Tournament Broadcast Guide - Part 5: Event & Player Data

In part 4 of our guide, we covered how to set up round data so that your event is properly displayed on Chess.com. In this part, we'll discuss the basics of using DGTLiveChess and Swiss Manager to provide accurate information about your event and its players.

DGT LiveChess Setup

Almost all data entered into DGT LiveChess (or equivalent) will be included in the generated PGN files and the DGT LiveChess Cloud output. We use this data to enhance the viewing experience for your audience, so it's important for you to provide as much accurate data as possible.

The instructions below are based on DGT LiveChess, but the principles apply to all other software that generates PGN files. Some of the fields mentioned below may not be available, but please make sure you follow these instructions as closely as possible.

Event Data

Event Data refers to basic information about your event, such as its name, location, and time control. You should enter this information in the Tournament tab. While Chess.com won't use some of this data, it may be displayed on other platforms and on downloadable PGN files. For our purposes, the fields of interest are:

• Name: The tournament's official name
• Location, Country: The city and country where the tournament takes place
• Time control: The event's time control. This is a very important field to fill out! If you have multiple time controls (for example, a knockout event with tiebreak matches), insert the main time control. This information determines which FIDE ratings will be displayed (classical, rapid, or blitz).

Player Data

The Players tab in DGT LiveChess lists all the players entered in the event and available to be paired. Ideally, you'd add the full list of participants in the event, but there is no simple, automated way to do so. However, you can get all the information using PGN files generated by your pairings program, as you'll see below.

Here is an example of a fully filled player card:

The FIDE ID field on the information tab for any player is the single most important piece of data and should always be filled in! A player's FIDE ID grants access to their full details from the FIDE rating lists and our player database. 

Even if all other fields are empty, the FIDE ID is usually enough to identify the player and accurately display all their relevant information. Our platform displays as much information about a player as possible: full name, rating, title, federation, and photos when available, as long as we can correctly identify a player with their FIDE ID.

Without a FIDE ID, our system will attempt to identify the player using their full name, so spelling players' names exactly as they appear on FIDE's rating list is extremely important. For example, when entering data for someone like IM Danny Rensch, you should use: "Daniel" (first name) and "Rensch" (last name) and not "Danny."

For more complex names (like names with multiple first or last names, middle names, or academic titles like "Dr."), we strongly advise looking up the player in the FIDE rating list to make sure you're accurate. In this case, it would also be simple to look up and provide their FIDE ID!

If we lack both a FIDE ID and a unique full name, our system will attempt to use the additional information provided on this tab to identify a player correctly. However, this will not always be possible or accurate. This is why including FIDE IDs is essential.

Regardless, you should make an effort to fill in all other fields on this tab. We'll display the information you input here (name, rating, title, federation) if we can't establish an accurate match.

The process of adding dozens of players and filling in their information can be very time-consuming, as is the process of manually adding pairings to the Rounds tab, especially for large events. Thankfully, there is a shortcut to add players and pairings in bulk by using a PGN file generated by your pairings software. Swiss Manager supports this and will include all information about a player in the generated PGN file—FIDE IDs included.

Once pairings are ready for an upcoming round, you can export an "empty" PGN file from the pairings software that includes all game headers (player names, round, board, and other details) but no moves. Importing this PGN file into DGT LiveChess adds all players to the Players tab with full details, along with all pairings to the relevant round in the Rounds tab!

Once you have an upcoming round already paired, follow these steps to export that PGN in Swiss Manager:

Go to the "Other" menu item, scroll down, and click on "PGN Files." A new window should appear:

The entries in the "Event" and "Site" fields will generally be overwritten in the process, so you can ignore them. However, you need to make sure they do not contain any special characters or non-English quotation marks. Having these characters in the PGN file will result in LiveChess failing to load it

In the "from" and "to" Round fields, input the upcoming round you wish to export. Use the same round number in both fields to export one specific round.

In the "from" and "to" Board fields, define the range of the pairings that will be relayed live. For example, if your tournament has 100 players (50 games per round) and you are using 20 e-boards for boards 1 through 20, input "from" =1 and "to" =20. There is no need to output the full list of pairings.

In the "PGN Output File" field, select a location and file name of your choice for the file that will be generated.
"Output Rating" should be set to your preference, though we recommend "International." In most cases, ratings in the PGN file will be overwritten by the appropriate official rating when displayed.

"Output Name" should be set to the full version ("Hysek, Alois") to ensure full identification.

"Chess-results server" field must be left unchecked.

"Output board as subround" should be checked; this enables the proper sorting of the pairings when displayed.

In team tournaments, you'll see an option called "Output pairings # and board # as subround" immediately below "Output board as subround." This option is checked by default, but you must uncheck it before proceeding. Otherwise, LiveChess will not be able to read the file generated.

You can ignore all other settings. Now click on the" Output empty PGN file" button on the bottom left of that window to generate the PGN file.

You'll then have a PGN file that contains the headers of all selected games. If you open it with a text editor, you'll notice that a lot of information about the players is also included.

To import the pairings (and players) into DGT LiveChess, go to the "Rounds" tab and select the desired round. Click on the arrow next to the cogwheel at the bottom right and select "Import Pairings from PGN."

Select the PGN file you generated from Swiss Manager and press O.K.

As you will see in LiveChess, all the pairings you exported are now loaded for the specified round in the correct order:

Additionally, all the players involved in these pairings have been automatically added to the Players tab, along with their personal information contained in the PGN file, including the all-important FIDE IDs.

Now, regardless of whether you are using DGT LiveChess Cloud or the PGN method, this information will be included in the output, and we'll use it on Chess.com!

Pro Tip 1: Especially in large tournaments, you may choose to export the full pairing list to a PGN file and import it to LiveChess at the start to import all players and their data at once. This may be useful if, in later rounds, you need to add pairings manually.
You should then delete, from the "Rounds" tab, all the unnecessary pairings (those that are not relayed live).

Pro Tip 2: In round-robin tournaments, the pairings of all rounds are known in advance, and it would be a good idea to upload all rounds to LiveChess in one go. However, the current version of LiveChess (version 2) cannot import a PGN file with games stretching multiple rounds (version 1 would do so). In this case, the simplest is to export multiple PGN files from Swiss Manager, one for each round.

In the next part of our guide, we'll cover some important topics that were not discussed so far, such as delay, multiple live game sources, and more.

Check out the full guide:

• Introduction 
• Part 1: DGT LiveChess Cloud 
• Part 2: PGN Files
• Part 3: Uploading and Syncing PGN Files Using FTP
• Part 4: Round Data & Numbering
• Part 5: Event & Player Data (you are here)
• Part 6: Chess Results & Swiss Manager