Running an FSHR-rated tournament: the organizer's steps

The national rating is a separate list kept by the Russian federation. It takes in events submitted for rating within Russia, including those that are too short or too local for FIDE.

• The bar to entry is lower. If a player has neither a national rating nor a FIDE one, a starting value of 1000 is used in the calculation - so getting a first rating is easier than in the FIDE system with its threshold of 1400 and its minimum of five games.
• More events count. The national rating takes in junior, regional and club competitions that never appear in the FIDE lists.
• A link to the sports categories. It is national events that most often produce the norms for a category - Russian sports categories.

One does not exclude the other: an event can go into the national and the international rating at the same time if it meets the requirements of both.

The FSHR ID is a player's identifier in the national system, the equivalent of a FIDE ID. Without it a participant's results will not go into the calculation, and the player will not appear in the rating list.

It is obtained through the regional federation: the player or the organizer submits the details, and the entry appears in the database. You can check your own ID and current rating in the federation's rating database.

For an organizer the point is to allow time for this: if half the field is playing in a rated event for the first time, registering the IDs has to start a couple of weeks ahead, not the night before.

As in the FIDE system, the event is registered before round one. The organizer sends the federation a notice of the event with the regulations attached, signed off by the organizer.

The filing procedure and where the documents go are set by the regional federation - practice differs between regions, so the first thing to do is write to your own. That is also where you find out whether the event needs an arbiter of a particular category and whether there is a fee for rating.

What goes into the regulations of a rated event - the tournament regulations.

For the calculation you need, for every player: surname and first name, date or year of birth, sex, rank or title, the FSHR ID, and also the FIDE ID and federation if the event is going into the international rating as well.

A practical tip: put these fields into the entry form from the start, even if some players fill them in with dashes. Collecting the missing data on the day is the main cause of a late first round. What the form looks like - the entry form, and the process - registering players.

In the Vibe Chess app these fields live in the player's profile: FIDE ID, FSHR ID, title, sex, date of birth and federation are filled in once and then carried into every event automatically.

During the event you need the same documents as at any official competition: the starting protocol, the round protocols with pairings and results, the player cards and the final crosstable. Sample forms - the organizer's document set.

Pairings are made by software under the FIDE rules: pairing by hand at a rated event is grounds for refusing the rating and for appeals from the players. How pairing works - the Swiss system and the software.

After the event ends, the final documents and a results file go to the federation. As a rule that is a report in TRF format or the file of the pairing program - the exact format is confirmed when filing.

In the app a finished tournament exports as a TRF file at one press: it carries both the parameters of the event (name, city, federation, dates, number of players, format, arbiter, time control, number of rounds) and every player's data with the full round-by-round history. How the format is put together - the TRF format.

One caveat worth keeping in mind: the app follows the rules of the Dutch system, but it has no approval from the FIDE pairing programs commission. For a rated event, agree the use of a particular program with the federation in advance.

• Registering the event after it was played. It cannot be rated retrospectively.
• Some players without an FSHR ID. Their results drop out, and the crosstable stops matching the report.
• Pairing by hand. Even correctly made pairings will raise questions when the report is checked.
• The wrong time control. An event announced as classical but played in an hour will not go into the classical rating.
• The regulations and the facts disagree. If the regulations say five rounds and four were played, the report will need explaining.
• Filing late. The later the report, the later the players see their ratings change.

And most importantly: the rules and the filing procedure change from time to time, and regions have their own particularities. Before your first rated event, write to your own federation and confirm the current procedure - it saves weeks of correspondence later.