Prize Calculation

TournaChess can calculate prize distribution for your tournament sections following USCF rules. If you run rated tournaments with cash prizes, this feature handles the math for you -- splitting tied prizes, enforcing eligibility rules, and producing a clear breakdown that you can use to pay out winners.

This feature is designed for Tournament Directors running USCF-rated events. It supports the most common prize structures used in over-the-board tournaments. Team Place and manual awards need no ratings and are available in every section, rated or not.

Prize Types

TournaChess supports eight types of prizes. You can mix and match them within a section to build the prize structure your tournament needs.

Place prizes

Place prizes are awarded by final standing position. First place goes to the player who finishes first, second place to the player who finishes second, and so on. Every player in the section is eligible for place prizes regardless of rating.

Class prizes

Class prizes are restricted to players within a specific USCF rating class. Only players whose pre-tournament rating falls within the class boundaries can win that prize. The standard USCF rating classes are:

Class	Rating Range
Master	2200 and above
Expert	2000 -- 2199
Class A	1800 -- 1999
Class B	1600 -- 1799
Class C	1400 -- 1599
Class D	1200 -- 1399
Class E	Under 1200

A player rated 1800 is Class A (the boundary belongs to the higher class). A player rated 1799 is Class B.

Under prizes

Under prizes are open to all players rated below a specified threshold. For example, an "Under 1800" prize is available to any player with a pre-tournament rating strictly less than 1800. A player rated exactly 1800 is not eligible for an Under 1800 prize.

Biggest upset prizes

A biggest upset prize recognizes the largest rating-relative result. Normally played wins are measured by the gap between the two players' ratings. If Include draws (half rating gap) is enabled for that prize, a lower-rated player's normally played draw also qualifies at half the Elo difference. The largest qualifying score wins.

Unlike the other three types, this prize is not tied to where anyone finished. It does not use up a place, and it takes no part in tie splitting between finishers -- it is awarded separately, after the place, class, and under prizes are settled.

It is also one of the three prizes you can offer across the whole tournament rather than inside a single section. See Tournament-wide prizes below.

Three settings are available when you add one:

Min gap -- the smallest award score that qualifies, for flyers that advertise something like "biggest upset, 200+ points". Leave it blank and any positive score counts. A draw uses half the rating difference against this minimum.
Include draws (half rating gap) -- off by default for each prize, including existing prizes. Turn it on to count a lower-rated player's normally played draw against a higher-rated opponent. A 400-point rating difference counts as +200 and can tie a +200 win.
Only award to players not otherwise receiving a prize -- when checked, the prize skips any player who already won a place, class, or under prize in the section and goes to the next-biggest upset instead. Leave it unchecked (the default) and the upset prize is paid on top of whatever else that player won. The same option is available on any $0 prize, for the same reason.

You can offer more than one, for example a first and second biggest upset. Each goes to a different player, and each player is measured on their single biggest upset -- winning two big games does not win two upset prizes.

Best female performance prizes

A Best Female Performance prize goes to the highest-scoring female entrant, judged on the Gender registration field. Score is the whole criterion -- there is no rating-relative adjustment.

Eligibility follows where you define the prize. Configure it for a section and every player in that section is in the running; configure it for the tournament and every player in the event is. Nothing else narrows it -- not the section's Gender field setting, and not the entry type a player chose. Defining the prize is the decision.

You do not have to turn the Gender field on to award it. The field decides whether players answer for themselves; where they have not, eligibility falls back to the rating bodies as below. Turning it on is still worth doing when you want players' own answers rather than a federation's record of them.

Who counts as eligible. The player's own answer decides it wherever they gave one: someone who answered Female is eligible, and someone who answered Male is not, even if a federation's records say otherwise. Where the player left the field blank or was never asked, eligibility falls back to the rating bodies -- US Chess's member record first, then FIDE's -- exactly as the registration details show it, so what you see on a registration and what the prize awards on are always the same thing.

Two cases are deliberately never awarded:

A player who chose Prefer not to answer is left alone. Declining is an answer, and falling back to a federation record would award the prize on precisely the disclosure they withheld.
A federation value that is neither a clear male nor a clear female record counts as nothing, rather than being guessed at.

If nothing in any of those sources says female, the prize is left unawarded rather than guessed at.

Like a biggest upset prize, this one is not tied to a finishing position. It uses up no place, joins no tie split between finishers, and is awarded after the place, class, and under prizes are settled -- so by default it is paid on top of anything that player already won. Check Only award to players not otherwise receiving a prize to have it skip a player who won something else in the section and pass to the next-highest-scoring female entrant instead.

Unrated players are eligible by default, because score is something an unrated player has. Untick Unrated eligible if your prize structure says otherwise.

You can offer more than one -- a first and second Best Female Performance -- and each goes to a different player, in score order. It can also be offered across the whole tournament; see Tournament-wide prizes.

Ties are settled the same way every prize in TournaChess settles them: cash is split between everyone on the top score, while a Trophy cannot be split and is decided by the section's tiebreaks, falling back to rating when the tiebreaks run out. A tournament-wide one is settled the same way when the sections involved agree on their tiebreaks; see Tournament-wide prizes.

Best debut prizes

A Best Debut prize goes to the highest-scoring unrated player. Score is the whole criterion, exactly as it is for a Best Female Performance -- the prize simply asks a different question about who is in the running.

Unrated means unrated in this event. A player is eligible when the section has no rating on file for them from any federation it is rated by: the US Chess rating in a USCF-rated section, the FIDE rating in a FIDE-rated one, the NWSRS rating in an NWSRS section. A section rated by two federations checks both — a player holding a US Chess rating but no NWSRS one is an established player there, whichever of the two the section pairs on, so they are not making a debut. A rating of 0 counts as unrated, since that is how an unrated player is often typed in.

Class prizes use the US Chess rating and can be added only in USCF-rated sections. A Class prize retained after switching the section's rating type still uses the US Chess rating. Under prizes use the section rating instead: US Chess in dual-rated sections, and the corresponding online, FIDE, or NWSRS rating in single-system sections. If you switch a section to Unrated, any saved Under prize stops awarding until you switch it back to a rated type.

Which sections can offer it. Best Debut is an automatically decided prize you can configure on a section that US Chess does not rate: it needs a rating for its winners to have arrived without, and FIDE and NWSRS each supply one just as US Chess does. On a FIDE-only or NWSRS section the Prizes tab also offers Under prizes, Manual awards and Team Place trophies.

Two kinds of section cannot offer it:

Online-rated sections. An online rating is a site's record of blitz games, not a federation's record of tournament play -- so "no online rating" is at least as likely to mean the player never linked an account as that they are new to chess. Awarding a debut prize on it would name a winner the phrase does not describe.
Unrated sections. Every player in one is unrated, so the prize would be the section's first place under another name.

The consequence worth knowing before you advertise the prize: a rating you type in makes a player rated. If a first-time player turns up and you enter an estimate so they can be paired sensibly, they are no longer eligible for Best Debut. If you want them in the running, leave the rating blank and let the pairing handle them as unrated.

There is no Unrated eligible setting on this prize. Being unrated is what makes a player eligible, so the option would only ever describe a prize nobody could win.

You can offer more than one -- a first and second Best Debut -- and each goes to a different player, in score order. It can also be offered across the whole tournament; see Tournament-wide prizes.

Ties are settled the same way a Best Female Performance settles them: cash is split between everyone on the top score, while a Trophy cannot be split and is decided by the section's tiebreaks. Rating is the usual last resort when the tiebreaks run out, and it decides nothing here -- every contender is unrated -- so configure tiebreaks on the section if you are offering this as a trophy.

Team place prizes

A team place prize is a trophy for a finishing position in the section's team standings: 1st Place Team, 2nd Place Team, and so on. A team's score is the sum of its top individual scores -- you choose how many in the section's settings -- and that is what the trophies are awarded on, so the team the Teams tab shows on top is the team that takes the 1st Place Team trophy.

It is the only prize awarded to a team rather than a player, which decides most of what is different about it:

It is always a trophy, never cash. There is nobody to hand a share of the prize fund to, so the amount field is not offered and the award is an object by definition.
It needs no ratings. Team standings are built from the scores players actually made, so team place prizes can be offered in any section -- including an unrated scholastic section, where no other prize type is available.
It goes to teams of at least two players. A school that entered one player is passed over rather than collecting a team trophy for an individual result -- and it does not hold up the trophy either: the next eligible team below it takes it. The Teams tab still shows the one-player team in the standings; only the trophy skips it.
It changes nothing about the player prizes. A team trophy uses up no place, joins no tie split, and is awarded alongside the individual prizes rather than out of the same fund. There is no "only award to teams not otherwise winning" option, because the standings settle it outright.
Ties are broken by the section's tiebreaks, summed from the same top players the team score is. Two teams that finish level on score and on every configured tiebreak are separated by team name, so both configured trophies still find an owner -- but configure tiebreaks if you are relying on these, for the same reason as any other trophy.

Team standings are a per-section setting and are separate from the prize: turn on Show team standings in the section's settings (see Creating Tournaments) or no team trophy is awarded. The prize editor and the Prizes tab both say so when the setting is off.

A position no eligible team reached awards nothing -- a 3rd Place Team trophy in a section with two teams is simply not given out, rather than passing to the last team on the list. A gap in the positions is honoured rather than closed up: a lone "2nd Place Team" trophy goes to the runner-up, exactly as a lone 2nd Place trophy does.

Because one-player teams are skipped, a trophy can name a team whose rank in the standings is lower than the trophy's position -- a 1st Place Team trophy going to the team ranked 2nd, when the team above it entered a single player. The Players column beside each award is what explains it.

Team awards are rebuilt whenever anything they are read from changes: a result, a player's team, a bulk rename or merge on the Teams tab's roster, and the section's own Show team standings and Top scores to include settings. Turning the setting on is all it takes to start awarding a trophy you configured earlier.

Registering a player into a section that is already under way rebuilds them too, which is the one case where an arrival changes an award without a game being played: the second entrant from a school makes that school a team, and it becomes eligible on the score its first member already had. This covers walk-ins, a director's late add, a bulk roster add and a registration that was paid for online.

Team place prizes belong to a section. There is no tournament-wide version: the Consolidated team standings view ranks a school across sections on screen, but the trophies are awarded from a single section's standings.

Class vs. Under -- what's the difference?

A class prize targets a single rating band. A "Class B" prize can only be won by a player rated 1600--1799. A player rated 1500 cannot win a Class B prize -- they are Class C.

An under prize targets everyone below a threshold. An "Under 1800" prize is available to players rated 1799 and below, including Class B, Class C, Class D, and Class E players. Under prizes cast a wider net.

Most tournament prize structures use one approach or the other. Some use both -- for example, place prizes plus an "Under 1800" prize and a separate "Class E" prize.

How Ties Are Handled

When multiple players tie for positions that span one or more prizes, TournaChess pools the prize money and splits it among the tied players. This follows USCF Rule 32B (pool sharing). No more prizes may enter a pool than there are winners. Place, class, and under prizes compete for those slots together; a lower-value prize that is not used remains available to eligible players below the tie.

A pool can include prizes with different eligibility restrictions. For example, an unrated player eligible for place prizes can share a combined place/under pool even when Unrated eligible is off on the under prize. The description names the prizes funding the shared award, not separate prizes that every recipient could win outright. Unrated players still cannot win that under prize on its own.

Shares are equal unless a player would receive more than their largest eligible prize. That player receives their maximum, and the excess stays in the pool for the other winners. This is the standard Rule 32B3 maximum, not a separate organizer-defined unrated cash limit.

Example: two players tied for 1st/2nd

Your section offers $200 for 1st and $100 for 2nd. Two players finish with the same score at the top. The 1st and 2nd place prizes are pooled: $200 + $100 = $300, split two ways. Each player receives $150.

Example: three players tied for 3rd

Your section offers $75 for 3rd place. Three players are tied for 3rd. The $75 prize is split three ways. Each player receives $25.

Rounding

When a prize amount does not divide evenly, TournaChess rounds up so that every player in the split receives the same amount. For example, $100 split three ways pays $33.34 to each player. This may result in the total paid exceeding the original prize fund by a few cents.

Separation

In some situations, a subset of tied players is eligible for a restricted prize (class or under) that would pay them more per person than the pooled share. USCF rules require that this prize be separated from the pool and distributed only to the eligible subset. The remaining players and prizes are then recalculated together: a player who is left alone cannot collect two place prizes, and an unused prize remains available to an eligible lower finisher. TournaChess handles this automatically.

Tip: You do not need to think about separation logic yourself. Configure your prizes, and the calculator applies the correct USCF rules.

Eligibility Rules

The calculator applies the following rules to determine who can win each prize:

Pre-tournament rating determines eligibility. The rating a player had before the tournament started is used for all class and under prize calculations, not their performance during the event.
Unrated eligibility follows the prize's rating system. Class, Place, and Best Female Performance prizes use the US Chess rating, including a retained configuration after a section rating-type switch. An Under prize uses the section's rating: US Chess in USCF or dual-rated sections, online in Online sections, FIDE in FIDE-only sections, and NWSRS in NWSRS-only sections. A player without the relevant rating can win only when Unrated eligible is selected. Best Debut is limited to unrated players in USCF, FIDE, and NWSRS sections. Biggest Upset requires both players to be rated.
Only games actually played count as upsets. A forfeit win, a bye, or a draw that was not normally played does not qualify; a normally played draw qualifies only when that prize opts in, and only for the lower-rated player. The candidate must also still be in the tournament at the end, like any other prize winner.
Tied upsets split the prize. If two players overcame exactly the same rating gap, they share the upset prize equally, the same way tied finishers share a place prize.
Withdrawn players are ineligible. Players who withdrew from the tournament before it ended do not receive any prizes.
Boundary ratings belong to the higher class. A player rated exactly 1800 is Class A, not Class B. A player rated exactly 2000 is Expert, not Class A.
Under thresholds are strict less-than. A player rated exactly 1800 is not eligible for an Under 1800 prize. Only players rated 1799 and below qualify.

How to Use

Configuring prizes

Open your tournament's management page and navigate to the section you want to configure.
Click the Prizes tab in the section settings.
Add prizes by specifying the type (Place, Class, Under, Biggest Upset, Best Female Performance, Best Debut, Team Place, or Manual award), the amount or the Trophy box, and any type-specific details (place number, class code, rating threshold, minimum rating gap, or a manual award's name and selected winner). A Team Place prize takes a place number and nothing else -- it carries no cash, so it has no amount to enter.
Add as many prizes as your tournament structure requires. They are processed in the order you define them.

Your changes save on their own a moment after you stop typing -- there is no separate save step for prizes.

Manual awards

Choose Manual award to name a prize such as “Youngest Participant” and select its winner yourself. This prize does not infer a winner from standings, age, rating, or game results. It can be configured in one section or for the whole tournament; a section award's winner picker contains only players registered in that section. Leave the winner Not assigned until the director has made the choice. An unassigned award appears in the director's prize configuration but not on the payout sheet.

Enter a cash amount, leave it at $0 for recognition, or tick Trophy for a physical award. A manual award always goes to the one selected player and is never split. Cash awards use the same payout-status, amount-paid, notes, and print controls as other individual prizes.

Manual awards do not offer Unrated eligible or Only award to players not otherwise receiving a prize: the director chooses the recipient, even if that player is unrated or wins another prize. Later special-prize passes can still treat a manual winner as an existing winner when those prizes have their own exclusivity option enabled. A registration moved out of a section can no longer receive that section's manual award; the director must choose a player still registered there.

Tournament-wide prizes

Most prizes belong to a section, because that is where a finishing position means something -- there is no way to rank a 4/5 in the Open against a 4/5 in the Reserve when the two fields never played each other. Team Place prizes belong to a section for the same reason. Four types can be offered across the whole event: Biggest Upset, measured inside a single game; Best Female Performance and Best Debut, each naming the best score among a subset; and Manual award, whose winner the director selects.

To add one, open Tournament Settings and click the Prizes tab. From the Prizes tab of a running tournament, Actions → Tournament Settings opens on that tab directly.

A tournament-wide Biggest Upset is decided over every USCF-rated section at once -- the largest rating gap anywhere in the event wins it, whichever section the game was played in. The gap is measured between USCF ratings, so sections rated another way (FIDE-only, NWSRS-only) or not rated at all contribute no candidates, and a tournament with no USCF-rated section cannot offer the prize. Everything else about it works the way the section version does: both players must be rated, only games actually played count, ties split it, and you can set a minimum gap or offer a second and third.

A tournament-wide Best Female Performance is decided over every section, whatever its rating type: score is something every section has, so a FIDE-only or unrated event can offer this prize even though it cannot offer a tournament-wide Biggest Upset. No section has to be collecting the Gender field: eligibility follows where you defined the prize, so every registration in the event is in the running on whatever gender can be determined for them -- see Best female performance prizes above. One thing to weigh before you offer it: if your sections play different numbers of rounds, comparing raw scores across them favours the longer schedule.

A tournament-wide Best Debut is decided over every section rated by US Chess, FIDE or NWSRS, and carries the same caution about sections that play different numbers of rounds. Each section's players are judged against that section's own federations, so an established FIDE player in a FIDE-rated section is not swept in as a debutant because they happen to carry no US Chess rating. Online-rated and unrated sections contribute no candidates, for the reasons given under Best debut prizes above, and an event made up entirely of those cannot offer the prize.

Any tournament-wide prize can be a Trophy, on the same terms as a section one. The difference is how a tie is settled, and it depends on the prize.

A Biggest Upset trophy tied on the rating gap falls to the higher score across the event, and then to rating: there is no shared field to compare, so section tiebreaks cannot separate two players who never faced the same opponents.

A Best Female Performance or Best Debut trophy tied on score uses the sections' tiebreaks -- but only when every section holding a player in that tie is configured with the same tiebreaks in the same order. Each player's values are still computed inside her own section, as they always are; what the matching configuration establishes is that the event asked for the same measure everywhere, so the trophy follows the order both players' standings tables are already ranked by. If those sections break ties differently, or any of them has no tiebreaks configured, there is no shared answer to apply and the tie falls to rating instead.

Only the sections actually contesting the award are consulted -- the ones holding a player who can still win it. How the Open breaks its own ties does not matter if the tied players are all in the Reserve; neither does a section holding a contender who finished below them, nor one holding a player this particular prize rules out, such as an unrated player on a Best Female Performance with Unrated eligible unticked, someone skipped by "only award to players not otherwise receiving a prize", or the winner of the prize above this one. None of them is in the running, so none of their sections has a say in separating the players who are.

A Custom tiebreak counts as shared only when the sections also give it the same name. It is whatever you decided it is, entered by hand per section, so one section's "Blitz Playoff" and another's "Coin Flip" are two unrelated numbers however similar the setting looks; where the names differ, the tie falls to rating.

Two things are worth knowing about how these interact with section prizes:

They are paid on top by default. A player can win their section's first place, their section's Biggest Upset, and the tournament's Biggest Upset, and receive all three. Check Only award to players not otherwise receiving a prize to change that: the tournament prize skips anyone who already won something in their own section or an earlier tournament-wide prize, and passes to the next candidate in the event. Tournament-wide prizes are awarded in the order shown in the editor: Biggest Upset, Best Female Performance, Best Debut, then Manual award (with numbered prizes in rank order within each type). A manual award always goes to the player the director selected, even if that player won another prize; later automatic prizes cannot be displaced by it because it comes last.
They are paid from their own table, not from the winner's section. The Prizes tab shows a Tournament-wide prizes card at the top listing each award, the section its winner came from, and the same payment status, Amount paid and notes fields the section tables carry. That is where you settle them. The winner's section table lists only what that section awarded, so a player who won both their section's first place and the event's biggest upset appears on both sheets, with the two payments tracked separately -- marking one paid says nothing about the other. The printed sheet is laid out the same way.

Trophies

Tick Trophy on any individual prize -- place, class, under, Biggest Upset, Best Female Performance, Best Debut, or Manual award -- to make it a physical award rather than a share of the prize fund. A Team Place prize is a trophy already and offers no box to tick. A trophy carries no cash -- the two are exclusive -- and it names a winner on the Prizes tab and the printed payout sheet like any other prize.

Trophies behave differently from cash in the ways that matter for handing out an object:

They are never split. Cash pools and divides between tied players; a trophy cannot. The section's tiebreaks decide who takes it. This is what the Trophy box does that a $0 amount alone does not — on a Biggest Upset, ticking it is the only thing that makes the award indivisible.
They are awarded separately. Cash is divided first, then the trophies. Adding a trophy never changes who gets paid what.
A place trophy outranks a class or under trophy. If the section winner is also the top Class B player, they take the 1st Place trophy and the Class B trophy passes to the next Class B player. One player, one trophy.
Class and under trophies rank within their own band. "1st Class B" goes to the best-placed Class B player, "2nd Class B" to the next one down.
An upset trophy goes to one player. A cash Biggest Upset splits between players who overcame the same rating gap; a trophy cannot, so the one higher in the standings takes it and the other stays in line for a 2nd Biggest Upset trophy if you have configured one. Everything else about the prize is unchanged: it is still decided on rating gap, still paid on top of anything else that player won, and still respects a minimum gap.
A Best Female Performance trophy goes to one player. Same rule, one criterion over: a cash prize splits between everyone on the top score, and a trophy goes to whichever of them the section's tiebreaks put higher (rating, when the tiebreaks run out).
A Best Debut trophy goes to one player too, decided the same way -- with the difference that the rating fallback settles nothing here, since every contender is unrated. Configure tiebreaks on the section if you are offering one.

Turn tiebreaks on before relying on trophies. Because a trophy is never split, a tie has to be broken. With tiebreaks configured, the trophy follows the standings order your players can see. Without them, ties fall back to seeding -- an order, but not one based on how anyone played. The prize editor shows this reminder whenever a trophy is configured.

A player can still hold a trophy and cash at once -- the section winner taking the 1st Place trophy and the Class B money, say. If you would rather spread the recognition around, check Only award to players not otherwise receiving a prize on the trophy. A class or under trophy then passes to the next eligible player who has not already won; a place trophy is simply not awarded, since "1st Place" names a position and the runner-up did not finish first.

A place, class or under prize left at $0 without the Trophy box ticked is treated the same way -- it has no cash to pool, so it is awarded alongside the trophies rather than inside the prize fund, tiebreaks and all.

Biggest Upset, Best Female Performance and Best Debut left at $0 are the exception, and it is worth knowing before you rely on it. Ticking Trophy is what makes one of these indivisible; leaving it at $0 without ticking it keeps the cash rules, so two players who tie for it both get named as winners of that one prize rather than one of them being chosen. Tick Trophy when you mean a single object going to a single player.

On the Prizes tab and the printed sheet, a trophy is labelled as one: "1st Place (trophy)", "Biggest Upset (R3, def. 2010, +560; trophy)", "Best Female Performance (4.5; trophy)", or "Best Debut (4.5; trophy)". That keeps it clear when a section offers both a paid prize and a trophy of the same kind, and the same player takes both.

A $0 award counts as a prize everywhere a paid one does. An upset prize set to Only award to players not otherwise receiving a prize skips a player who won a $0 place or class prize, exactly as it would for a cash prize -- what matters is that they already won something, not what it was worth.

Viewing prize distribution

Prizes appear on the Prizes tab of the tournament management page. The tab is visible only to Tournament Directors, Admins, and Owners, and it only shows up once the tournament has at least one prize configured -- in a section's settings, or in Tournament Settings for a tournament-wide one.

There is no Calculate button -- prize amounts update on their own as results are entered, including results entered by another TD on a different device. They also update after the other changes that affect who wins what, such as moving a player to a different section, merging one section into another, a rating changing (whether you correct it yourself or the nightly US Chess refresh does), withdrawing a player from the final round, editing a custom tiebreak value that decides who takes a trophy, or rolling a section back to an earlier round. While the tournament is still active, prizes are labeled projected, because a later result can still change them. Once you mark the tournament complete, they are labeled final -- and a Prizes tab that is already open switches over on its own, without a refresh, even when another TD is the one who marks it complete. Final prizes are called ready to distribute only when no unfinished game is found that could change an award; if one is, the tab says so and flags the winners it could affect (see Games that could still change a prize below). A board that pays the same however it ends does not count against readiness. A section's readiness covers the prizes that section awarded: a board elsewhere in the event cannot change them, so it is not counted here. A tournament-wide prize is settled across every section at once, so its own card is labelled separately -- and unfinished boards elsewhere in the event count against it, since a result in another section can take that award away. Which boards depends on the prize. A Biggest Upset is measured between two USCF ratings, so only the event's USCF-rated sections are swept; sections rated another way are left out, because nothing played there can win it. A Best Female Performance is decided on score, which every section has, so rating type does not restrict it; a Best Debut adds one restriction, since only US Chess-, FIDE- and NWSRS-rated sections can produce a debutant. Beyond that, only sections holding an eligible entrant can produce a winner for either, so only those sections' boards count. Within those sections it narrows again to the boards an eligible entrant is sitting at, with two exceptions that widen it back to every board there: a prize set to skip players who already won in their own section, because any result can change which section prizes they won, and a Trophy, because the tiebreaks that settle a tie for one are computed from how a player's opponents finish.

A section offering Team Place prizes carries a separate Team Prizes block under its payout table, listing each trophy, the team that won it, the team score it was won on, and how many players that team had in the section. There is no payment status or amount on it: a team trophy is an object, not money. When the section's team standings are switched off, the block says so instead of listing nothing.

That block carries its own projected/final line rather than relying on the one above the payout table, because the two are settled on different things. A team score is the sum of its members' scores, so any unfinished board in the section can move a team trophy -- not only the boards flagged against a player's award. While one is still out, the team block says so instead of calling the trophies ready to hand out, even when the player prizes above it are settled.

Each individual winner’s name includes their team or school when one is recorded on their registration, including winners sharing a prize. This appears for section and tournament-wide awards and on the printed payout sheet, so you can announce the player and their school together. Players without a team show just their name.

Each award shows the player's award amount and a description of how it was determined (for example, "1st/2nd Place split 2 ways" or "Class B"). An upset award names the game that won it -- "Biggest Upset (R3, def. 2010, +560)" means a round 3 win over a 2010-rated opponent, 560 points above the winner. "Biggest Upset (R3, drew 2010, +280)" means a normal-play draw against an opponent 560 points higher, scored at half the gap. A Best Female Performance or Best Debut award names the score that won it -- "Best Female Performance (4.5)", "Best Debut (3.5)". A player who wins any of them alongside a place or class prize shows both, and the amount is the total. On a table with no money on it there is no amount to show, and the row carries the winner, the award and whether it has been handed over (see Recording payouts).

Prize distribution never appears on the public tournament page or to players. You are responsible for communicating prize amounts to your players and handling payouts.

Games that could still change a prize

Marking a tournament complete does not mean every board is finished, so the Prizes tab also tells you what is still outstanding. When a game in the section has no result entered yet, a banner above the table says how many such games could still change the prizes, and each winner those games could reach gets an in progress flag next to their prize. Click the flag to see the games behind it -- round, board, and both players with their current scores.

The same flags are available on a phone, so you can check a winner while you are standing at the prize table.

A game is listed by playing it out every way it can end -- white wins, black wins, draw, a double forfeit scoring nothing for either player, and the custom scores in between that would leave a player level with somebody else -- and recalculating the whole section's prizes for each. If those results do not all come out the same, the game is listed, and it is flagged against every winner whose prize changes between them. What counts as a change is who wins which prize and who they share it with, rather than the dollar figure, so a result that swaps the winners of two equally sized prizes is flagged just like one that moves money. That is a stronger check than comparing scores or rating classes, because prizes interact: a player who cannot win a given class prize can still change it by tying the player who holds it, since a tie pools prizes and splits them. Players who have withdrawn are left out, since they win nothing whatever they score, and a game that pays the same however it ends -- a last board two points off the money -- is not listed at all.

There is a limit worth knowing. Each unfinished game is checked on its own, and against the case where the other outstanding boards go to the players still on them. TournaChess does not try every combination of every unfinished result, so a payout that only moves when several specific games all fall a specific way may not be flagged.

A section offering a trophy of any kind, Biggest Upset included, is treated differently, and deliberately more cautiously: every unfinished game is listed, without a winner named against it. A trophy is never split, so a tie for one is settled on the section's tiebreaks -- and most tiebreaks depend on how a player's opponents finish, which means a board neither contender is sitting at can still decide which of them takes it. Rather than work through that while you wait, TournaChess says the same thing about every outstanding board: check it by hand. Once the last result is in, the flags clear and the trophies are settled.

In the other direction, a section can be complicated enough that TournaChess cannot settle whether a game matters -- a very large field with a very long prize list, a large tie where many players are eligible for the same list of overlapping under-rating prizes, scores spread so finely that a game has too many possible results to work through while you wait, or simply too many games still out at once in a large tied field to work through all of them. In that last case the games checked before time ran out are answered normally, and the rest are the ones left open. Rather than guess, it lists those games anyway and says they need checking by hand, without naming a winner against them.

Games can appear in that same list for two other reasons, and each one says which applies to it. A game can be one TournaChess could not match to a player at all -- that points at a data problem rather than an unanswered question. Or it can be a game whose only effect is to put somebody on the prize list who is not on it yet: there is no winner's row to flag it against, because the row does not exist until the game is played.

Just after a result is entered, the tab says prizes are still updating rather than ready to distribute: the recalculation runs a moment behind the result, and until it lands the amounts on screen are the previous answer. The other changes that move prizes -- correcting a rating, withdrawing a player, moving someone between sections, editing the prize list -- recalculate the same way but are not called out like that, so give the tab a few seconds to catch up after one of those before treating the amounts as final.

That is exactly why TournaChess stops at listing games rather than telling you a prize is safe to pay. A winner with no flag has no unfinished game that TournaChess can tie to their award, and the call is yours to make from that.

Printing prizes

The Print button in the Prizes tab header produces a printer-friendly payout sheet for everything currently shown -- the sections on screen and any tournament-wide awards -- listing each winner's name, rating, score, prize, award amount, amount paid, and payment status, with a per-section total. A section with no money on it is printed without the amount, paid and total columns, for the same reason the tab drops them: there is nothing on it to pay. Every card on the tab can also be printed on its own: use the Section Actions menu on a section's card for that section alone, or the Event Actions menu on the Tournament-wide prizes card for the event's awards without any section. Like the rest of the tab, the sheet is Tournament Director--only and never reaches players.

A section's Team prizes are printed as their own short table beneath its payout table, naming each trophy, the winning team, the team score and the number of players -- no amounts, paid figures or statuses, since none of them apply to a trophy handed to a school. It carries its own projected/final line for the reason given above, so the sheet never vouches for a team trophy on the strength of the player payouts being settled. A section whose only awards are team trophies is printed too, rather than dropped as having awarded nothing.

Winners are listed by award amount, largest first. Awards worth the same -- most obviously a section of trophies, where every award is $0 -- are listed in prize order instead: 1st Place before 2nd, place prizes before class prizes, and the prizes settled outside the pool (Biggest Upset, Best Female Performance, Best Debut) last.

If the event has a tournament-wide prize, the sheet opens with a Tournament-wide prizes table naming each winner, the section they came from, and what has been paid -- matching the card on the Prizes tab, and dropping its money columns when none of the event's awards carries cash. Those awards are not repeated in the section tables below, which list only what each section awarded.

Printing a single section is the one case that narrows that table rather than dropping it: the section's sheet carries a tournament-wide award only if that section's player won it. Printing each section in turn therefore hands out every award exactly once, with no payout desk holding a duplicate.

Recording payouts

Each player's row has a payment status -- Unpaid, Paid, or Follow Up -- and an Amount paid field. The amount defaults to the calculated prize; change it when you pay out something different, for example deducting an entry fee for a free titled-player entry. A notes field is also available for payment details such as a Venmo handle or mailing address.

A row that awards a trophy rather than cash is labelled for what it is: Unclaimed until you hand it over, Presented once you have, and Follow Up when the winner left before you could and it has to be posted. These are the same three states the cash rows use, so the two kinds of award are tracked the same way and read differently -- a trophy sitting on the table is not an unpaid debt. A winner who took both cash and a trophy has one row covering both, and it uses the cash wording, since money is still owed on it.

The wording follows how the prize was configured, not what it is worth. A Biggest Upset, Best Female Performance or Best Debut left at $0 without ticking Trophy keeps the cash rules -- as described under Trophies -- so its row still reads Unpaid rather than Unclaimed, matching the description beside it, which carries no "(trophy)".

When no award on a table carries money, the Amount and Amount paid columns and the section total are left off it altogether: there is nothing there to show, so the table carries the winner, the award and whether it has gone out. An amount you already recorded against a winner keeps them: if you paid someone $50 and their prize later became a trophy -- because you changed the prize list, or because a last result moved them onto a different award -- the columns stay, so the payment you made is still on the table and on the printed sheet.

When you mark a player Paid, TournaChess records the amount showing at that moment as the amount paid. If a later result changes that player's calculated prize, the Amount paid figure stays at what you actually handed over rather than following the new prize. You can still correct it by editing the field. Marking a player Follow Up records no amount, since the money has not changed hands yet.

If you move a player back to Unpaid or Follow Up after marking them Paid, the recorded amount is cleared -- it described a payment that is no longer being made. The Amount paid field goes back to tracking the calculated prize, so if you mark the player Paid again later, what gets recorded is the prize as it stands then. An amount you typed on a row that was never marked Paid is left alone.

Payment status, amount paid, and notes stay with the player if you move them to a different section: the record follows them, so someone already marked Paid does not reappear as unpaid in their new section. If the same player has payout details recorded in both sections, the two are combined, keeping Paid over Follow Up over Unpaid.

Handing over a prize means making sure you have the right player in front of you. The ID-card icon to the left of each winner's name opens their registration details -- USCF and FIDE IDs, section, contact details, what they paid to enter, and any notes on the registration -- without leaving the payout table. It is the same dialog the Registrations tab opens, read-only here: corrections to a registration are still made from that tab.

If two Tournament Directors are working the payout table at the same time, each one's changes appear on the other's screen within a few seconds, including after the tournament is marked complete. If a save fails, the notes dialog stays open with your text so you can try again.

What's Not Currently Supported

TournaChess covers the most common prize structures, but a few less common formats are not yet automated:

Based-on prizes -- Prize funds advertised as conditional on turnout ("$500 based on 40 entries", paid at a reduced rate if fewer enter). Work out the adjusted amounts yourself and enter those figures. Note this is not a limit on using an opponent's rating: the Biggest Upset prize does exactly that, automatically.
Handing out non-cash prizes -- The calculator will happily work out who wins a trophy or a medal: tick Trophy and it names a winner on the Prizes tab and the printed sheet like any other, and you can mark each one Unclaimed, Presented or Follow Up as you hand them out (see Recording payouts). (Leaving a place, class or under prize at $0 does the same; on a Biggest Upset, tick Trophy rather than relying on $0 -- see Trophies.) What it does not do is track the physical item -- there is no inventory, so which cup came off which shelf is still yours to keep straight.
Automatic subjective-prize selection -- For best game, sportsmanship or similar criteria, configure a Manual award and select the winner yourself; the app does not judge those criteria.
Other gender-restricted or demographic prizes -- Best Female Performance is the only one automated. Age-restricted prizes ("Top Under 13"), state-residency prizes and the like still have to be worked out by hand.
"First US Chess tournament" prizes -- Best Debut is decided on whether a player is unrated in your event, not on whether they have ever played a rated game before. A player with a rating you typed in, or one returning after a long gap with a rating still on file, is rated here.
Points-based prizes -- Prize structures based on cumulative points across multiple events rather than a single tournament.

If your tournament uses any of these, you can still use TournaChess for the standard prizes and handle the exceptions manually.

USCF Rule References

The prize calculation feature follows the relevant sections of the USCF Official Rules of Chess:

Rule 32A -- General prize distribution principles
Rule 32B -- Pool sharing for tied players (32B1 through 32B5)
Rule 32C -- Class prize distribution and separation
Rule 33C -- Rating class definitions and boundaries
Rule 33F -- Under prize eligibility

For the full text of these rules, consult the current edition of the US Chess Federation's Official Rules of Chess.

Running Tournaments -- Complete guide to managing a live tournament, including standings and results.
Creating Tournaments -- Tournament setup and section configuration.