Co-event

A Countdown tournament is an amateur tournament similar to a Scrabble or Chess tournament. Players meet up with their Countdown board games and play a number of rounds, usually 5 or 6, and the player with the most wins is the tournament winner. In the event of a tie, the number of points scored it used to separate them. There are two disctinct types of tournament, head-to-head "match play" tournaments and "duplicate" tournaments. For example the Countdown in Lincoln tournaments use head-to-head games with random letters, while the Countdown in Bristol tournament uses a duplicate system. The word duplicate comes from duplicate bridge which inspired duplicate Des chiffres et des lettres tournaments in French-speaking countries. Duplicate means that the letters are randomly selected before the tournament in the same way that the cards are predetermined in a duplicate bridge tournament. Players play head-to-head, but all players have the same letters, numbers and conundrum. This eliminates the luck factor as no player or players have "better" selections than anyone else. The tournament is still sorted by wins and points scored

Notable Countdown tournaments

• The Edinburgh Countdown Club was the first to organise tournaments
• Countdown in Lincoln, most recently COLIN 2008
• Countdown in Bristol
• Countdown in Redhill
• Various online tournaments via MSN Messenger, such as the Countdown Online Masters.