Tournament states and visibility
Every tournament carries two independent settings: a state, which says whether the event is live at all, and a visibility, which says who can find it. This article covers both, plus when registration is actually open.
| State | Page reachable? | Registration possible? | Typical moment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Draft | No | No | Being configured |
| Published | Yes | Yes, while the registration window is open | Announced and running |
| Completed | Yes | No | Finished, final standings visible and locked |
| Cancelled | No | No | Called off |
Who can find a tournament
State and visibility answer different questions: the state decides whether the tournament's page opens at all, visibility decides which listings it appears in. The Visibility setting has three levels, on the tournament creation form and in the cockpit's Configuration tab:
| Level | Search and the tournament list | Your organization's or group's page | Direct link |
|---|---|---|---|
| Public | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Organisation only | No | Yes, for every visitor | Yes |
| Private | No | No | Yes |
- Public is the default: listed everywhere — the tournament listing, name search, the open-registration list, your organization's page and the sitemap.
- Organisation only is the middle tier: kept out of global discovery, but listed on your organization's page and on any group page it belongs to, for anyone including logged-out visitors. Use it for a club championship your members should find on your own page without advertising it platform-wide.
- Private is listed nowhere. Only people you give the link to can find it.
Important: All three levels stay reachable by direct link. Visibility controls listing, not access — it is not a password. Anyone holding the URL of a published or completed tournament can open its page whatever the level.
Draft and cancelled tournaments are a separate matter: their pages are visible only to their managers, whatever their visibility.
Tournament groups (series and festivals) have the same three levels, in their create and manage forms.
Registration windows
Being published doesn't automatically mean players can register. Registration is open only when all of these hold:
- the tournament is Published,
- registration via Chesstide is enabled,
- the event hasn't ended,
- today falls within the registration start date and deadline, when set.
Moving between states
Organizers move tournaments forward with Publish, Mark as Completed and, when needed, backward with Reopen (completed → published). Cancel is available up to completion. See Publishing and managing registrations and Completing, cancelling and copying for the organizer workflows.
Marking a tournament completed also locks its standings — see Standings and tie-break configuration.
Rounds have their own smaller lifecycle (draft → published → completed) described in Generating pairings.