A tie is a rule problem, not a scoring problem
Every judged show ties eventually — the more classes and the more judges you run, the more often two totals land on the same number. That's not a flaw in your scoring system. It's arithmetic. What matters is whether you decided, in writing, before the show started, how a tie gets broken.
"The judges will confer and figure it out" is not a rule. It's a decision you're postponing to the worst possible moment — in front of the two owners it affects, with a trophy sitting on the table. Whatever method you pick, pick it this week, put it in your printed rules or judge briefing, and follow it exactly the same way every time it comes up.
What Car Show Expert shows you today
The Judge Results tab lists every car ranked highest total first, and flags tied cars with a "Tied" badge next to their name so you don't have to spot it yourself in a long list — but there's no built-in resolution tool. Breaking a tie is entirely at your organisation's discretion, using whichever method you choose below. The per-judge score breakdown further down that same tab shows every judge's individual scores by category, which is what you'll need for most of these methods.
Start here: don't round before you have to
The cheapest fix for ties is the one most shows skip: carry scores out to the decimal instead of rounding each category to a whole number before totalling. A surprising number of "ties" are only ties because two different scores got rounded down to the same integer on the way to the leaderboard. Keep the raw numbers and a lot of ties dissolve on their own.
Car Show Expert averages each category across the judges who scored it and rounds that average to the nearest whole point before adding it into the total shown on the Judge Results leaderboard — so two cars that would separate at the decimal can still land on the same rounded total today. If you want that extra precision, pull up the per-judge score breakdown on the same tab, which shows every judge's raw category scores, and total the unrounded numbers by hand for the tied cars only. It's a two-minute manual check, not a feature you need to wait for.
Convention #1: a focused re-score of one category
This is the most common tiebreak among organisers who've run enough shows to have opinions about it. Before the show, pick one category — exterior is the usual choice, since it's the category judges disagree on least — and decide that if two cars tie, the chief or head judge alone re-scores just that one category on both cars.
It's fast, because it's one judge looking at one category, not a panel re-litigating the whole scorecard. It's defensible, because you can point to the exact rule and the exact category in front of anyone who asks. Score the re-score on paper or directly against the entries in Car Show Expert's judging interface the same way any other score gets entered, then use that number to settle the placement — it doesn't change the published totals for anyone else.
Convention #2: chief judge's discretion
At smaller, community-scale shows, it's common to just let the chief judge (or the judges as a group) look at the two cars again and make a call. This works fine when the chief judge has run the show long enough to have earned the trust of entrants and other judges. It falls apart fast when they haven't — an unstructured "we talked about it and picked one" is the version of a tiebreak that turns into an argument, because there's nothing written down to point to afterward.
If you use this method, still write it down as your rule: "ties are broken at the chief judge's discretion, considering the field." That sentence, printed in your rules before the show, is the difference between a decision and an improvisation — even though the actual judgment call happens the same way either time.
Convention #3: highest score in a named category wins
Pick a category in advance — engine bay is a common choice — and the rule is simply whoever scored higher in that one category on the original scorecards wins the tie. No re-judging, no extra time on the field, no judge needing to go back out and look at the cars again. You already have the numbers; you're just reading them off the per-judge breakdown for the category you named.
This is the fastest of the five conventions to execute on the day, because it requires nothing new — the data already exists in your results. The trade-off is that it can feel arbitrary to an owner if the category wasn't announced ahead of time, so this only works as a rule you publish before entries even open, not one you invent after two cars tie.
Convention #4: a sudden-death additional round
At concours-level events, some organisers run genuine sudden-death judging — a full panel re-examines just the tied cars against a tighter, more detailed rubric. It produces the most thoroughly justified result of any method here, but it's slow, and it only works when your schedule has slack built in for it.
For a single-day community or regional show with a trophy ceremony on a fixed clock, this method usually isn't practical — you won't have the fifteen or twenty minutes it takes per tie while a few hundred people wait. Save it for shows where judging depth is the point and the schedule already allows for it.
Which one should you actually use?
For most single-day shows: stop rounding early first, then fall back to a focused re-score of one pre-named category if a tie still survives. It's the combination that resolves the largest share of ties with the least drama and the least time spent. Reserve chief judge discretion for shows small enough that everyone already trusts the call, and reserve a sudden-death round for concours events where the schedule has room for it.
Write it down before the first car checks in
Whichever method you choose, it only works as a rule if three things happen before show day: it's written into the rules you publish to entrants, it's covered in your judge briefing so every judge and the chief judge know exactly what happens, and it names a specific category or process rather than leaving the method itself open to interpretation on the day.
See Car show judging: how to set up a fair system for the rest of the chief judge role, and How to set up judging for building your scoring categories and classes in Car Show Expert.
Before your next show, you should
- Pick one tiebreak method and write it into your published rules
- Cover it in your judge and chief judge briefing, not just the entrant rules
- If you use a named-category method, name the category before entries open
- Remember Car Show Expert flags ties with a badge but has no built-in resolver — the call is yours to make and record