Recurring Series

If your club runs regular events -- a Thursday evening blitz, a biweekly rated classical, a monthly scholastic -- you already know how repetitive it can be to create the same tournament over and over again. A recurring series automates that work for you.

Think of it like a calendar event that repeats. You define a tournament template once, choose a schedule, and TournaChess generates new tournaments automatically based on that template. Each generated tournament is a fully independent event with its own registrations, pairings, and results. The series just handles the creation part so you do not have to.

What is a Recurring Series?

A recurring series is a template-based system that automatically generates tournaments on a schedule. You configure a template with all the settings you want -- sections, time controls, registration options, entry fees -- and then set a frequency. TournaChess takes care of creating new tournament instances at the right intervals, with names and dates adjusted automatically.

Common use cases

Weekly club nights: A Thursday evening blitz that generates a new 4-round Swiss every week.
Biweekly rated events: A classical tournament every other Saturday, rated through USCF.
Monthly scholastic tournaments: A scholastic event on the first Saturday of every month, with separate sections for different age groups.

How it differs from Grand Prix

Recurring Series and Grand Prix are complementary features that solve different problems:

Recurring Series is about scheduling. It automates the creation of tournaments so you do not have to manually set up the same event every week.
Grand Prix is about standings tracking. It accumulates player scores across multiple tournaments into a season-long leaderboard.

They work well together. A recurring series can generate tournaments that automatically feed into a Grand Prix, giving you both automated scheduling and cumulative standings without any extra effort.

Creating a Recurring Series

To create a recurring series, start from your club's management page and select the option to create a new series.

Step 1: Name your series

Give your series a descriptive name. This name identifies the series itself -- it is not the name used for generated tournaments (that comes from the template name, which you will set separately).

Step 2: Set the schedule

Choose how often you want tournaments to be generated:

Frequency	Description	Example
Weekly	Every week on a specific day	Every Thursday
Biweekly	Every two weeks on a specific day	Every other Saturday
Monthly (by date)	A specific day of the month	The 15th of each month
Monthly (by weekday)	A specific weekday occurrence in the month	The 2nd Tuesday of each month
Custom	A custom interval in days	Every 10 days

For weekly and biweekly schedules, you select the day of the week. For monthly schedules, you choose either a fixed date or a weekday pattern (like "the first Saturday" or "the third Wednesday").

Step 3: Set the start date and time

Choose when the first tournament in the series should occur. This also establishes the reference point for all future dates. Set a start time and end time for the event -- these carry over to every generated tournament.

You can optionally set a series end date. When the end date passes, the series automatically stops generating new tournaments.

Step 4: Configure rounds

Set the number of rounds each generated tournament will have. For multi-round events that span multiple days or weeks, you can also configure the days between rounds. For example, a 4-round tournament with 7 days between rounds would schedule rounds one week apart, with round dates calculated automatically from the tournament start date.

Step 5: Set the generation horizon

The horizon controls how far in advance TournaChess generates tournaments. The default is 8 weeks, meaning the system keeps roughly 8 weeks of upcoming tournaments created at all times. You can set this anywhere from 1 to 52 weeks depending on how far ahead you want your schedule to extend.

Create series

Template Settings

The template is the heart of your recurring series. Everything you configure on the template carries over to each generated tournament.

What carries over

When a new tournament is generated from the template, it inherits all of these settings:

Section configuration: Section names, rating types (Unrated, USCF, FIDE, USCF+FIDE), time controls, pairing methods, rating eligibility ranges, max players per section, and BYE settings.
Registration settings: Whether public registration is enabled
Tournament options: Name (with optional date placeholders), description.

Automatic name and date adjustment

Each generated tournament gets an automatically adjusted name based on the template name and the tournament date. You can use placeholders in your template name to control how the name is formatted:

Placeholder	Replaced with	Example
`{date}`	Full date	Jan 15, 2025
`{month}`	Month name	January
`{day}`	Day number	15

For example, a template name of Thursday Blitz - {date} would produce tournaments named "Thursday Blitz - Jan 9, 2025", "Thursday Blitz - Jan 16, 2025", and so on. If you do not include any placeholders, the system appends the date automatically (e.g., "Thursday Blitz - Jan 9, 2025").

Draft vs active creation

By default, generated tournaments are created in Draft status. This gives you a chance to review each tournament before making it visible to players. If you prefer tournaments to go live immediately, you can configure the template to create them as Active instead.

Tip: Starting with Draft mode is a good idea when you first set up a series. Once you are confident the template is configured correctly, you can switch to Active mode to skip the manual review step.

Editing individual tournaments

Each generated tournament is an independent event. After a tournament is generated, you can edit it freely -- change the name, adjust section settings, modify entry fees, or update any other detail. Your changes only affect that specific tournament. Future tournaments generated by the series will continue to use the original template settings.

Managing Your Series

Once your series is running, the series management page gives you tools to control it.

View upcoming tournaments

The management page shows all generated tournaments in chronological order, with their current status (Draft, Active, or Complete). You can see at a glance what is coming up and which tournaments need attention.

Skip specific dates

Life does not always follow a perfect schedule. When you need to skip a date -- for a holiday, a venue closure, a special event, or any other reason -- you can mark that date to be skipped. No tournament will be generated for skipped dates, and the series continues normally on the next scheduled occurrence.

For example, if your weekly Thursday series falls on Thanksgiving, you can skip that date. The series will generate tournaments for every other Thursday as usual.

Pause the series

If you need to take a longer break, you can pause the entire series. While paused, no new tournaments are generated. When you are ready to resume, reactivate the series and it picks up where it left off.

The three series statuses are:

Status	Behavior
Active	Generating tournaments on schedule
Paused	No new tournaments generated; resume anytime
Ended	Series is finished; no more tournaments will be generated

Edit future instances

You can edit any individual generated tournament without affecting the series template or other tournaments. This is useful when a specific week needs different settings -- a different time control for a special event, an adjusted round count, or a different section structure.

If you want to change the template itself so that all future tournaments pick up the new settings, edit the series template directly. The system uses smart propagation: when you update the template, changes are applied to existing Draft and Active tournaments only if those fields have not been manually modified. Tournaments where you have already made individual edits keep their custom values.

End the series

When you are done with a series, you can end it. Ending a series gives you options for what happens to existing tournaments:

Keep all tournaments: Tournaments remain in your club, just unlinked from the series.
Delete drafts: Remove only Draft tournaments; keep Active and Complete ones.
Delete non-complete: Remove all tournaments that have not been completed.

Manage series

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I change the schedule after creating a series?

Yes. You can change the frequency, day of week, or time at any point. The changes apply to future tournament generation only. Tournaments that have already been generated keep their original dates.

What happens if I edit the template after tournaments have been generated?

Template changes propagate to existing Draft and Active tournaments using smart propagation. If a field on a generated tournament still matches the old template value, it gets updated to the new value. If you have manually edited that field on a specific tournament, the system respects your manual change and leaves it alone.