Running Directed Tournaments On Chess.com

Chess.com provides many automated event formats, including swiss systems (live), arenas (live), matches (live and daily), and round robins (daily), but many tournament organizers want to run unique and innovative events using external softwares such as Swiss Manager.

Using some spreadsheet skills and Chess.com match creation tools, it is possible to quickly and easily run tournaments of nearly any format on Chess.com. Here are a set of suitable steps using Swiss Manager.

1. Store Chess.com usernames in the "Club/City" field in your management software.

Within your tournament management software, the only change you must make to your normal tournament setup is to include Chess.com usernames SOMEWHERE in the software so that they will be included in your pairings sheets. Within Swiss Manager, one solution is to include the usernames in the "Group" field. Select Input → Update players... and fill in the data)

2. Pair the tournament.

Pair your tournament as usual.

3. Copy/paste the pairings into a Google Sheets document.

Here are some example pairings that have been pasted into Google Sheets. To access the sheet in Swiss-Manager, select Lists → Pairings and click on “Excel” at the bottom of the screen.

4. Use the following spreadsheet formula to generate match commands.

=CONCATENATE("/match ",H1," ",O1," 90 30 u protected")

• H1 = White's username
• O1 = Black's username
• 90 = initial time
• 30 = increment
• u = unrated
• protected ensures that the game won't be aborted

The final commands should look something like this: /match WHITEPLAYER BLACKPLAYER 90 30 u protected

TROUBLESHOOTING: If you have any issues, make sure that your columns (here H and O) are correctly referencing the columns with usernames for White and Black.

5. Copy/paste the commands into Chess.com. (Must have access as an organizer. Request in the comments if needed.)

Paste the commands into the chat in chess.com/live to start the games. As each game starts, it should load in a small game tab in live chess.

TROUBLESHOOTING: If the command is not working, verify that the username has no typos and the player is connected in chess.com/live.

6. (Optional) Use the following spreadsheet formula to generate a follow URL.

=CONCATENATE("https://www.chess.com/live#m=",JOIN("|",H1:H24,I1:I24))

H and I should be the columns with the usernames. The final URL will be as follows and can be pasted into the browser to automatically load all active games. To make an unwieldy URL easier to work with, you may wish to use a tool like bit.ly to shorten the URL.

https://www.chess.com/live#m=PLAYER1|PLAYER2|PLAYER3

7. Update the results and pair the next round.

As the games finish, be sure to record the results in your tournament management software, and you are all set to rinse and repeat and pair the next round. If you miss a result, you can find the completed games on the member's profile page.

Video Tutorial On Launching And Recording Games