Will I make top cut? What you need to know

How do you know if you will make the top cut at a competitive TCG tournament? Well, ensuring your spot at the top takes more skill than running a top cut calculator.

Somewhat ironically, there’s a lot more that goes into winning tournaments and championships in any card game than knowing how to play the game. Understanding how tournaments run and ensuring you are making the right calls to end up on top is a whole added game unto itself, and inevitably those who are good at that particular game will fair better in tournaments regardless of what their actual card game skills are.

In this guide, I’m going to be explaining how competitive TCG tournaments typically work, how to make sense of the points, and how to know where you stand in regards to making the top cut.

What is top cut?

First, what exactly is top cut? In most competitive, larger scale tournaments, top cut is the elimination phase following the initial Swiss rounds. The purpose of the Swiss rounds is to define who gets to compete in the top cut and who doesn’t. It’s sort of like making the playoffs if you are familiar with how other sports work.

However, the points system can be quite confusing especially for those new to trading card games. Let’s break it down, though, so you can know what to expect at your next competitive event.

Trading card game tournaments: how points work

For the most part, tournaments work on a three points for a win one point for a tie basis. This is true regardless of the particular format – best-of-one matches or best-two-of-three.

So if you, for example, win three matches and lose two in a five round tournament, you will end up with nine points.

While that’s relatively straightforward, unfortunately few things in life are that simple, and TCG tournaments are no exception.

Understanding tie-breakers in TCG tournaments

What ends up happening almost always is that a lot of people end up with the same record at the end of Swiss rounds. So to separate the top cut from the rest, something called opponents’ win percentage is brought into play. This calculates how well your opponents did, with the idea that in a tie-breaker the person who faced the tougher opponents gets put ahead of someone who faced opponents who performed less well.

In the event that the opponents’ win percentages are tied as well, it goes to the opponents’ opponents’ win percentage.

Typically it won’t go to this extent but it does happen.

How to know if you will make top cut

While it’s all well-and-good to just play your game and try to win every time, it does pay to understand how the tournament system works and how your own unique tournament standings are looking so you can make decisions about when to take an intentional draw.

While there are even more complex ways competitive card players work to make the system work in their benefit, lets just focus on how you can make smart moves to make top cut, not necessarily try to work the system.

How to calculate the top cut

First, you should always run a top cut calculator during your event. The earlier you do this the better as you will have a decent ballpark idea of what kind of records and points you will need to make the top cut.

These top cut calculators will run the math for you so you know what record would likely be safe.

A word of caution on top cut calculators

Usually, these calculators will be reliable and accurate. However, they can be wrong. You still need to pay attention to your own standings. At a recent tournament I was at, for example, I made the mistake of not closely following the standings and how other players were doing and instead relying on how many points I would need to make top cut based on a calculator.

In a perfect world, getting 10 points after five rounds was a safe record that should have guaranteed me getting into the top eight.

However, the world isn’t perfect, is it? What ended up happening is that the top four players got ahead so early on that they ended up taking two rounds of draws each, which basically secured their spot in the top eight while narrowing the field for everyone else.

For this reason, anyone with a usually safe record was no longer safe and had to play their games.

Because I was only relying on the calculator, I missed this nuance, took an intentional draw, and ended up tied for sixth place. When it went to the opponents’ percentages, I got bumped down to ninth.

What is an intentional draw and why would you want to take it?

Intentional draws are when you and your opponent agree to a strategic draw instead of playing the game because taking a tie will get you into the top cut more reliably than a possible loss.

You should only ever take an intentional draw if you know it will get you into the top cut. Otherwise, just play it out.

How to know when taking an intentional draw is a good idea

Again, don’t rely on your calculator when deciding if you should take an intentional draw (called IDing). Instead, look at where you stand on the board and your record compared to everyone else.

In my scenario where I ended up in ninth, my mistake was to take an ID when there were two players beneath me who both had the same record as me. Although I was in eighth place, taking a draw was not a safe move. The players in ninth and tenth would have known they had to play for the win to make the top cut. Because I was in eighth, when one of those players inevitably won, they bumped me out of my top spot.

In that scenario, the only way I could have gotten into the top cut with an ID was if their game had also ended in a tie. In reality, the only safe way to make top cut even with only one loss would be to play for the win.

I hope this helps give you a good idea of what to look for in your own competitive event and helps you make top cut more reliably each time!