Staff and arbiter access
Tournament staff records who officiates your event — and it's what ends up in the FIDE report. Access to the cockpit itself is a separate matter, covered below.
Recording tournament staff
In the cockpit, Settings → Staff lists your officials with their role and FIDE/national IDs. The roles are the ones FIDE's own tournament registration form offers, so you can record your team the way you will have to declare it:
- Chief Arbiter — exactly one per tournament.
- Deputy Chief Arbiter — as many as you need.
- Sector Arbiter, Arbiter, Assistant Arbiter, Anti-cheating Arbiter, Pairings Arbiter — as many as you need.
- Organizer — as many as you need.
One person can hold several roles.
Every arbiter role can receive an FA/IA arbiter norm from the cockpit's Administration tab — except Assistant Arbiter. See Arbiter norm report forms for how to generate one. FIDE's arbiter title regulations do not count an event where the applicant is only listed as an assistant, so Chesstide will not offer them as a norm recipient. They can still officiate, appear on the staff sheet, and sign a norm form for someone else. Organizers are not norm recipients either, but may sign.
Under Add Staff Member, look the person up with the same player finder the registration pages use — by name or by FIDE/federation ID, across the federation and FIDE databases as well as existing Chesstide profiles, with duplicates and disagreeing birthdates flagged as you go (see Registering for a tournament). Pick the person, choose the role, and click Add. If they cannot be found, enter them on the Add player manually tab: Chesstide first checks for an existing person with that name and birthdate and offers them instead, so the same arbiter is not recorded twice, and then asks for the role exactly as for a search result. Remove staff with the trash icon.
This page has no Save button: every row applies the moment you add or remove it.
Only the chief and deputy chief arbiters recorded here are exported in the FIDE TRF report — that report has one field for each — see Exports, TPNs and the poster. Publishing to chess-results carries more: the chief arbiter and every deputy go to the fields chess-results names for them, and the sector, plain, assistant, anti-cheating and pairings arbiters share its general arbiter field.
Each staff row also shows whether that person is linked to a Chesstide account — Account linked, or No account — and, next to it, whether you have given that account Cockpit access. Both matter: see below. The row says whether, not which: for privacy, the account's email address is not shown.
Officials on the public page
The tournament's public page has an Officials card: your organising club, followed by the staff you choose to show there. The Public page column on each staff row decides it — Shown or Hidden, one click to switch.
The chief arbiter is shown by default; every other role starts hidden. The choice is made per role, so someone who is both chief arbiter and organizer can appear as one without the other. Only names and roles are published — never FIDE IDs or contact details.
Who can use the cockpit
The cockpit is available to:
- the tournament's creator,
- administrators of the organization the tournament belongs to,
- staff members you have granted cockpit access,
- Chesstide administrators.
A tournament whose cockpit you have been granted is listed in My Tournaments alongside the ones you created, so you can reach it without being sent a link.
That third case takes two steps, and both are deliberate. Recording someone as staff grants nothing on its own — it is the record of who officiated, which is what the FIDE report carries.
- The person links their own account. They do it themselves with Link your chess profile on their account page (see Your account and profile). Until they do, the staff row reads No account, and the Cockpit access column offers nothing to grant — access is given to an account, and there is no account yet.
- You grant the access. Once the row reads Account linked, Grant access in the Cockpit access column opens the cockpit to that account. The column then reads Access granted, and Revoke closes it again at any time.
The grant is made to the account linked to that person, not to the player profile. If that person later unlinks their profile — or an administrator does it for them — the access ends with the link, and anyone who claims the profile afterwards inherits nothing. You can't revoke the grant that is holding your own cockpit open; ask the tournament's creator or an administrator of your organization.
So to give your arbiter working access, either grant it on their staff row as above — which gets the paperwork right at the same time — or add their Chesstide account as an administrator of your organization (see Managing your organization), which covers every tournament your organization runs.
Tip: The two lists still answer different questions: staff answers "who officiated?" (for players and FIDE), organization administrators answers "who can click the buttons?" — with granted staff accounts as the overlap.
Who changed what
The cockpit's Activity tab lists the changes made to pairings, rounds and results, newest first. That covers generating, publishing, reopening, completing and erasing rounds; editing pairings, including swapped colors or players, manual boards and pairing numbers; recording absences; entering or changing results and played dates; and adjusting extra points. Each line shows When (in your timezone), Who made the change, the Round and the Change itself, for example Changed board 4 (Dupont – Martin) from 1–0 to ½–½.
Use the Round filter to see one round's history. A round you later removed still keeps its history in the filter. Changes the system made on its own are attributed to System, and an account that has since been deleted shows as Deleted user. Everyone who can use the cockpit can see the tab.
Tip: The Activity tab doesn't record registration changes, check-ins or payments.