Creating Tournaments
The tournament wizard gets your event online fast. You fill in a few essentials and choose whether to publish right away or start as a draft, then ChessRoster walks you through the rest of the setup at your own pace.
Prerequisites
- You are signed in to ChessRoster. You don’t need an organization to create a tournament.
- To collect entries and payments on ChessRoster, the tournament must belong to an organization with a linked PayPal account. See Getting Started to create an organization and PayPal Setup to link PayPal.
How the Wizard Works
The wizard has three steps, and they are split across two stages:
| Step | What it covers | When it happens |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Register Tournament | Name, location, dates, and format | Before your tournament exists |
| 2. Tournament Details | Banner, description, staff, and questions | After your tournament is created (mostly optional) |
| 3. Set Up Online Registration | Registration method, settings, sections, and pricing | After your tournament is created |
Draft or Published — you choose in Step 1. By default, your tournament is published and publicly listed on ChessRoster as soon as you finish Step 1, before you complete Steps 2 and 3. If you’re not ready for players to see it yet, choose Draft instead — it stays visible only to you and your tournament directors until you publish it. Everything you enter can be edited afterward either way, and you can switch between Draft and Published at any time.
The wizard remembers where you are using the web address (the ?step= part of the URL changes as you move), so you can close the page and return to the same spot later.
Step 1: Register Tournament
This is the only step required to create your tournament. It collects “just the essentials — name, place, and dates” and takes about a minute.
What you set here:
- Organizer — which of your organizations is hosting the event, or None if the tournament belongs to you personally. You can move a None tournament into an organization later, but a tournament that belongs to an organization can’t be moved back to None. See Fields With Post-Creation Restrictions.
- Tournament name — displayed on the tournament page and in search results.
- Format — Swiss, Round Robin, Team Swiss, Team Match, or Ladder.
- Country and location — venue address with geocoding to confirm the spot on the map.
- Dates and times — start date and time, end date for multi-day events, and the timezone (set this so cutoff times display correctly for players in other regions).
- Publication — Published (visible to players, the default) or Draft (visible only to you and your tournament directors until you publish it).
No organization yet? Choose None. The wizard notes that the tournament “will belong to you, not an organization” and offers a Create one button. A tournament with no organization gets a public page and can show reports, but it can’t collect entries or payments on ChessRoster or use a custom public web address.
Starting from a past event? If your organization has run tournaments before, use Import a previous tournament to copy its settings as a starting point. This option is only available before the tournament is created.
Creating the Tournament
When the essentials are filled in, click Create Tournament. A confirmation dialog appears, worded for whichever publication choice you made:
Create Tournament? Create “Your Event Name”? It will appear publicly on ChessRoster right away — you can edit everything afterward.
Create Tournament? Create “Your Event Name” as a draft? Only you and your tournament directors will see it until you publish it.
Click Create to proceed. If you chose Published, your tournament is now live and listed on ChessRoster; if you chose Draft, it’s created but stays private until you publish it.
After Step 1: Finishing Setup
Once your tournament is created, ChessRoster takes you straight into the editor to finish setup. A success banner confirms the handoff — its wording depends on whether you published or saved a draft:
Your Event Name is live. Your tournament is now listed on ChessRoster. Finish setting it up below — next up: details, then online registration so players can enter and pay online. You can leave and come back anytime.
Your Event Name is saved as a draft. It is not publicly listed yet — only you and your tournament directors can see it. Finish setting it up below, then publish it from this page when you are ready. You can leave and come back anytime.
You can complete Steps 2 and 3 now, or come back later. The tournament management panel shows a setup checklist that tracks what’s left and links you straight to each unfinished item.
Step 2: Tournament Details
Most of this step is optional — a banner, a description, and staff make your event easier to find and trust, but you can add them anytime. The page is organized into three groups.
Public page
- Public web address — an optional URL path you choose (tournaments that belong to an organization only). Leave it blank to use the tournament’s ID-based URL. Once an administrator explicitly sets a path—during creation or later—it is locked for non-site administrators so shared links remain stable.
- Time control, number of rounds, and rating types (USCF, CFC, FIDE). USCF and CFC are mutually exclusive; FIDE can be combined with either.
- Banner image — an optional promotional image (cropped to a wide 3:1 banner). You can upload your own or use Image Studio after the tournament has been created.
- Description — a rich-text field. The AI assistant can generate a first draft or suggest changes to existing text, with every change shown for review.
See AI-Assisted Descriptions and Images for the complete workflow and image-generation limits.
Staff & notifications
- Tournament directors — staff who can manage this event. Search by email to add existing ChessRoster users or invite new ones; invitees receive an email. Directors are optional for an external listing, but at least one is required once you turn on ChessRoster Registration (the wizard will prompt you).
- Organizer notifications — choose who on your staff gets email alerts about registration activity. See Tournament Notifications.
Pairing notifications (Coming soon). A teaser in this group previews an upcoming feature: “Soon you’ll be able to text players their pairings and let them reply with results — no app required.” See SMS Pairings & Results for the current rollout status.
Registration questions
Add custom questions players must answer when they sign up — for example a USCF ID, a t-shirt size, or a school name. You can make each question required or optional, apply it to all sections or specific ones, and map a response to a SwissSys export field (Team, Club, City, State, Zip, Age, or Grade).
Questions can be Text, Dropdown, or Autocomplete fields. Answers are private unless you deliberately mark them public. See Custom Registration Questions before collecting sensitive information or uploading a club, school, or team suggestion list.
Step 3: Set Up Online Registration
This step decides how players enter your tournament. It opens on the Registration Method page.
Choosing a Registration Method
You pick between two paths:
ChessRoster Registration & Payments (Recommended)
Players register and pay on ChessRoster. You get:
- Online registration and payment — entries download straight into SwissSys
- Automatic USCF membership and rating verification
- Refunds, withdrawals, and byes handled for you
- Member lists, discounts, and per-section pricing
Available in the US and Canada for tournaments that belong to an organization. If the tournament’s organizer is None, this option is unavailable; move the tournament into an organization first.
Handle registration externally
A free basic listing — you collect entries yourself (by email, your own website, or on-site). Your tournament still gets a public ChessRoster listing, but online registration and payment are turned off.
How fees work. When you use ChessRoster Registration, your organization’s configured platform fee (a fixed amount, a percentage of the entry fee, or both — set for your organization by ChessRoster) plus PayPal’s applicable processing fee is deducted from each entry before your payout — players just pay the entry fee, with nothing added on top as a separate charge. The page lists your organization’s actual rate and shows the exact math for any entry fee you enter, so there are no surprises.
Linking PayPal
To accept payments, your organization’s PayPal account must be linked. If it isn’t, the page shows an inline prompt — “Almost there — link your organization’s PayPal account to accept payments” — with Set up PayPal and Check again buttons. Link your account, click Check again, and the wizard continues without losing your place. See PayPal Setup.
Registration Settings
When ChessRoster Registration is on, the wizard adds a Registration Settings page. Smart defaults are already filled in, so review and adjust only what you need:
- Registration open and close dates — when the registration window is active.
- Public or private registration — private generates a unique invite-only link.
- Refund policy — Full (organizer absorbs fees), Standard (player refunded minus platform fees), or None.
- Player withdrawal — whether players can withdraw themselves, with an optional cutoff time.
- Director refunds — whether tournament directors (not just admins) can issue refunds.
- Capacity limit — an optional overall cap across all sections.
The Fees section here states it plainly: charges are “deducted from each registration before your payout — players just pay the entry fee.” It lists your organization’s configured ChessRoster platform fee and PayPal processing, and notes that fees are non-refundable even if you cancel or refund a player.
Tournament Sections
Every tournament needs at least one section — even a single “Open” section works.
- Click Add Section to create a section, then name it. Drag to reorder.
- Use the Quick add chips for common section names: Open, Reserve (U1800), U1400, and Scholastic. Each chip adds a section with that name in one click.
- Each section can carry its own rating types, and — when ChessRoster Registration is on — its own online-registration toggle.
Section Details
When ChessRoster Registration is on, the final page sets the entry fee and eligibility for each section — fees and fee schedules, rating limits, membership and titled-player discounts, play-up fees, bye rules, and round schedules.
This page has a lot of options. For a full deep dive, see Registration Tiers & Section Pricing. For team-type sections, see Team Registration.
Fields With Post-Creation Restrictions
Most settings — name, dates, location, registration cutoffs, sections, fees, directors, and notifications — can be edited at any time. A few have restrictions once the tournament exists:
| Field | Restriction |
|---|---|
| Organizer | If set to None, you can later move the tournament into an organization where you are an administrator or tournament director. Once it belongs to an organization, it can’t be moved back to None, and only site admins can move it to a different organization (not after it has completed registrations). |
| Public web address (once set) | Optional at creation; an unset tournament uses its ID-based URL. Once an administrator explicitly sets a path, only site admins can edit it. |
| Currency | Every fee is denominated in it (USD or CAD), so it is fixed at creation to keep existing pricing consistent. |
Related Topics
- Tournament Management Panel — finish setup and run your event
- Registration Tiers & Section Pricing — the full Section Details reference
- AI-Assisted Descriptions and Images
- Custom Registration Questions
- Editing & Deleting Tournaments
- Team Registration
- PayPal Setup
- Discount Codes