For tournament directors (TDs)
What is a tournament director?
A TD is appointed by an organisation to run a tournament. This means taking attendance, fill in results, start and end rounds, and much more. The administrator of an organisation can assign TD functionalities to any account in the website's database, and any tournament can have as many TDs as you want. In this chapter you can find every parameter a TD can influence plus a detailed guide on how to navigate a live tournament.
If you want to see what our environment looks like if you are a TD, please let us know so we can share the password of our demo website!
The main tournament screen
Tournament screen
Clicking on a tournament opens the main tournament page, showing the most basic info about the tournament:
A tournament director can edit tournament properties by clicking on the relevant tournament > "Edit".
Editing tournament core setup
- Tournament name — sets the name of the tournament
- Location — sets the correct location from the dropdown menu. Note that only locations added to the database can be used.
- Date — sets the date of the tournament
- Time — sets the start time of the tournament
- Duration — sets the duration in hours. This serves as an indication for the attendees and does not influence the tournament's actual length
- Format — sets the pairing format. The options available are Swiss, Accelerated Swiss, Round Robin, and Double Round Robin
- Time control — sets the desired time control format. The options available are Bullet, Blitz, Rapid, and Classical
- Number of rounds — sets the number of rounds in case the (Accelerated) Swiss pairing system is selected.
- Time format — sets the exact time control. This is free text, so you can choose any type of time control you like
- Description — sets the tournament description visible on the main tournament page
Editing visibility & entry
- Toggle tournament privacy — checking this box will make the tournament visible only for those who have the direct link
- Enable free entry — checking this box will make the tournament free of charge, meaning anyone with an account can register
- Token cost — if the tournament is not free, this sets the number of tokens charged for the tournament. Leaving it empty means one token will be charged by default.
Editing FIDE event settings
- Enter FIDE arbiter name — ???
- Enter chief FIDE arbiter name — ???
- Enter deputy FIDE arbiter name — ???
- Toggle tie-break scoring system — the options available are Buchholz or Sonneborn-Berger
To learn more about the different tie-break scoring systems, please visit the FIDE handbook.
Editing player bye requests
- Select bye points — this option decides how many points a player receives after a bye has been awarded
- Max byes — set the maximum number of byes a player can request per tournament
- From round — sets the first round players can request byes for
- Until round — sets the last round players can request byes for
Editing entry options
Before a tournament
Everything you need to do in preparation for a tournament will be done from here.
Checking in attendees
To mark attendees as present, simply click on the green button next to their names to check them in. Checked in players will automatically move to the upper list. Should a player be unable to attend, you can remove them from the registered players list by clicking on the red thrash can icon. Whether the entry fee will be refunded will always depend on the rules set by the organiser of the tournament.
Manually adding players
Should a walk-in want to attend, you can create an account and collect the appropriate payment on the spot:
Manually adding players is also possible if the tournament is full. If that is the case, the new player will automatically be added to the waiting list. Should no spot free up, the entry fee will be refunded in the form of a token on their account for future use.
Closing the waiting list
Players on the waiting list will by default automatically promote to the list of registered players should a spot open up. To avoid this, you can toggle closing the waiting list. By doing so, you stop the system from automatically promoting players on the waiting list. This can come in handy for example when you are finalising the registration of walk-in who you want to prioritise over a player on the waiting list who is already too late or will not come but forgot to deregister.
Delete tournament
If you want to delete the current tournament, click on the delete button and confirm.
This also goes for the attendee list so be careful!
Starting a tournament
If you are sure you checked in all the players, hit the "Start" button. Time to play!
During a tournament
Once you have started a tournament, the page will look as follows:
Restarting a tournament
If something went wrong during the first round and you want to restart the tournament, hit the "Reset Tournament" button. This will remove any scores for round one that have already been registered and generate a fresh pairing.
As soon as you complete the first round and enter round two, it is not possible anymore to reset the tournament and the button disappears. Therefore, please make sure that everything is in order by the end of round one to avoid inconvenient situations!
Restarting a round
If something went wrong during a round, clicking the "Restart This Round" button restarts the current round, and only the current round. This means that the scores of the previous round(s) stay intact. Resetting a round will also force a new pairing for that round.
Entering results
To enter a result, click or tap on the pairing you want to register a result for. This unfolds a card with buttons for registering a win for white or black, a draw, and a forfeiture of white or black. After this, the result will be notated in the pairing. Of course, the results will immediately be visible in the standings column as well.
Completing a round
If you are sure all the results of a round are registered correctly, you are ready to proceed to the next round. Click on "Complete Round" to continue the tournament.
Ending a tournament
If you have correctly entered the results of the last round and want to end the tournament, you can click on the yellow "End Tournament" button in the top right corner of the screen:
After confirming that you want to end the tournament, you will be directed to the final standings screen where you can see each player's score, results, and TPR (Tournament Performance Rating):
