception in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond in 1885 and 1907, the club competed in the Victo ...

's Secretary, Percy "Pip" Page, who had advocated its use.

History

The Page playoff system was used at the Australian Rugby League Championship 1954–1972. In Australia, its most notable use today is in netball, having been adopted by

Suncorp Super Netball Suncorp Super Netball is the top level netball league featuring teams from Australia. In 2017 it replaced the ANZ Championship, which also included teams from New Zealand, as the top level netball league in Australia. Since 2019, the league has ...

when it began play in 2017. The system has been used since 1990 by the

International Softball Federation Map of member states., 400px, right The International Softball Federation (ISF) is the international governing body for the sport of softball with its world headquarters and training centre at Plant City, Florida. The ISF is a non-profit corporat ...

and its successor, the

World Baseball Softball Confederation World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC; french: Confédération internationale de baseball et softball) is the world governing body for the sports of baseball, softball, and Baseball5. It was established in 2013 by the merger of the Inter ...

, for the

Women's Softball World Championship The Women's Softball World Cup is a fastpitch softball tournament for women's national teams held historically every four years, now every two years, by the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC). The tournament, originally known as the ''I ...

and from 1996 to 2008 at the

Olympic Games The modern Olympic Games or Olympics (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques) are the leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a var ...

.International Softball Federation
Technical & Venue Manual
(

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). Retrieved March 23, 2006 Its first use in curling was by the

Canadian Curling Association Curling Canada (formerly the Canadian Curling Association (CCA)) is a sanctioning body for the sport of Curling in Canada. It is associated with more than a dozen provincial and territorial curling associations across the country, and organizes C ...

in the 1995 Labatt

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,Dalla Costa, Morris (March 3, 2006)

''

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''. the men's championship, and was adopted the next year at the

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Scott Tournament of Hearts The Scotties Tournament of Hearts (''french: Le Tournoi des Cœurs Scotties''; commonly referred to as the Scotties) is the annual Canadian women's curling championship, sanctioned by Curling Canada, formerly called the Canadian Curling Associat ...

, the women's championship.Soudog's Curling History Site
1996 Scott Tournament of Hearts
Retrieved March 23, 2006. It gained acceptance and in 2005 the

World Curling Championships The World Curling Championships are the annual world championships for curling, organized by the World Curling Federation and contested by national championship teams. There are men's, women's and mixed doubles championships, as well as men's an ...

started using it until 2018 when the playoff format was switched to re-seeding 6 team

. It has not yet been adopted in curling at the

. The format is used in the

cricket tournament since 2011. The format has also been used in some much lower-key, internet gaming events, such as chessFischer Random Chess Email Club.
FRCEC's Annual Championship Tournament
. Retrieved March 23, 2006. and backgammon.New Horizons Backgammon.

. Retrieved March 23, 2006. Beginning with the 2020 season, the

League of Legends Championship Series The League Championship Series (LCS) is the top level of professional ''League of Legends'' in the United States and Canada. The esports league is run by Riot Games and has ten franchise teams. Each annual season of competition is divided into ...

uses a double-elimination format with a Page playoff system being employed for the final rounds of the playoff tournament. A similar format would also be adopted for the

League of Legends European Championship The ''League of Legends'' EMEA Championship (LEC) is the professional ''League of Legends'' esports league run by Riot Games in the EMEA ( Europe, the Middle East and Africa) region, in which ten teams compete. Each annual season of play is divi ...

that same year. The 2021 playoffs saw the

National Basketball Association The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United S ...

use the system for its Play-In Tournament. It featured teams ranked 7th–10th in their respective conferences during the regular season. The winner of the 7–8 game advanced to the playoffs as the seventh seed, while the loser played in the preliminary final game against the winner of the 9–10 game for the eighth seed. This meant the 7th and 8th place teams have two chances to win once, while the 9th and 10th place teams needed to win back-to-back games. The

League of Legends Pro League The ''League of Legends'' Pro League (LPL) is the top-level professional league for ''League of Legends'' in China. The first season of the LPL was the 2013 Spring season. The top three finishers of the playoff tournament receive automatic bids ...

also uses the same system to determine its final two World Championship berths since 2020, followed by

League of Legends Champions Korea ''League of Legends'' Champions Korea (LCK) is the primary competition for ''League of Legends'' esports in South Korea. Contested by ten teams, the league runs two seasons per year and serves as a direct route to qualification for the annual ...

since 2022.

Format

The system requires teams to be

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in some way, as the top two teams have an advantage over the bottom two. This is usually accomplished through a round-robin tournament, which eliminates all but the top four teams.

Round-robin

A standard round-robin tournament is used, in which all teams play each other once. Because the number of total games increases quadratically with respect to the number of teams, scheduling too many teams will result in an unwieldy number of games, particularly when there are a limited number of playing surfaces (championship curling arenas usually only have four or five sheets). Therefore, the number of teams is usually capped at around a dozen; if this is not possible or desirable, teams may be separated into groups playing separate round-robins and either having the top teams combining for the Page playoff or playing separate ones in each group and having the winners play each other after.

Page playoff system

The system was invented in Australia in the early 1930s and adopted soon after by the Victorian Football League (now known as the Australian Football League). The top four teams advance to the playoffs, which are played over three rounds with one team being eliminated in each round.Football League
/ref> The format progresses as follows: *In Game 1, the third- and fourth-placed teams play against each other. The loser is eliminated. *In Game 2, the first- and second-placed teams play against each other. The winner qualifies directly for the final. *In Game 3, the winner of Game 1 plays against the loser of Game 2. The loser is eliminated. *Game 4 (the final) is then played between the winners of Games 2 and 3. This system gives the top two teams a double chance, in that they can lose their first game and still go on to win the title, producing a similar though not identical effect to a

. This gives the top two teams a significant advantage over the next two, since winning the title from third or fourth place requires winning one more game than winning from first or second, and also requires defeating every other team in the playoffs. Additionally, the higher-ranked team in any pairing (which, in the final, is automatically the team that won Game 2) will play as the

home team In sports, home is the place and venue identified with a team sport. Most professional teams are named for, and marketed to, particular metropolitan areas; amateur teams may be drawn from a particular region, or from institutions such as sch ...

to provide an additional advantage; in the case of curling teams, where teams rarely play national or international tournaments at their home rink, the advantage is that the first-placed team is given the

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(last rock) in the first end, which is a reasonable advantage between comparably skilled teams. In the 2008 World Women's Curling Championship, a fifth match was added to the format: a bronze medal playoff match, which was played between the two teams which did not qualify for the final (the losers of Games 1 and 3). This game is normally scheduled between Games 3 and 4. Previously, the bronze would have automatically been awarded to the team which lost Game 3, so this game provides a chance for the loser of Game 1 to still receive a medal. This was also introduced at the national level at the 2011 Scotties Tournament of Hearts and the

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. The bronze medal game was heavily criticized for being "meaningless" in part because simply winning a "medal" does not carry the same sort of prestige it does in the Olympic Games. The bronze medal game was eliminated prior to the 2018 Canadian championship curling season.

Names of matches

In Australia, Games 1 and 2 are known as ''Semi-Finals''; Game 3 is called the ''Preliminary Final'', and the final is known as the ''Grand Final''. To distinguish between the two Semi-Finals, which are different in nature, the match between 3rd and 4th is known either as the ''First Semi-Final'' or the ''Minor Semi-Final''; and the match between 1st and 2nd is known either as the ''Second Semi-Final'' or the ''Major Semi-Final''. In Curling, Games 1 and 2 are usually known as the ''3-4 game'' and ''1-2 game'', respectively (and Game 2 is usually played first, to give the higher-ranked team more rest before Game 3); Game 3 is called the ''Semi-Final'', and the final is known by that name. In India, Game 1 is known as the ''Eliminator'', Games 2 and 3 are called ''Qualifiers'' 1 and 2 respectively, and the final is known by that name. In China's LPL, Game 2 is known as the ''Winner's Bracket'', while Game 1 and Game 3 are respectively called ''Loser's Bracket first round'' and ''Loser's Bracket final''. There is no real final, the winner of Game 2 would be the 3rd seed of LPL in the Worlds, while the winner of Game 3 is seeded as 4th and have to enter the play-in round.

Examples

1931 Victorian Football League playoffs The first-ever use of the system was in Australia in 1931 after the Victorian Football League adopted it. The regular season ended with Geelong winning the minor premiership, followed by Richmond, Carlton and Collingwood. The

finals Final, Finals or The Final may refer to: *Final (competition), the last or championship round of a sporting competition, match, game, or other contest which decides a winner for an event ** Another term for playoffs, describing a sequence of cont ...

proceeded as follows: Page playoff, including a bronze medal match, from the 2011 Scotties Tournament of Hearts.

Reaction

Players and fans alike have had a mixed reaction to the system. Broadcasters enjoy it as it produces one more game than the single-elimination format.

References

{{reflist Curling terminology Sports terminology Tournament systems Softball