Standings and tie-break configuration

The Standings tab ranks players from the results entered so far; the tie-breaks that order equal scores are configured in the Configuration tab. This article covers both, plus the per-player tie-break explainer.

Reading the standings

The table shows rank, player (or team), rating, points and wins/draws/losses, followed by one column per configured tie-break — hover a column header for the full tie-break name. A round badge shows which round the standings reflect. Optional columns (title, gender, birth year, FIDE ID, national ID) can be toggled with the column chooser and are included in the CSV export.

Team tournaments have sub-tabs: Team Standings plus per-board standings for the individual boards.

If categories are defined, a category filter narrows the ranking to one category.

A footnote under the table records which tie-break engine build computed the values, so a number that shifts after an engine update is attributable.

Recalculating

Standings don't recompute on every result — when they're out of date (results corrected, configuration changed), an amber banner warns that standings are stale. Click Recalculate to refresh them. Prize amounts on the Prizes tab refresh with the same recalculation.

What freezes when you close a tournament

Once a tournament is Completed, its published standings are final and Chesstide stops anything that could rewrite them. The Standings tab replaces the recalculate banner with a notice saying the standings can no longer be recalculated.

While the tournament is closed, these are refused:

• Recalculate, on both the Standings and the Prizes tab
• entering or correcting results, and erasing a round's results or pairings
• reverting a round to in progress, or unpublishing a round
• editing the ranking settings — tie-breaks, break-tie tie-breaks, board tie-breaks, categories, team scoring system and the fictitious-rating toggle. The Configuration tab carries a lock banner; every other setting on that tab still saves normally.

The unlock is Reopen Tournament (see Completing, cancelling and copying): reopen, make the correction, then mark the tournament completed again.

Why: a tie-break value is only reproducible against the engine that computed it. A recalculation months later runs on whatever tie-break engine is deployed that day, and engine updates do change values — ARO, AROC, TPR, APRO, APPO and some Buchholz and Koya variants have all shifted between builds. The lock keeps a finished event publishing the numbers it published on the day.

Cancelled tournaments are not locked, and simultaneous exhibitions are exempt — they have no standings to protect.

Configuring tie-breaks

In the Configuration tab, tie-breaks are ordered lists — drag to reorder; the order is the priority. Three lists exist:

• Tie-breaks — the main list, shown as standings columns. Individual tournaments can use Buchholz (full, Cut-1 or Median), Sonneborn-Berger, Direct Encounter, Progressive Score, Koya, number of wins, games with Black, rating-based methods (ARO, AROC, TPR, APRO, APPO) and more. See Tie-break definitions for what each means.
• Break-tie tie-breaks — applied after the main list but not shown as columns; they also go into the FIDE report.
• Board tie-breaks — team tournaments only, for the per-board standings.

Team standings rank by Match Points or Game Points with team-specific tie-breaks (team Sonneborn-Berger variants, direct encounter, board count…).

A toggle lets unrated players count with a fictitious rating in rating-based tie-breaks. For round-robins, Chesstide shows a warning if you configure a Buchholz-family tie-break — FIDE recommends against it for that format.

Important: Changing tie-break configuration mid-event doesn't silently rewrite the ranking — standings are marked stale and you choose when to Recalculate. Players may have seen the previous order, so prefer settling the configuration before round 1. Once the tournament is completed the ranking settings are frozen entirely — see What freezes when you close a tournament.

Explaining a tie-break to a player

In individual tournaments, every tie-break value in the standings links to a per-player breakdown: each round's contribution, which rounds a cut dropped, and how unplayed games were adjusted per FIDE rules. When a player questions their Buchholz at the results desk, this page is your answer — it's also linked from the player popover.

Tie-break games

If the configured tie-breaks can't separate players and the Tiebreak Games method is in your list, a banner counts the unresolved ties and Manage tie-breaks lets you create an over-the-board tie-break game or match (blitz playoff, Armageddon…) as a manually paired extra round.