Simultaneous exhibitions

A simultaneous exhibition (a simul) is an event where one or more strong players — the givers — each play many opponents at once. Chesstide runs a simul as a single-round tournament with its own Simul tab: you pick the giver(s), assign the field, enter results and publish, all in one place.

Creating a simul

Create a tournament you manage on Chesstide and, under the format options, set the Pairing System to Simultaneous exhibition. A simul is always individual and single-round, so the number-of-rounds field disappears — Chesstide fixes it to one round.

Tip: Everything else (name, dates, venue, registration) works like any other tournament. Add your players and check them in as usual on the Players tab before setting up the boards.

The Simul tab

Simuls replace the usual Pairings, Standings and Cross-table tabs with a single Simul tab. Open it to configure givers, assign participants, enter results and see the scores.

Choosing givers and assigning the field

The Givers & assignment panel lists every confirmed or checked-in player. Tick the Giver box for each simultaneous player (one or several), then pick how the remaining players (the field) are shared out with the Assignment buttons:

• By rating (snake) — orders the field by rating and deals it in a serpentine so every giver gets a field of similar size and similar average strength. Best default for multiple givers.
• Random — shuffles the field evenly across the givers.
• Manual — an Assigned giver dropdown appears next to each player so you can place them by hand.

Click Assign to build the boards. The giver starts as White on every board. Each giver must face at least one player, and there must be at least one player besides the givers.

Important: Re-assigning replaces all the boards. Once any result has been entered the panel locks; erase the results first (a single board or all of them — see below) if you really need to redraw.

Moving a player to another giver

After assigning, the Boards table shows a Giver dropdown on each board. Change it to move that player to a different giver — the board number and colours stay the same. A board can be moved until it has a result; once a result is entered, its dropdown locks.

Rearranging boards and switching colours

Click Rearrange boards above the Boards table to enter rearrange mode. Result entry is disabled while it is on, so you cannot mis-click a result. In this mode you can:

• Move a player to another board — click one player, then click the player you want them to swap with. The two exchange boards; each board keeps its number and its giver, so swapping across givers also reassigns both players.
• Switch the colours of a board — click the ⇄ button at the left of the row. The giver moves to Black on that board (or back to White), and the ⚪/⚫ dots next to the two names update.

The dots show at a glance who has which colour, and the 1 / ½ / 0 buttons keep reading from the giver's point of view whichever side they play. Click Rearrange boards again to leave the mode and go back to entering results.

Boards that already have a result cannot be rearranged — erase the result first.

Entering results

Each board has three result buttons, read from the giver's point of view:

The buttons highlight the current result, and they always follow the giver — on a board whose colours you switched, 1 still means the giver won.

A fourth button, –, appears on a board once it has a result: it erases that single board so you can re-enter it, without touching the rest of the exhibition. Erase results (next to Assign) clears every board at once.

Scores and the participant list

The Giver scores cards summarise each giver as +wins =draws −losses, with their running score out of the number of boards and a percentage. Below, the Boards table lists every board with its giver, player, colours and result — your at-a-glance record of the exhibition.

Publishing and completing

The Status badge and buttons drive the round, just like a normal tournament:

• Publish makes the boards and scores visible to the public (see below). Unpublish hides them again.
• Complete finalises the event — it needs every board to have a result, and because a simul is a single round, completing it also marks the whole tournament Completed.
• Reopen puts the round back into draft (and the tournament back to published) so you can fix a result.

What spectators see

Once you publish, a public Simul tab appears on the tournament page showing the giver scores and a read-only board list with the colours and result of each board. Nothing is visible until you publish.

How simuls differ from a normal tournament

Because a giver plays many games in one round, simuls don't fit the FIDE Swiss ranking model, so they are excluded from standings, the cross-table and TRF (rating-report) export — the Simul tab is the results view instead. PGN export still works: each board is exported as a normal game with the colours you set.