How to run a Swiss, round robin or quads at club night

A tournament starts as house rules (under Castle). Three presets cover most clubs, each complete and checked; save one as yours and change what you need.

A round robin can also put everyone together instead of in quads, and have each pair meet once or twice. A big round robin runs long: if the clock and the field won’t fit the evening, the console says so (“A faster clock, a smaller cap or more nights would help”).

The settings that matter most, all in plain sentences on the form: the clock, Rated (on by default; off makes it friendly, with no rating and no crowns), whether players report their own results or only staff enter them, who can enter (this Castle’s members, or anyone signed in), a cap and a waitlist, whether guests and roster players can enter, check-in, and Reserve boards for it when it shares the room with casual games.

Under Schedule, press New event, name it, pick when (once, weekly or monthly) and choose your tournament house rules. The form then asks one more question: does it play in one night, each night its own tournament, or across the event’s nights, one tournament from the first night to the last? A tournament across several nights takes no guests, because a guest account only lasts 30 days.

• Side games for everyone else keeps casual pairing going for anyone waiting, on the boards the tournament doesn’t reserve.
• Who sees it: everyone (your Castle page and calendar feed) or members only.
• Post it as a Gambit so people can enter themselves and follow the pairings online. Without it, you add every player by hand. (The box is there for one-off events and tournaments; a weekly casual night lives on your Castle page instead.)

The event’s page has Open the TD console. That’s your desk for the rest of this guide. Press Open entries, and people enter by accepting the tournament’s gambit: “Accepting the gambit enters you.” The gambit only ever shows a count (“8 entered”), never who.

On the console’s Players tab you can Add a player yourself (someone checked in tonight, or on your roster), move someone up from the waitlist with Move into the field, or Withdraw them. When the field is set, press Close entries, or leave them open until you start.

Everyone on the Players tab is a name and an entry number. Nobody’s rating is shown, there or anywhere else in a tournament.

1. 1

   Open the night. On Tonight, press Open tonight: and the event’s name. The lobby opens with its house rules, and the tournament goes on its boards by itself. (If it doesn’t, the console has Put it on tonight’s boards.)

2. 2

   Check-in. Players join tonight’s lobby with the code, then check in from the tournament’s card there, from 30 minutes before the start in the presets. The console counts them: “9 here of 10 in the field”.

3. 3

   Close check-in and Start. Start says what will happen first: everyone gets an entry number, the rules lock, anyone who isn’t here is withdrawn, and anyone on the waitlist who is here fills a place. It needs at least two players.

You can change tonight’s boards at any time from the console (“give the tournament more, or move it”). Games already on a board stay where they are.

Start lands you on the Rounds tab with round 1 as a draft: only you can see it. Check it the way you’d check a pairing sheet before pinning it up.

• Tap two people to trade seats, or flip a board’s colors.
• Pair it again if the room changed (someone left, someone’s absent).
• Press Publish round 1. The boards fill, every phone shows its board and color, and the TV updates.

Spotted a mistake after publishing? Take round 1 back returns it to your draft, as long as nobody has sent a result yet.

Results come in from the phones as players report them, or from you if the house rules say only staff enter results. When the copies disagree, or a game couldn’t settle itself, it shows under Needs you with a link to settle it on the games page. Once every result is in, press Pair round 2, check the draft, publish, and so on to the last round: “That was the last round.”

With an odd number, one player sits out each round. In the Swiss presets that bye is worth a full point, the way FIDE and most US clubs score it, and the console reminds you. The player sees “The bye” on their phone, so nobody wanders the room looking for an opponent.

The Players tab handles the rest of real life:

• Absent round 3 for someone who says they’ll miss the next round: they sit it out without a game, and Back for round 3 undoes it.
• Withdraw someone who has gone home. Their results stand and they aren’t paired again. Put back reverses it.
• Record a forfeit on a board when someone doesn’t turn up: pick who came, or neither. A forfeit isn’t a game, so it’s never rated and earns no crowns.
• A late entry, where the house rules allow one (the Weekly Swiss does, until round 3), plays from the next round.

The Standings tab keeps the table and the crosstable up to date after each complete round, with the tiebreaks your house rules name. The Swiss presets use Buchholz Cut 1, then Buchholz, then direct encounter, then wins; quads use direct encounter, Sonneborn-Berger, then wins.

Players and your Castle’s members can follow along on the tournament’s gambit (Pairings, Standings, Crosstable), signed in. Signed out, it shows no names at all.

The club TV gives each tournament its own block: its name, “Round 2 of 4”, and every board. Running two screens? The code card on Tonight has A second screen: a TV link for one tournament only, or for the casual boards only.

Press Print on the console for the wall: a pairing sheet, the wall chart, the crosstable, or quad sheets. Printing is free with every tournament.

The downloads sit beside it: Standings, Crosstable and Latest pairings as CSV, and a TRF file for directors who keep records elsewhere (its rating field is always 0). Downloads come with Keep, which we switch on for a Castle when you ask; printing works either way.

One button for before the start, one for after, each with a confirm step that says exactly what happens:

• Call it off, before you press Start: everyone entered gets one email saying so, and its gambit comes down. Once it has started, this button is gone.
• End early, once it’s running: no more rounds are paired. Results already in stand, and the standings after the last complete round are final.

A single-elimination or double-elimination night works differently: no rounds, a bracket. That’s the knockout guide.