Create a tournament, open registration, start the rounds and get a finished table.
The organiser's guide →Sign up for a tournament, find out your opponent and your table, and send in your result.
The player's guide →The organiser adds a player without a messenger as a guest, by name - they play on equal terms with everyone else.
How it works →The scheme is the same for blitz in the office and for a club rapid at the weekend.
At any moment a player can see /my_pairing - their pair in the current round, and /standings - their position in the table.
Creating a tournament step by step: from the name to announcing the winner.
How to sign up, find your table and send in your result.
An overview of the approach: why a messenger replaces paper and spreadsheets.
How to include people who do not have the messenger.
What to say and do at the host's table during the tournament.
Answers to dozens of questions about running tournaments, in one place.
A full overview of the features: pairing, results, Buchholz, guests, languages.
How to suggest the feature you need, and why this is not a «frozen» service.
How the bot differs from the classic pairing programs.
What replaces the scrap of paper and the napkin with the results on it.
This is the very system the bot uses to work out the pairs. Its key property: the number of rounds does not depend on the number of players, so a tournament for 30 fits comfortably into one evening.
A lookup table: how many rounds you need for 8, 16, 32 and 64 players.
A step-by-step guide: from the idea and the venue to the prizegiving.
What to check five minutes before you begin so that nothing is forgotten.
Where it came from: Zurich 1895, Buchholz and computer pairing.
A round robin or a Swiss - what to choose for a small group.
Five rounds that really do fit into one evening.
The classic size for a Swiss tournament.
Six rounds and a live table for a medium-sized event.
The point at which counting by hand is no longer possible.
A4 forms for 10, 15 and 20 players, if you need a paper version.
The rules are the same everywhere, but the timing, the prizes and the presentation depend a lot on the place. Write-ups for particular situations:
From eight colleagues to an entire workforce.
Blitz over the lunch break that does not derail the working day.
Chess on the shop floor: shifts, the timetable and getting workers involved.
A format that does not feel like a training session imposed from above.
Individual and team standings at the same time.
When it is simpler to hand the whole thing over to someone else.
A step-by-step guide for a teacher: from the paperwork to the prizegiving.
Fitting a Swiss system into a 45-minute lesson.
A regular league and a season rating instead of one-off tournaments.
University, halls and campus: where to find players.
Running one within a single session without breaking the routine.
Libraries and youth centres as a venue.
From the bench to the final: how to gather the neighbours.
Family and friends around one board.
A weekend tournament outdoors.
How to put on and run a clever evening.
A contest for the guests at a birthday party.
Chess over coffee: a format for a venue.
The fallback for when Telegram is not working for your players: a stripped-down version, but the tournament goes ahead.
A free timer in your phone's browser: two clocks and a Fischer increment.
Why you need a time control and how to choose one.
Set the pieces out online and get the position in FEN format.
For the beginners you are inviting to their first tournament.
Real evenings in cafes and bars in cities around Russia.
It is a Telegram bot that runs a chess tournament in place of the organiser: it works out who plays whom in each round, sends the pairs to the players, takes in the results and keeps the table. You need it once more than eight people turn up and counting by hand gets hard.
It is free to use. There is no separate subscription, no limit on the number of tournaments and no paid features for running an event.
No. The bot works inside Telegram and you sign in with your account. If you prefer a computer, there is a browser version - also with nothing to install.
The Swiss system: before each round your opponent is picked from the players on the same score. The bot does not pair people who have already met, it alternates colours, and with an odd field it gives somebody a bye. The final order is decided on points, and ties by the Buchholz score.
The organiser adds them as guests, by name. Such a player enters the general pairing and plays on equal terms with everyone else; the only difference is that the organiser enters their results.
For that case the site has an online tournament section - a web version that opens in an ordinary browser. It is deliberately built as a fallback: if Telegram is unavailable for most of the players, the organiser creates and runs the tournament right on the site. It has fewer features than the bot, but it does the main thing - the tournament goes ahead, and the people who have already turned up to play do not have to go home.
The interface is translated into 11 languages, and the language is picked up from your Telegram settings. That makes the bot usable for international and mixed groups.
It does not play chess against you and it does not analyse games - it is an arbiter's tool, not an engine. Nor does it replace a live organiser when it comes to the venue, the equipment and the prizes: a person is still responsible for those.
The Vibe Chess app opens from a link and needs no installation. Setting up a tournament takes a minute: pick the system, set the date, the venue and the time control - the app handles the rest.
for a large field: opponents are matched by score, you choose the number of rounds
for a small circle: everyone plays everyone, the round count follows from the field
no rounds, no pairings: players sign up and pick opponents at the table
The bot is constantly improved based on real tournaments. If you need a feature that isn't there yet, message the developers right inside the bot with the /support command. Many features appeared exactly because organizers asked for them, and useful ideas get added quickly.
Step by step - the organiser's guide. Every feature - what the bot can do. Questions - the big FAQ. From scratch - how to run a tournament.
At the board since childhood: hazy about his rating, precise about every rook he has blundered. Counts an evening as a good one if the opponent stayed to talk afterwards instead of rushing off to check with an engine. Message →
