Manual tournaments

Manual tournaments give the tournament director full control: the director decides who plays whom and when. Unlike automatic club tournaments, pairings are not drawn and rounds are not started automatically — everything happens on the tournament page, which the director shapes with Markdown.

Status of a manual tournament

A manual tournament moves through exactly these four statuses, in this order, with no rollback:

Registration → Preparation → Running → Finished

Registration

Players sign up; the director maintains the tournament page. At least 3 participants must be registered before advancing to the next status.

Preparation

Registration is closed. The director can now add game pairings on the tournament page. A pairing is just a note in the Markdown at this point, not yet a game. Nothing counts, no one has to move.

Running

The director starts the games, either one by one via the start button on a pairing or via the "Start all games" button. Only when a pairing is started does it become a real game, become visible, and start the clock. New pairings can still be added as needed.

Finished

The director declares either a participant or a club as the winner. The end date is set. Final state.

Only director and admin are allowed to advance the status.

Creating games

Games in a manual tournament are not created through the usual invitation flow. Instead, the director notes them as pairings in the Markdown of the tournament page and starts them there.

A pairing looks like this:

<game pairing="white-black"/>

white and black are the usernames of the two players, separated by a hyphen. Both must be tournament participants. As long as there is no id on the tag, it is a planned pairing and not yet a game.

Adding a pairing

You can write the tag directly or insert it via a dialog:

  1. Status must be Preparation or Running.
  2. Open the Markdown editor on the tournament page (edit button as director).
  3. In the toolbar, click the </> button ("Insert element") and choose "Insert game pairing".
  4. Fill in the dialog:
    • White and Black, picked from the tournament participants (must be different)
    • Starting position (FEN), optional, only for unrated tournaments, for any starting position
    • Display, how the game is rendered on the page ("Both player names and result", "From White's perspective", "From Black's perspective")
  5. "Insert" writes the tag <game pairing="white-black" .../> into the text. No game is created yet.

Starting games

In status Running, the tournament page validates every pairing. If a username is misspelled or a player is not part of the tournament, it shows the director an error next to the pairing.

  • One by one: via the start button next to the pairing. A confirmation follows, then the game is created and started.
  • All at once: via the "Start all games" button. First a list of all pairings to be started appears, including any errors. After confirmation, all valid pairings are started.

When started, a pairing becomes a game. The game's id is added to the tag (<game pairing="white-black" id="..."/>), the game becomes visible, and the clock starts.

Things to keep in mind:

  • Both players must be tournament participants (enforced server-side).
  • Time control and rated status are inherited from the tournament, not per game.
  • Custom FEN starting positions are only allowed in unrated tournaments.

Crosstable

For a round-robin you can generate a crosstable. It is not a single tag but a normal Markdown table that a wizard writes for you and that you can then edit freely.

Generating the crosstable

  1. In status Preparation or Running, open the Markdown editor.
  2. In the toolbar click the </> button and choose "Insert crosstable".
  3. Pick the participants, optionally a double round-robin (each pairing twice, once with white and once with black). A preview shows the generated table.
  4. "Insert" writes the table at the cursor position.

The result cells hold <game pairing="…"/> pairings; each row's points column is a <score view="…" games="row"/> that sums the row's games.

Starting the games and results

Before the start the cells show the pairings, so the table is also its own preview. The existing "Start all games" button (or a single cell control) creates and starts the games. The same pairing appears in two mirror cells, but only one game is created and its id is written into both cells.

Afterwards the cells show the result from the row player's perspective and the points column sums automatically. A win counts 1, a draw ½; running games do not count.

Because it is a normal Markdown table you can adjust it freely, for example reorder rows, add notes or enter special cases by hand.

Markdown on the tournament page

The tournament page is a full Markdown page. You can put tables, diagrams, game links, links to sub-pages and much more in there — the full syntax and all available widgets are documented in the Markdown guide.

Especially relevant for directors:

  • <game pairing="white-black" view="..." /> — planned pairing the director can start as a game.
  • <score view="..." games="row" /> — sums the results of a table row's games from a player's perspective. Generated by the crosstable wizard, see the "Crosstable" section.
  • <game id="..." view="..." note="..." /> — game link with configurable display. See Markdown guide → "Games".
  • <diagram fen="..." /> — position diagrams for explanations. See Markdown guide → "Diagrams".
  • [[Sub-page]] — wiki-style link to other tournament sub-pages (e.g. one page per round).
  • <user name="..."/> or <user id="Name"/> — linked player name with profile tooltip.

Permissions

  • Director and admin can advance the status, add pairings, start games, finish the tournament, and edit the tournament pages.
  • Participants see only the started games; planned pairings don't appear in their game list.