Clear the field

In a round robin-based schedule format, a team in is said to clear the field if, when considering games played against other teams in the topmost bracket, it total number of wins is highest among all teams, and greater than the next-most-winning team(s) by 2 or greater.

The typical practice is for a team that clears the field of a tournament to be declared the winner of the tournament outright, without needing to play an advantaged final. (The justification for this is that the clearing team's advantage is large enough to make a fair finals series unfeasible in terms of length of time and number of available packets -- a team up by two wins would require the disadvantaged team to win three games in a row, e.g. -- and unlikely to alter the ultimate outcome).

Example

In the top bracket of Tournament T, a six-team round-robin, the win-loss records look like this after all teams have played all games:

• Team A: 5-0
• Team B: 3-2
• Team C: 3-2
• Team D: 2-3
• Team E: 2-3
• Team F: 0-5

In this case, Team A has the most wins with 5, and Team B and C are tied for the second-highest with 3. Team A has cleared the field, because 5 - 3 >= 2.