Tournament Broadcast Guide - Part 4: Round Data And Numbering
So far, in our Tournament Broadcast Guide, we've discussed the steps required to broadcast live chess games on Chess.com. However, you must also set up the data for the round associated with the games correctly, so that we can show the tournament's structure on Chess.com. In this part of the guide, we'll cover how to do this for different tournament formats.
The process is straightforward for the most common cases, like individual Swiss and round-robin tournaments. However, it gets more complex for knockout events and team tournaments, which require very specific data formats to avoid the need for manual corrections.
Below, we will provide guidance for all common tournament formats.
Swiss Tournaments
Handling a Swiss tournament is quite simple. You must add the pairings of each round to LiveChess, ideally using the Swiss Manager method (coming soon in the next part of this guide).
If you add the pairings manually, you should follow the same board order as the official pairings.
If you've exported a PGN file, this should already contain the board order—the "decimal" value of the Round tag, e.g. "2.5" means "round 2, board 5." We also use these values to sort the games on our Events page so that the top boards appear at the top of the event page.
Round-Robin Tournaments
These events are also relatively simple. You must add pairings for all rounds in advance (so that they are displayed on the event page). The order of the boards does not matter in this case, as it is not dependent on current standings. Therefore, you can adjust this order in any way you like without affecting any functionality.
Knockout Tournaments
Knockout events require a specific data format to be represented properly on Chess.com.
First, you must load the first-round games on LiveChess in the same order as they appear on the intended bracket while reading it from top to bottom. This will ensure that the bracket is displayed correctly on the Results tab of our Events page. If you notice any discrepancies, please get in touch with us, and we'll make adjustments.
The most complicated aspect of knockout events is the numbering of rounds. It's imperative to use the same tournament entry inside DGT LiveChess for all rounds and, therefore, the same LiveChess Cloud link (or, when using PGNs, the same tournament parent folder).
However, we need to set up our system in advance to match the round numbers in the live games data with the round numbers in the actual event. This process is called "round mapping," and it is handled on our side as long as we have all the necessary information—which we kindly ask you to provide.
Rounds are numbered incrementally inside DGT LiveChess (1, 2, 3, and so on). But when it comes to the actual tournament structure, the numbering of the rounds could be quite different—and this is why we need to do the round mapping.
The main challenge to setting this up in advance is that, if tiebreak games are needed at any stage, there's no way of knowing exactly how many there will be.
The solution is to pre-assign, inside LiveChess, round numbers to all possible tiebreak games/rounds and leave them empty if those games are not needed.
Here's an example: A knockout event's rules describe matches of two classical games, followed, in case of a tie, by two rapid games, then two blitz games, and then armageddon.
The ideal setup inside LiveChess would be to assign rounds 1 and 2 to the two classical games, then rounds 3 and 4 to rapid, rounds 5 and 6 to blitz, and round 7 to the armageddon game.
The next stage would similarly be assigned to rounds 8 through 14, followed by 15 through 21, and so on. If no tiebreaks are ultimately needed at any stage, you can leave all those pre-assigned rounds empty of games and move on to the first round of the next stage.
This method allows us to do all required round mapping in advance before the tournament starts. This, in turn, allows the tournament run unattended until the end without errors.
Here is another example, this time from the 2025 Chessable Masters; here the rules specified a match of 4 rapid games followed by an armageddon game in case of 2-2: In round 1, we entered the pairings in the order of the bracket.
In round 1, pairings are entered in the order of the bracket. Three of the matches ended after game 3, while the fourth one was tied in the four regular games and had to be decided with an armageddon game tiebreak.
If your event has an unknown number of tiebreak games (sudden death, for example), some round mapping issues will inevitably occur—but we'll handle them in time. In that case, continue with the next stage at the next round slot available in LiveChess.
We strongly advise against using separate LiveChess tournaments or cloud links for different stages of the same event, as this complicates setting up the relay.
Team Events
Team events, be it Swiss or round-robin, introduce an additional challenge: correctly assigning all players to their teams to properly display team results and match-ups.
By default, our software will assign players to teams according to their federations. This will work for events involving national teams, such as the Olympiad, Continental Team Championships, etc. However, for team events that aren't based on federations, players must be assigned to teams in advance.
We recommend you use Swiss Manager and Chess-Results.com (we'll cover this in detail in the next part of the guide). Our system automatically pulls data from Chess-Results.com, ensuring accurate results with no extra work.
Alternatively, some software allows the inclusion of team name data in the generated PGN files. DGT LiveChess does not currently support this, but if your software does, our system can read this information from the PGN files and assign players to teams accordingly.
If you choose not to use Chess-Results.com, the only alternative is to provide us in advance with a full list of team rosters in a readily usable format so we can import the rosters into our systems. This can be a simple bullet list or spreadsheet.
If none of these options are possible, the event can still be relayed, but the games will be displayed in an unclassified list without any team-related presentation.
It is also important to load the individual pairings of each team match in DGT LiveChess in the proper order (from first to last board) so they are correctly sorted on the event's page. If you load the pairings directly from a PGN file, LiveChess will take care of this automatically.
For team knockout events, you must make sure the round mapping is correct, just like in individual knockout tournaments. Therefore, you should follow the same procedures described above.
Other Formats
The above formats cover the vast majority of tournaments. If your tournament follows a different format, you are welcome to reach out to us for advice on the best way to set it up.
In the next part of our broadcast guide, we'll cover how to handle event and player data to ensure that viewers have access to relevant information about your tournament and its players. Thanks for sticking with us so far!
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 (you are here)
- Part 5: Event & Player Data
- Part 6: Chess Results & Swiss Manager
