Generating pairings

The Pairings tab is where you run the tournament round by round: generate the pairings, publish them, enter results and complete the round. Chesstide pairs Swiss tournaments with bbpPairings, the reference implementation of the FIDE Dutch system.

The round lifecycle

Pick a round in the round selector; its status drives which buttons appear:

• Draft — pairings exist but players can't see them yet. You can still adjust everything.
• Published — pairings are public; result entry is open. Unpublish returns to draft if needed.
• Completed — all results are in and the round is final. Revert to In Progress reopens it if a result must be fixed.

The normal cycle: Generate Pairings for Round → review → Publish Pairings → enter results → Complete Round. Complete stays disabled while games have no result (the tooltip tells you how many are missing).

Generating a round

Click Generate Pairings for Round. Checked-in players who aren't withdrawn or absent for the round are paired; with an odd number, the engine assigns a bye, shown as Bye (+points) using your configured bye points. Requested byes and absent players are listed below the boards.

If you configured Accelerated Pairings (Baku, Haley or Manual) in the Configuration tab, the acceleration is applied automatically during generation.

Round-robin tournaments work differently: a single Generate All Rounds creates the full Berger schedule at once, after you choose the player ordering (by rating is the FIDE default).

Important: A round can only be generated when the previous round is complete. If results are missing, Chesstide offers to complete the previous round for you — or blocks generation until you resolve it.

If bbpPairings cannot find a valid Swiss pairing (rare, typically tiny or heavily constrained fields), a replacement algorithm produces the round and a warning asks you to review the boards carefully.

Adjusting pairings manually

While the round is draft or published, the arbiter has the last word:

• Swap Mode — click two players to exchange them, put an unpaired or absent player onto a board, or fill a bye. Result entry is paused while swap mode is active.
• Swap colors — flips white and black on a board.
• Team tournaments additionally allow swapping whole teams and swapping players between boards, plus Regenerate boards to refresh lineups without losing entered results.

Tournaments using the Other pairing system are fully manual: pick pairs from the Players to pair roster and Chesstide numbers the boards for you.

Printing and exporting

Print views open in a new tab, ready for the pairing board: by Board, Alphabetical (individual), by Teams and Boards (team), and Results slips with signature lines. A PGN export is also available for games.

Fixing a generated round

A draft round with no results can be regenerated — click Generate Pairings for Round again. If results were already entered, use Erase All Results first (draft rounds only; byes are preserved), or clear the individual results. Completed rounds can't be regenerated.