Team Registration

In the tournament editor, enable ChessRoster registration, then choose Team registration on Tournament Sections. Select Team label (school or club) or Team roster (captain and seats) to reveal the Teams setup page after Section Details. Review the section’s mode and rules there. A tournament can mix modes across its sections. Save the tournament to save its team settings; reopening or copying the tournament preserves those settings. Saving changed team settings re-derives existing teams’ pairing entries (team rating and whether the team is entered) to match. Once a section has a paired round, a settings save does not rewrite or withdraw a team’s pairing entry. This protects only the pairing entry; do not assume every other team figure stays frozen.

Choose the mode and pairing format

Registration mode and pairing format are separate choices. Team labels work with Swiss and Individual Team formats. USCF rosters support Individual Team, Fixed Roster, Teams Only Fixed Roster and Team Match. FIDE Dutch rosters use Swiss team pairing. The editor refuses incompatible combinations.

A label does not change individual opponents. For Individual Team standings, the director sets how many member scores count toward each team total. Teams Only Fixed Roster pairs whole teams; players still have their own registrations and fees.

Configure a roster

In Teams, select Team roster, then configure the section:

• Boards per team, Minimum registered players, and Maximum roster (including alternates). Set a larger maximum than the board count to allow alternates. Team Match supports 4, 6, 8 or 9 boards.
• Combined rating calculation (Average or Sum), Counted members (All rostered members, Top ratings (board count) or First boards (board count)), optional Minimum team rating and Maximum team rating, and the Unrated players policy. See Rating rules and unrated players.
• Enrollment: Self service lets members register under the joining rules; Captain required requires the playing captain to finish registration first or be included in the same named checkout.
• Joining: Invitation only, Open join, or Captain decides. With Captain decides, the captain chooses invitation-only or open joining. Solo entries separately offers Team required or Players may register without a team; the second adds Register without a team to the tournament page’s Register choice, and you can attach those players to a team later from the management Teams tab. An open team still requires the player to obtain and use its join code. Private tournament invitations remain separate from team invitations.
• Pricing: Price per player (the default) or Price per team. See Price per player or per team.
• Payment (shown only under Price per player): Each player pays, Captain pays named players, or Per-seat payment choice, where captain-paid checkout is turned on for your organizer account. Contact support if you need captain-paid checkout and it is unavailable. Under Price per player, every playing captain and alternate has an individual entry fee. An empty seat or a nonplaying coach has none.
• Captain adjustment: a negative amount discounts the playing captain’s own entry; a positive amount adds a surcharge. It does not change teammates’ fees. Normal minimum and platform fees still apply.
• Captain roster and invitation permissions, Roster lock, Team payment deadline, withdrawal and captain-transfer permissions. Dates use the tournament timezone. The roster lock controls editing; the payment deadline is separate. Short teams at deadline offers Keep players, flag and notify or Cancel and refund per policy. Refunds follow the tournament policy; check unresolved operations in management before treating a cancellation as finished.
• Player and team capacity limits. An unpaid hold does not guarantee final admission. A team takes a completed-team slot once its registered players reach the section minimum and its roster meets the team rating rules. Open alternate seats do not block it, and alternates can join a complete team later as long as the roster stays within the rules. When the team cap fills, teams that are partly paid but still below the minimum are not refunded automatically; handle them through Short teams at deadline or manual refunds.

The maximum team size can be at most 50 players. The maximum team rating compares the team average rounded down, so a maximum of 1799 admits a team averaging 1799.75 but not 1800.0. Size and rating rules are enforced during admission and payment. The registration step displays the permitted next-player rating range. Completing a roster that cannot satisfy the rules is refused. Unpaid holds participate in feasibility checks; public complete-roster displays contain completed registrations only.

Notify captain and coach when a member joins or pays defaults off. Enable it only when those notices are appropriate. The coach contact receives captain-directed team notices and can opt out; it does not confer management authority.

Price per player or per team

Under Who pays, Pricing decides what the section’s price means. Set the amount on the Sections step; Pricing only says whether that amount is charged to each player or once to the team.

• Price per player: each playing member pays the tier fee. Payment offers Each player pays, Captain pays named players, or Per-seat payment choice, and Captain adjustment is available.
• Price per team: someone with team payment authority pays one Team entry fee and members register at no charge. Payment is not shown because the team pays one fee, and Captain adjustment is not available.

Price per team has these requirements. The editor refuses a saved section that breaks them:

• Team registration must be Team roster with a USCF team format (Individual Team, Fixed Roster, Teams Only Fixed Roster or Team Match). Team labels and native FIDE team pairing are not supported.
• Exactly one registration tier, whose fee is the team price. No rating limits, member or titled pricing, member-only tiers, play-up fee or captain adjustment on it, and Solo entries must be Team required.
• Discount codes do not apply to the team fee or to members of a per-team section.
• The pricing choice cannot be changed once the section has any team or registration.

A team is locked in only when its roster is complete and the team fee is paid (or the team price is $0). Until then it holds no completed-team slot. Completeness and fee are separate gates: in formats that export individual players, an incomplete roster does not by itself remove anyone from a SwissSys export (a Teams Only Fixed Roster whole-team entry does need a complete roster), and an unpaid fee does not make the roster incomplete. See SwissSys export warnings for what each gate leaves out. Someone with team payment authority pays from the Team entry fee card on the team dashboard: the team’s creator or non-playing coach (manager), a captain, an assistant with both roster-editing and payment-clearance permissions, or you as the organizer. A coach contact email alone cannot pay. The card shows Unpaid, Payment in progress, Paid, Waived, Refunded or Unavailable. A started payment that is abandoned is released automatically after it expires. The fee is refunded once, to whoever paid it, only when the whole team goes (team withdrawal, deadline cancel-and-refund, organizer withdrawal); a member leaving or being replaced does not refund it. Finance Summary and its export count each captured team fee once, separately from the members’ $0 registrations.

On the Teams tab each team shows Locked in or Not locked in, with an “N of M teams locked in” summary and a filter. Each registered member carries a payer marker: covered by team fee, no payment required, captain-paid, coach-paid, paid by another sponsor, self-paid or unpaid.

Rating rules and unrated players

Team rating is computed from the members you choose in Counted members, using Average or Sum. The minimum and maximum compare the rating rounded down. Members use their pairing rating: a federation rating when one applies, otherwise a self-reported estimate, otherwise they are unrated. On the Teams tab a member can carry an Unrated, Estimated (self-reported) or Organizer-set rating marker, and a team’s computed rating is labelled COMPUTED on the captain dashboard.

Unrated players chooses how unrated members count toward the team rating:

Maximum unrated players caps unrated members per team. Both the prohibition and the cap cover the whole registered roster, including members who are not counted. With USCF 31C1 variation, the members counted are set by the section’s SwissSys Team cut when one is configured (a value between 1 and 998), in board order, instead of by Counted members and the board count. With no Team cut, the normal selection applies. The 31C1 option is a team-rating rule; it is separate from the pairing setting “Rate teams using rule 31C1”.

When Counted members is Top ratings (board count), alternates may not be rated above any board player.

Self-reported versus required USCF. If the tournament does not require a federation membership, a player can enter a self-reported rating estimate, which serves as their rating when no federation rating applies. If USCF membership is required, an unrated USCF member can enter an estimate only when you turn on Let unrated members enter an estimated rating on the registration settings (off by default, existing entries unchanged); the estimate then serves as their pairing rating. You can review or override any player’s rating in registrations, and teams are rechecked after a rating change.

A player or captain who would break a size or rating rule is refused with an explanation, and the registration step shows the rating range a next player may have. Organizers with the proper authority can override a refusal; overrides are recorded.

Team questions and coach contacts

Questions have Player or Team scope. Team questions are answered once on the team profile, including school and coach information. Player questions belong to the individual entry. The roster manager may answer player questions or delegate them to that player’s email. Names, federation IDs and other core identity fields cannot be delegated.

Configure the coach contact as off, optional or required. A nonplaying coach may create and manage a team when granted that role. A contact email alone grants no editing permissions; a signed-in matching coach contact has a read-only dashboard.

Named rosters and payments

Managers can enter names, optional emails, federation IDs, ratings and player answers before payment. Upload CSV or Excel roster accepts the roster template’s Board, Role and Payer columns. Review and save each row before checkout. Unsaved rows remain drafts when another row is saved.

Captain-paid checkout bills the saved named seats, through the same per-player pricing rules as individual checkout. Before payment, the captain sees a review of each named player and the total. If a player is missing something the tournament requires, such as a phone number for the first player, a required question answer, or a USCF ID when membership is required, checkout lists that player with what is missing and links back to the roster instead of offering payment. On a private tournament, the captain opens checkout from the private registration link. A player’s email can be omitted when no question is delegated. Paying does not create an account for that player. Later top-ups can pay additional named seats without charging already completed entries again.

A manager can request SMS opt-in using a saved player phone, including a named seat not yet paid or linked to an account. The player must reply to opt in; entering their phone does not grant consent. A captain cannot restore consent after the player opts out. Invitations and delegated-question links require the intended recipient to sign in. Share private invitation links only with that player.

SwissSys export warnings

What the export leaves out depends on the format and on which gate is not met:

• Unpaid team fee (price per team). In sections that export players rather than a whole-team entry, the export leaves out the players of a team whose fee is not settled, and shows one warning per team naming it and the section: “team fee unpaid”. A player who is on no team in such a section is also left out, with a warning that the player is not on a paid team.
• Teams Only Fixed Roster. Each team is exported as one whole-team entry. It is exported only when the roster is complete (at least the minimum and no more than the maximum), meets the section’s rating and unrated rules, and, under price per team, the fee is settled. Otherwise the team is left out and the warning gives the first reason that applies: fewer players than the minimum, over the maximum, a broken rating rule, or team fee unpaid.
• Other formats with an incomplete roster. Roster size alone does not remove players from the file, and a team’s pairing record and member links are created as soon as the team has a registered player, before it is locked in. Only the whole-team entry in Teams Only Fixed Roster waits for lock-in.

Public teams and roster

The Teams tab offers open, complete and all-team views. The organizer can hide forming teams. Forming teams show availability and rating information without member names or reserved contacts. Completed rosters show the registered members and their boards or alternate roles. A reservation is not a completed registration.

The public roster groups complete teams while retaining ordinary player rows for forming teams and individual entries. Team labels appear with the people they identify. A whole-team pairing entry is not an extra person in the roster, registration count, invoice list or financial report.

Director management

Open the tournament’s management Teams tab for team administration. Existing registrations, paid or unpaid, can be attached to teams without registering or charging the players again. Preview the assignments and supply an audit reason before applying them. For eight players split into two four-player Team Match sides, the preview shows 16 cross-side games and no teammate games; it does not publish a schedule or send emails.

An organizer can always add a player and mark them unpaid, including placing a walk-in into an open team seat in Add player, or attaching an existing unpaid registration (labelled “(unpaid)”). The player counts toward the roster, appears as Unpaid in finance reports, and is never refunded, charged or counted as received.

Undo an attachment before play through its explicit preview and audit reason. Board changes, member removal, captain transfer, locking and team withdrawal show their effects before confirmation. Changes after play require the applicable director override and preserve historical pairings. Late members need explicit board placement before the next round.

Withdrawals and refunds

The manager’s Withdraw entire team and Transfer captaincy controls follow the section’s permissions. A captain must transfer leadership before leaving their own team entry. Refund previews identify the original payer and the amount lost under the tournament’s refund policy. A no-refund policy still permits an authorized withdrawal; it does not fabricate a refund.

An interrupted operation can be resumed. A payment-provider failure remains visible for reconciliation rather than being reported as completed. A paid withdrawal reopens only its own seat.

Pairing and exports

Complete rosters project their team name, code, rating and membership into pairing. Board order is automatic by rating and is never stored: a team with no explicit boards is ordered by rating (highest first, unrated last, ties by seat order) for team rating, admission, pairing and SwissSys export, so a higher-rated alternate who registers later moves up automatically. A stored board is an explicit assignment: a board you set, or a lineup changed in SwissSys. Stored boards take the top boards in order and everyone without a board follows by rating. Explicit boards take precedence, including in FIDE team pairing. Teams that locked in before this change keep their stored boards; clearing every board for a team returns it to automatic order.

In the roster dialog, Set board placement reviews the whole roster: use each board once, or clear every board for rating order. Changes after play starts need an explicit override and never rewrite existing pairings. Players do not set boards themselves.

Teams Only Fixed Roster uses one non-billable team entry per complete roster. Enter the match result and the aggregate game points, such as 3–1 for four boards. Finalization updates team standings while retaining the individual members’ original registrations and financial records.

SwissSys export uses team competitor rows for roster Teams Only Fixed Roster and player rows for other formats. Mapped Team questions come from the saved team profile; Player questions come from the individual entry. Public team standings honor the configured team cut.

Related topics

• Player team registration
• Managing participants
• Pairing settings