Tips: The points system

How do the points at Worlds work? Well there are actually two sets of points. Team points and Speaker Points. The team points determine the rankings of the teams especially for the break and speaker points break any ties between teams on team points and are used to determine the best speaker of the tournament

Team Points.
Team points are awarded as follows
3pts for a win
2pts for second
1pt for third
0pts for fourth

This means the maximum points any team can win is 27. In general the top team will score 23-24 points.

At Worlds Teams are randomly drawn in round 1 and after that they are drawn based on their "power match" (i.e. top 4 teams meet the top 4 and so on). There are other considerations in tabbing such as roles in a debate, "pull ups" etc but that is for another post.

At the end of 9 rounds the top 32 teams proceed to the knockout rounds. (There is also a knock out tournament for EFL and ESL teams outside the top 32).

At the last 4 worlds 18 points has been needed to break. The previous 4 tournaments (excluding Glasgow which was only 8 rounds) the break was at 17 points. The points depends largely on the number of teams at the tournament but it is safe to say that 18 plus speaks is now the standard people must reach to break.

18 points means averaging second in every debate (i.e. be in the top half). For every third you take you must win a debate to get back on track. For every fourth you must win two debates.

Speaker Points
A 90-100
Excellent to flawless. The standard of speech you would expect to see from a speaker at the Semi Final / Grand Final level of the tournament. This speaker has many strengths and few, if any, weaknesses.

B 80-89
Above average to very good. The standard you would expect to see from a speaker at the finals level or in contention to make to the finals. This speaker has clear strengths and some minor weaknesses.

C 70-79
Average. The speaker has strengths and weaknesses and roughly equal proportions.

D 60-69
Poor to below average. The team has clear problems and some minor strengths.

E 50-59
Very poor. This speaker has fundamental weaknesses and few, if any, strengths.

You can't give a speaker less than 50 points. As a general guideline you should have a good reason to give an A and you should have an excellent reason (i.e. be able to defend it if asked by the adjudication team) for giving an E.

With 70-79 being the middle rank the average speaker points at worlds is around 73.

The best speaker usually comes in averaging somewhere in the mid to high 80s.

For the past two worlds teams have needed to average just over 79 to break on 18 plus speaks.

So all that means that to break at the world championships you need to average second in every debate and average B's in speaker points.