Advantaged final
- "Clearing the field" and "two-game final" redirect here.
An advantaged final is a two-game final series played in tournament structures employing a round robin in the top playoff bracket to handle the case where the first-place team's record is exactly one game ahead of second-place. It replicates the final of a double-elimination tournament, requiring the second-place team to win two games in a row to win the tournament and the first-place team to only win one.
When the first-place team is two or more games ahead and no final is required, they have cleared the field. When the top two teams are tied, a conventional single-game final is played. When the first-place team clears it is still possible to have an Eric Mukherjee final for second.
History
The term "advantaged final" was coined by Robert Hentzel - it does not exist outside of quiz bowl. The scheme is sometimes called an "ACF final" or "ACF-style final", even though it is used by many non-ACF tournaments (including, more or less, the ICT). Sometimes the term "advantaged final" is incorrectly used for the entire scheme.
Advantaged final on half-packets were briefly used in high school quiz bowl but are no longer used because it has the major disadvantage of being much less fair for little to no reason.
It was once the case that NAQT national tournaments mandated that a final be played i.e. a team could not clear the field. It is commonly believed that this has resulted in at least one team clearing the field but losing the tournament, but records for this period are incomplete.
Tiebreaking
If there is a tie for second place (i.e. two teams are one game behind first place) tiebreaking procedures will be necessary to determine which of the second-place teams faces the first-place team; this requires additional rounds and questions. If time is short and/or questions are not available, the top team may be declared the winner because there is no fair way to determine which second-place team should have the opportunity to play for first, or statistical tiebreakers may be used to determine which second-place team has that opportunity, though the latter is not a best practice.
National results
The following is a list documenting whether advantaged finals were used at various national tournaments where they were possible.
| Tournament | Level | Winner | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 ACF Nationals | Collegiate | Chicago | Cleared the field by 2 |
| 2024 ICT | Collegiate | Chicago | Cleared the field by 2 |
| 2023 ICT | Collegiate | Cornell | Cleared the field by 2 |
| 2018 ACF Nationals | Collegiate | Chicago | Cleared the field by 2 |
| 2014 ACF Nationals | Collegiate | Virginia | Cleared the field by 4 |
| 2007 ACF Nationals | Collegiate | Chicago | Cleared the field by 3 |
| 1999 ACF Nationals | Collegiate | Chicago | Cleared the field by 4 |
| 2024 NSC | High school | Barrington A | Cleared the field by 2 |
| 2017 NSC | High school | DCC A | Cleared the field by 2 |
| 2014 NASAT | High school | Team Texas | Cleared the field by 2 |
| 2012 NASAT | High school | Team California | Cleared the field by 2 |
| 2011 NASAT | High school | Team Texas | Cleared the field by 3 |