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These are the terms for using the Vibe Chess website, the chess clock, the board editor and the tournament app. They are short on purpose: the service is free, it takes almost nothing from you, and the rules should fit on one page.
Vibe Chess is an over-the-board chess club and a set of free tools around it: this website, a chess clock, a board editor, chess guides and an app that runs a tournament for the organizer. Using any of them means you accept the terms on this page.
If you do not accept them, do not use the service - there is nothing else you need to do, because nothing here requires an account until you decide to join a tournament.
The tools are free to use. There are no paid tiers, no subscriptions, no limit on the number of tournaments or players, and no advertising. We do not ask for payment details anywhere, and nobody from Vibe Chess will ever ask you for them.
Being free also means we make no commercial promise about availability: see section 6.
The tournament app signs you in through Telegram, so your account is your Telegram account and its security is a matter between you and Telegram. We never see your password.
You are responsible for what happens under your account. Use a name that other players can recognize at the board - an organizer may remove an entry that is deliberately misleading, offensive or impersonates somebody else.
Minimum age follows Telegram's own rules. Children play in club tournaments through a parent's or a coach's account.
Do not:
Engine assistance during a game is cheating, and it is dealt with by the organizer at the event under the standard rules of fair play.
A nickname, a photo, a description of yourself: it stays yours. By adding it you give us permission to show it where the service needs to - to other players in your event, in the standings and in the club rating tables. Nothing more: we do not license it out, sell it or use it in advertising.
What is visible to whom, and what never leaves our side, is set out in the privacy policy.
We may remove content that breaks these terms, and we may suspend an account that keeps breaking them. For anything short of that we would rather talk to you first.
The service is provided as it is. We work on it constantly and we run our own club evenings on it, so it is in our own interest that it works - but we cannot promise it will be available at a particular moment, free of defects, or fit for a tournament you have staked something on.
One thing worth being plain about: this software has no FIDE approval. Pairings follow the Dutch system through an open-source engine, and reports export in the FIDE exchange format, but the program has not been endorsed by the FIDE Systems of Pairings and Programs commission. For a rated event, check what your federation requires before you rely on it.
Practical advice, learned the hard way: at a real tournament keep a paper crosstable as well. Venue wi-fi fails more often than software does.
To the extent the law allows, Vibe Chess is not liable for indirect or consequential loss arising from your use of the service - a disrupted event, lost results, or costs you incurred around a tournament. Nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited by law.
Club evenings happen in bars, cafes and other public venues. The venue's own rules apply there - age limits, dress code, entry policy - and the venue, not Vibe Chess, is responsible for the premises, for the food and for the drink.
Where an event has a fee, it is announced before registration and it is collected by the organizer of that event. Photographs are often taken at events; if you would rather not appear in them, tell the organizer at the door and it will be respected.
The name Vibe Chess, the logo, the design of the site and the text of the guides belong to the project. You are welcome to link to any page, quote a passage with attribution, and print the tournament tables you generated for your own event. Republishing whole pages, or using the brand in a way that suggests we run something we do not, is not allowed.
The service is built on open work by other people, and they deserve the credit:
If you hold rights in something used here and think the credit or the licence is wrong, tell us and we will correct or remove it.
These terms change as the service changes, and the date at the top is updated when they do. Carrying on using the service after a change means you accept the new version.
You can stop at any time, and you can ask us to delete your account - see the privacy policy. We may suspend access for a serious or repeated breach of these terms.
Questions, complaints, or a rights issue: message us on Telegram. It goes to the people who actually run the club.
