How to use Chess-Results: pairings, standings and tiebreaks

Short answer

Chess-Results is the results server fed by Swiss-Manager, the program many arbiters use to pair tournaments. Each tournament has a page with the entry list by strength, the pairings for every round, round-by-round standings with tiebreaks, the crosstable and export to Excel and PDF. The home page offers tournament, player and game searches.

The essentials in a few lines

• Chess-Results publishes what the arbiter uploads from Swiss-Manager; the 'Last update' line says when the last upload happened and who made it.
• Starting rank is the list by strength at entry, and the number on the left is your starting number for the whole tournament.
• Each round's pairings are under Board Pairings; the interim standings under Ranking list after Rd.N.
• The tiebreak criteria appear in the Annotation note at the foot of the standings, in the order they are applied.
• Player search on the home page lists someone's tournaments — useful for getting to know an opponent before the round.

What Chess-Results is

The lazy explanation is that Chess-Results is a standings website, and its looks back that up: dense tables, text menus, little beyond numbers. But the site calculates nothing on its own. Everything on it comes from the file the arbiter uses to make the pairings, which is why it is the closest thing to the official result a player has during a tournament.

That has two consequences. First, the page is only as up to date as the last upload. Every tournament shows a 'Last update' line with the date, the time and the name of whoever uploaded; if it says yesterday, today's pairings are not up yet. Second, Chess-Results is not FIDE: the rating on the list is whatever the arbiter imported, and the official rating is published on the federation's own schedule.

The home page brings together three searches — tournaments, players and games — and a selection by federation, with filters for events in progress and for those starting in the next few days. The language changes in the selector at the top.

Finding the tournament and the player

The quickest route is nearly always the organiser's link. Searching by name works, but club tournaments tend to have similar names, and the same competition appears with one page per year, sometimes one per section. When the organiser shares the link, it already points to the right page.

Player search is the site's most underrated feature. It shows a person's tournaments with results and, from each one, their games round by round. Before an important round, it is the most direct way to see how often the opponent plays, at what time control, against what rating range and with what recent results. It does not tell you which opening they play; for that, only the games will do.

Inside the tournament, the 'Search for player' box filters the entry list by name. It helps in large events with hundreds of players and more than one section. When the tournament has sections, they appear on a 'Tournament selection' line, and each one has its own entries, pairings and standings.

Reading the tournament page

The labels look bureaucratic, but they answer the questions a player asks the night before. 'Time control' says whether there is an increment from move one. 'Rating calculation' says whether the event is rated nationally, internationally or both. 'Tournament type' says whether it is a Swiss or an all-play-all, which changes how much the tiebreaks matter. 'Rating-Ø' is the average rating of the entries.

For tournaments that ended more than five days ago, the site hides some of the links until you click the 'Show tournament details' button. Anyone who opens an old page and cannot find the standings is usually looking at that button.

The table below sums up where each piece of information lives, using the English labels — the same ones that appear in most links shared by organisers. In other language versions the names change, but the order of the links stays the same.

Pairings and standings round by round

At an over-the-board tournament, the pairings page becomes the most checked screen in the hall between rounds. It shows your board and colour before the printed sheet goes up, and the score in brackets makes clear who you are level with. If your name is not on any board, see whether it is on the 'not paired' list and speak to the arbiters before the start time.

The interim standings teach you to read your own tournament. From the halfway point, they show who can still catch you and how, and the tiebreak columns already hint at who comes out ahead in a tie — with the caveat that these numbers will still move, because they depend on your opponents' final scores.

The crosstable, 'Final Ranking crosstable', is the densest summary of the event: each row is a player, and each round column gives the opponent's starting number, the colour (w or b) and the result — '12b1' is a win with Black against number 12. It is from there that you can redo someone's Buchholz or Sonneborn-Berger by hand — the guide to tiebreaks shows the arithmetic.

Where the tiebreaks are

It is the most sought-after information after the final result, and the best hidden. The standings columns carry abbreviations — TB1, TB2 — that mean nothing on their own; the meaning is in the note at the foot of the page, where each abbreviation comes with the name of the criterion and, where relevant, the detail, such as the cut used for Buchholz.

If the standings look wrong, that note is the first thing to check. Most of the time the order is correct and the surprise comes from a criterion the player did not expect, such as Sonneborn-Berger before Buchholz, or direct encounter first. If the doubt remains, the question goes to the arbiters, who have the file and the regulations.

In team events, the same note says whether the standings are by match points or game points, and which team Sonneborn-Berger variant is used as a tiebreak. For these events the page also offers the team line-ups with round results ('Team-Composition with round-results'), board-by-board pairings and the board prizes ('Board-prizes').

Exporting, downloading games and checking

The Excel export is the shortcut for anyone running a club or company tournament who needs a report, and for players who want to follow their own results across several events. The export covers whichever list is open: entries, a round, the standings or the crosstable.

Games are another story. Many tournaments upload no PGN at all, because typing up scoresheets takes work; others upload only the top boards, broadcast from electronic boards. Some organisers put a link to the broadcast on another platform in the header. If your game is not there, the scoresheet you kept is the only record.

That is why it pays to get into the habit of entering your own game the same day, while the memory of the moves and the time spent is still fresh. Chess-Results keeps the result; what happened on the board, and why the point slipped, is only kept if you record it.

Frequently asked questions