 While the tie-breaker has always been a one-game playoff in cases where two teams have been tied, when the Brier was first held in the 1920s (long before the introduction of automatic playoffs) the tie-breaker would consist of an additional mini-round robin if more than two teams tied for the title.Later, as the Brier field became fixed as consisting of teams representing every province plus Northern Ontario, the tie-breaker evolved to consist of "semi-final" and "final" stages in cases of ties involving three or more teams.The last tie-breaker games for a Brier title before the introduction of automatic playoffs took place in 1971 when three teams tied for first place.