By convention, the magic number typically is used to describe the first place team only, relative to the teams it leads. However, the same mathematical formulas could be applied to any team, teams that are tied for the lead, as well as teams that trail. In these cases, a team that is not in first place will depend on the leading team to lose some games so that it may catch up, so the magic number will be larger than the number of games remaining. Ultimately, for teams that are no longer in contention, their magic number would be larger than their remaining games + the remaining games for the first place team — which would be impossible to overcome.