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A one-game playoff or pennant playoff is a tiebreaker in certain professional sports 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 are currently used in Major League Baseball (MLB). When two or more MLB teams are tied for a division championship or wild card playoff berth at the end of the regular season, a one-game playoff is used to determine the winner, except in cases where the tie is a two-way tie for a division championship and the tied teams' records are higher than the records of the second place teams in the other divisions. In this scenario, the winner of the season series between the two teams is deemed division champion for purposes of playoff seeding, and the loser of the season series is given the wild card.^[1] Home field advantage for one-game playoffs is determined by a coin flip. For statistical purposes, one-game playoffs are considered part of the regular season. The result of the playoff is included in the regular season standings and individual player statistics are included along with the statistics for the rest of the season.

The tie-breaking procedures become more complicated if three or more teams are tied.^[1] This would require a series of one-game playoffs, taking more than one day. There have been several occasions where this scenario was possible as late as the last game of the season, but it has not yet happened. In 2008, however, the equivalent of this happenned through complete conincidences. The Minnesota Twins ended the season 1/2 game ahead of the Chicago White Sox. The fractional difference was due to an earlier rained out game the White Sox missed against the Detroit Tigers. To determine whether if the game had not been rained out there would have been a tie between the Twins and White Sox, the White Sox and Tigers played the make up game at the end of the season. The White Sox won, resulting in a Twins-White Sox tie. To break the tie, the White Sox and Twins played a one game playoff in Chicago. This was not a 3 way tie breaker. However, in the event of a 3 way tie the same thing would occur. Two teams would play each other on one day, and the next day the winner of the first game would play at home against the third team that was off the first day. Chicago was not home for this reason either, the site for the one game playoff was determined weeks before the 2 games were played, or even before it was known they would need to be played.

History

Through the 2008 MLB season, there have been 12 occasions where a playoff was needed to break a tie in a league, division, or wild card race. Of these playoffs, eight have been one-game playoffs and the other four were three-game playoffs. Prior to the advent of divisional play in 1969, the National League broke ties for its league championship with a three-game playoff. The American League has always used one-game playoffs.

A tiebreaking game is held only to determine who is in or out of the playoffs, not to determine seeding within the playoffs. Since the advent of the wild card in 1995, there have been three occasions on which a tiebreaker was not necessary as the two teams that were tied for a division lead were also atop the wild card standings. In 2001, the Houston Astros and St. Louis Cardinals tied for first in the National League Central with record of 93-69. In 2005, the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox each finished 95-67 in the American League East. In 2006, the San Diego Padres and Los Angeles Dodgers finished tied with records of 88-74 in the National League West. In all three situations, the team with the better head-to-head record (the 2001 Astros, 2005 Yankees, and 2006 Padres) were declared winners of the division, thus receiving a better seed in the playoffs. The other team (the 2001 Cardinals, 2005 Red Sox, and 2006 Dodgers) entered the playoffs as the wild card.

The season-ending matchup of the Chicago Cubs and the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds on October 8, 1908, in which the Cubs prevailed 4-2, is sometimes thought of as a "playoff." Although it had that effect, it was actually a makeup game necessitated by a tied game on September 23, in which a base-running mistake by young Giants' player Fred Merkle cost the Giants a victory.

Prior to the wild card playoff system, all five pennant playoffs in the National League had involved the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers, and both American League playoffs had involved the Boston Red Sox. None of the five one-game playoffs since 1994 have involved those teams.

List of MLB one-game playoffs

Year	Title	Winning Team	Score	Losing Team	Site	Afterward
1948	AL pennant	Cleveland Indians	8-3	Boston Red Sox	Fenway Park, Boston	Indians won the 1948 World Series over the Braves
1978	AL East	New York Yankees	5-4	Boston Red Sox	Fenway Park, Boston	Yankees won the 1978 World Series over the Dodgers
1980	NL West	Houston Astros	7-1	Los Angeles Dodgers	Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles	Astros lost the 1980 NLCS to the Phillies
1995	AL West	Seattle Mariners	9-1	California Angels	The Kingdome, Seattle	Mariners lost the 1995 ALCS to the Indians
1998	NL wild card	Chicago Cubs	5-3	San Francisco Giants	Wrigley Field, Chicago	Cubs lost the 1998 NLDS to the Braves
1999	NL wild card	New York Mets	5-0	Cincinnati Reds	Cinergy Field, Cincinnati	Mets lost the 1999 NLCS to the Braves
2007	NL wild card	Colorado Rockies	9-8 (13)	San Diego Padres	Coors Field, Denver	Rockies lost the 2007 World Series to the Red Sox
2008	AL Central	Chicago White Sox	1-0	Minnesota Twins	U.S. Cellular Field, Chicago	TBD (White Sox due to play Tampa Bay Rays in 2008 ALDS)

Three-game playoffs

Teams with home-field advantage are denoted in bold.

Year	Title	Winning Team	Scores	Losing Team	Afterward
1946	NL pennant	St. Louis Cardinals	4-2, 8-4	Brooklyn Dodgers	Cardinals won the 1946 World Series over the Red Sox
1951	NL pennant	New York Giants	3-1, 0-10, 5-4	Brooklyn Dodgers *	Giants lost the 1951 World Series to the Yankees
1959	NL pennant	Los Angeles Dodgers	3-2, 6-5 (12)	Milwaukee Braves	Dodgers won the 1959 World Series over the White Sox
1962	NL pennant	San Francisco Giants	8-0, 7-8, 6-4	Los Angeles Dodgers	Giants lost the 1962 World Series to the Yankees

* Won coin toss for home field advantage, but chose to defer to the Giants

National Football League

The National Football League now has an elaborate formula for breaking ties in the qualification for its playoffs. However, before the merger of the National Football League and the American Football League in 1970, it was possible to have a playoff game if 2 teams tied for a division title. The NFL had 9 of these playoffs occur between 1941 and 1965. The AFL had 2 playoffs in 1963 and 1968.

The Chicago Bears and the Portsmouth Spartans of the National Football League tied at the end of the 1932 season. They held an extra game to determine the champion. Unlike subsequent post-season playoffs, this NFL Playoff Game, 1932 was considered part of the regular season, as are the baseball tie-breaking playoff games described above.

The great interest generated by the 1932 playoff game led the NFL to split into two divisions in 1933, and began playing a single post-season NFL Championship game. If two teams in a single division tied for first place, the rules also provided for a one-game tie-breaking playoff to determine which team would advance to the league championship game. This was the practice from 1933 to 1966. Unlike the 1932 contest, these tiebreakers were not part of the regular season's standings. The league's last one game playoff occurred in 1965. Since 1967, when they split into 4 divisions, the NFL has used a set of tiebreaking rules to break ties. The AFL did not adopt tiebreakers before the merger.

NFL one game playoffs

Year	Winning Team	Losing Team	Score
1941	Chicago Bears	Green Bay Packers	33-14
1943	Washington Redskins	New York Giants	28-0
1947	Philadelphia Eagles	Pittsburgh Steelers	21-0
1950	Cleveland Browns	New York Giants	8-3
1950	Los Angeles Rams	Chicago Bears	24-14
1952	Detroit Lions	Los Angeles Rams	31-21
1957	Detroit Lions	San Francisco 49ers	31-27
1958	New York Giants	Cleveland Browns	10-0
1965	Green Bay Packers	Baltimore Colts	13-10 (OT)

AFL one game playoffs

Year	Winning Team	Losing Team	Score
1963	Boston Patriots	Buffalo Bills	26-8
1968	Oakland Raiders	Kansas City Chiefs	41-6

Use in the Philippines

In the Philippines, the one-game playoff is called a "knockout game". In all instances, all games are held in neutral venues, since the home-and-away system is not used.

Philippine Basketball Association

As opposed to North American usage, in which one-game playoffs are held to determine a champion, in the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA), one-game playoffs are held when teams are tied in a last qualifying seed in the team standings. An extra game will be played in order to determine which team would be eliminated and which team will advance.

With the restructuring of the playoffs starting at the 2005-06 season, one game playoffs are also held which do not merit automatic elimination. When two teams are tied on the last qualifying seed for a stage (such as the #2 seed for the last semifinal berth), a classification game will be played in order to determine which team will clinch the higher seed. If the two teams are not tied on the last qualifying seed (such as the #1 seed where both teams are in the semifinals already), the points difference between the tied teams will be used to determine which team clinches the higher seed. Consequently, one-game playoffs that don't eliminate the loser are called "knockdown games."

Playoffs such as those after the 2004 restructuring are now very common due to the low amount of games played in the elimination round (18). In fact, each conference was able to feature at least one playoff game, until the 2007-08 PBA Philippine Cup where even though there were tied teams, the team's positions aren't critical so they were resolved on the points difference among the tied teams' games.

Season	Conference	Winning team	Losing team	Score	For the position of...
2005-06	Fiesta	Barangay Ginebra Kings	Red Bull Barako	109-102	Semifinal berth
	Fiesta	Talk 'N Text Phone Pals	Air21 Express	101-91	Quarterfinal berth
	Philippine	Coca-Cola Tigers	Air21 Express	87-73	Quarterfinal berth
2006-07	Philippine	Purefoods Chunkee Giants	Sta. Lucia Realtors	92-78	Quarterfinal berth
	Fiesta	Alaska Aces	Barangay Ginebra Kings	103-95	Semifinal berth
	Fiesta	Air21 Express	San Miguel Beermen	103-99	Quarterfinal berth

College sports

Starting at the reformation of the playoff structure of the UAAP basketball tournament on 1993 (actually first used on 1994 since UST swept the playoffs and were named automatic champions on 1993), where the top 4 teams qualify for the semifinals, with the top 2 teams clinching the twice to beat advantage, a playoff will be held if two teams were tied for the fourth and last semifinal berth.

Lately, when three or more teams are tied, all three teams undergo a series of one-game playoffs to determine the top seed and which team is eliminated.

Men's playoff results include:

Season	League	Winning team	Losing team	Score
2008	NCAA	TBD	TBD	TBD
2007	UAAP	UST	FEU	80-69
2004	NCAA	San Beda	Mapua	59-52
2001	UAAP	NU	UE	108-102
2000	UAAP	UST	UE	65-61
1998	UAAP	UST	UP	80-72

Ties may also broken when two teams are tied for third, second and first seeds, although the competing teams still qualify for the playoffs when they lose; a playoff game for the #2 seed serves as a de facto game 1 of a best-of-three series.

The UAAP has also used this format for the volleyball tournaments.

References

^ ^a ^b "2003 postseason tiebreakers: Excerpts from Major League Rule 33 and Major League Rule 34" (Press release). Major League Baseball. 2003-09-08. Retrieved 2008-09-28.

[rule33-1] "2003 postseason tiebreakers: Excerpts from Major League Rule 33 and Major League Rule 34" (Press release). Major League Baseball. 2003-09-08. Retrieved 2008-09-28.

[1]

@@ Line 8: / Line 8: @@
 One-game playoffs are currently used in [[Major League Baseball]] (MLB). When two or more MLB teams are tied for a division championship or [[Wild card (sports)#Major League Baseball|wild card]] playoff berth at the end of the regular season, a one-game playoff is used to determine the winner, except in cases where the tie is a two-way tie for a division championship and the tied teams' records are higher than the records of the second place teams in the other divisions. In this scenario, the winner of the season series between the two teams is deemed division champion for purposes of playoff seeding, and the loser of the season series is given the wild card.<ref name="rule33">{{cite press release | title = 2003 postseason tiebreakers: Excerpts from Major League Rule 33 and Major League Rule 34 | publisher = [[Major League Baseball]] | date = 2003-09-08 | url = http://www.mlb.com/news/press_releases/press_release.jsp?ymd=20030908&content_id=517243&vkey=pr_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb | accessdate = 2008-09-28}}</ref> Home field advantage for one-game playoffs is determined by a coin flip. For statistical purposes, one-game playoffs are considered part of the regular season. The result of the playoff is included in the regular season standings and individual player statistics are included along with the statistics for the rest of the season.
-The tie-breaking procedures become more complicated if three or more teams are tied.<ref name="rule33" /> This would require a series of one-game playoffs, taking more than one day. There have been several occasions where this scenario was possible as late as the last game of the season, but it has not yet happened.
+The tie-breaking procedures become more complicated if three or more teams are tied.<ref name="rule33" /> This would require a series of one-game playoffs, taking more than one day. There have been several occasions where this scenario was possible as late as the last game of the season, but it has not yet happened. In 2008, however, the equivalent of this happenned through complete conincidences. The [[Minnesota Twins]] ended the season 1/2 game ahead of the [[Chicago White Sox]]. The fractional difference was due to an earlier rained out game the White Sox missed against the [[Detroit Tigers]]. To determine whether if the game had not been rained out there would have been a tie between the Twins and White Sox, the White Sox and Tigers played the make up game at the end of the season. The White Sox won, resulting in a Twins-White Sox tie. To break the tie, the White Sox and Twins played a one game playoff in Chicago. This was not a 3 way tie breaker. However, in the event of a 3 way tie the same thing would occur. Two teams would play each other on one day, and the next day the winner of the first game would play at home against the third team that was [[bye (sports)|off]] the first day. Chicago was not home for this reason either, the site for the one game playoff was determined weeks before the 2 games were played, or even before it was known they would need to be played.
 ===History===