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A Match Decided on Penalties: How Should Your Pool Count It?
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Short answer: in almost every prediction pool, a match settled on penalties still counts as a draw on your slip. The shootout decides who advances in the tournament. It does not change what happened in the ninety minutes you actually predicted.
That sounds obvious until it happens in a round that matters. Then someone points out the team “won”, someone else points at the scoreboard that says 1-1, and it gets settled by whoever is loudest rather than by a rule. So settle it first.
The cleanest example you’ll see all year
Tigres closed the 2026 Leagues Cup league phase having drawn all three matches in normal time, won all three penalty shootouts, and finished with six points — three played, zero wins in ninety minutes, zero losses in ninety minutes, three shootouts won (league phase table, corroborated in match reports by ClaroSports and UNANIMO).
Now look at the same three matches two ways:
| What the tournament recorded | What a prediction slip recorded | |
|---|---|---|
| Match 1 | Progressed on penalties | Draw |
| Match 2 | Progressed on penalties | Draw |
| Match 3 | Progressed on penalties | Draw |
| Total | Six points | Three draws |
Same three matches. The table says a team that has banked the equivalent of two wins. The pool says a team that hasn’t won anything. Neither is wrong. They are answering different questions, and your pool only has to answer the second one.
The rule most pools use, and why
The standard convention: score the result at the end of normal time (or extra time, where the competition plays it). Penalties are a tiebreaker layered on top to decide progression, not part of the match result.
There are good reasons this is the default:
- It matches what you were asked. You predicted home win, draw or away win. A shootout doesn’t produce one of those three — it produces a qualifier.
- It’s consistent across competitions. League matches never go to penalties, so if your pool covers a league and a cup, scoring normal time keeps one rule instead of two.
- The official record agrees. Match reports list Tigres–Vancouver as 1-1. The shootout is reported separately, because it is separate.
When a pool decides differently — and how to do it cleanly
Some groups want the shootout to count, especially in a knockout-only pool where a slip full of draws feels like a wasted round. That’s legitimate. It just has to be stated. Write the rule so it answers all three questions:
- What counts as the result? “The team that advances is scored as the winner.”
- Does the draw still score anything? Many groups give partial credit — full points for calling the advancing side, fewer for calling the draw in normal time.
- Which rounds does it apply to? Matches that end level with no shootout need the ordinary rule anyway, so say explicitly that the penalty rule is knockout-only.
The failure mode isn’t picking the “wrong” convention. It’s picking neither, and finding that out in round three.
The competitions where this bites
It comes up more than groups expect: cup knockouts of every description, any final or third-place match, and — the one that catches people out — the Leagues Cup, which settles level matches in the league phase itself, so the situation arrives before the knockout rounds do.
Worth one note there, since it’s live right now. The public table appears to award a point for a shootout defeat as well as points for a shootout win. That’s our reading of the published standings, not a quote from a rulebook — no open source we could find sets the scoring out in full. Either way it’s a tournament scoring question, and it doesn’t change how your slip reads the match.
The one format where the draw is the whole game
If your group runs a survivor pool, this stops being bookkeeping and becomes the central rule. You pick one team per round and you’re out when it loses — so what a draw does to your life is the entire format.
In Quini’s Survivor mode, a draw keeps your life. You only lose a life on a loss. So a team like the one above — three draws, three shootouts, no wins in normal time — would have carried you through three rounds without winning a match. Whether that’s a loophole or the point is the conversation to have before you start.
Agree on it once, then stop arguing about it
House rules only work if they exist before the round they decide. The pools that run smoothly aren’t the ones with the cleverest scoring — they’re the ones where nobody has to ask.
That’s the part Quini handles. The mode and its rules are set when the pool is created, results come in from the official record, and the table updates itself — so a shootout on a Wednesday night doesn’t become a forty-message argument on Thursday. Setting one up for the first time? Start with how to run a prediction pool with friends, or see how Quini works.
FAQ
Does a penalty shootout count as a win in a prediction pool?
Usually no. The standard convention is to score the result at the end of normal or extra time, which makes a match settled on penalties a draw. The shootout decides who advances, not what the match finished.
Can our group decide that the shootout winner counts as the winner?
Yes, as long as it’s agreed before the round. If you do, state whether the correct draw still earns partial credit and make clear the rule only applies to matches that actually go to a shootout.
How does a shootout affect a survivor pool?
It depends on the draw rule, which is the core rule of the format. In Quini’s Survivor mode a draw keeps your life and you only lose a life on a defeat, so a team that draws and then wins the shootout leaves you alive either way.
Why do league tables and prediction pools disagree on these matches?
Because they measure different things. A table records tournament points, which can award something for a shootout. A pool records whether you called the match outcome. A team can bank points while its matches all go down as draws on your slip.
Set the rule before the next round
The shootout question always arrives mid-tournament, when the round is live and someone’s run is on the line. Have the answer already written down.
Get Quini at playquini.com and set your pool’s rules before the next knockout round.