Creating and configuring a tournament

This article covers creating a tournament — from a two-minute announcement to a fully configured event — and the settings you can adjust afterwards in the cockpit's Configuration tab.

Announce or manage?

Click Create Tournament and choose how you want to set up your event:

Announce a Tournament (~2 minutes) — quickly list your tournament with the essential details so players can find it. Registration happens elsewhere (your website, email…).
Manage a Tournament (~10 minutes) — full configuration with registration, pairings, fees, eligibility, and more. Choose this to run the tournament in Chesstide.

You can switch between the two at any time while filling the form (Switch to full configuration / Switch to quick announcement), and an announced tournament can be upgraded later by enabling registration.

The essential details

Every tournament needs:

Tournament Name, Start Date and End Date
City and Country
Tournament Type — Open, Invitational or School
Participation Mode — Individual or Team
Time Control Type — Standard, Rapid or Blitz
Number of Rounds

Optionally add a description, venue, an Organization (recommended — see Managing your organization), and contact details.

Important: The Participation Mode (individual vs team) cannot be changed once players have registered. Everything else can be adjusted later.

Full configuration options

In manage mode you can additionally set up:

Registration Period — a registration start date and deadline; outside this window players cannot register.
Pairing System — Swiss, Round-robin (with games per pairing and Cyclic or Grouped distribution), or Other, plus a per-round schedule.
Team settings — minimum/maximum players per team, players per match, and an optional team limit. Individual tournaments can set a maximum number of players instead.
Eligibility — age restrictions (Youth (U20), Senior (50+) or custom min/max age) and rating restrictions.
Fees — an Entry Fee (€), per-player or per-team for team events, plus flexible fee rules: exemptions for titled players, discounts by age, gender, club membership or rating, and an optional late fee after a cutoff date.
Homologation — mark the tournament as National or FIDE rated.
Private Tournament — hides the event from public listings; only people with the direct link can find it.

Publish now or save as draft

The Publish immediately checkbox decides whether the tournament goes public straight away. If unchecked, it is saved as a draft — invisible to players until you publish it from the manage page. See Publishing and managing registrations.

The Configuration tab

After creation, the cockpit's Configuration tab is where you refine the sporting rules:

Rating System — FIDE priority, national priority, or highest rating.
Tiebreaks — the ordered list of tie-breaks for the standings (see Tie-break definitions), plus board tie-breaks and team scoring for team events.
Categories — prize/ranking categories by age, rating or gender.
Prizes — prize lists and the split method.
Bye Points and Bye Requests — what a bye scores and whether players may request one.
First Player Color for round 1, Accelerated Pairings (None, Baku, Haley or Manual), and Handicap Tournament mode.
FIDE Event Codes — for FIDE-homologated tournaments, needed for the TRF report.
Tournament Staff and Forbidden Pairings — covered in their own articles.

Click Save Changes after editing a section.

Tip: Configure tie-breaks and categories before the first round if you can. Changing them mid-event recomputes the standings players have already seen.