Who advanced?

[Mathew5000]

I actually couldn't find a suggestion for this, so here it is:
Players Who Tie In A Tournament Should Advance Randomly, Not By Account Age

Thanks, Meeplelowda. Upvoted.

[Mathew5000]

It would take a while to find the post, but someone copied an email from customer support that if there is a tie because of the rules of the game (as opposed to someone being expelled), then the player who advances is chosen randomly.

Perhaps you are thinking of this thread: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=29137
...
The thread I linked to (which quoted a BGA customer service rep) concerned a round-robin format tournament, and it was not a tied game but a tie in the standings.

For that case, of a tie in the standings of a round-robin tournament, didn't we conclude that the customer service rep was incorrect?

The actual algorithm BGA uses, in the case of a tie in the standings of a round-robin tournament after all the documented tiebreakers are exhausted, is to rank in order of player id number (which generally corresponds to age of account), with a lower id number getting the better rank. [By "documented tiebreakers" I mean score difference and whatever else is listed in the standings when you click on the plus button.] That was stated by StoryTime here (in July 2022).

That's consistent with https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=31816 which was posted in January 2021: "Currently ties at the end of round robin (& Swiss) tournaments appear to be broken by how long a person has had a BGA account."

We can look at the standings in round-robin tournaments of Connect 4 and 7 Wonders Duel because in those games the "final score" of a game is just 1-0 so "score difference" will not resolve ties. Here are links to the standings of a few round-robin tournaments; you can click the plus sign to verify that the "documented tiebreakers" don't resolve ties and then hover over the player names to see their id numbers:

https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?i ... ge_display
https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?i ... ge_display
https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?i ... ge_display
https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?i ... ge_display
https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?i ... ge_display
https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?i ... ge_display
https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?i ... ge_display