TournaChess
All updates

March 2026

Two big pieces this month: a second pairing engine, and teams as a first-class idea rather than a column in a spreadsheet.

USCF Swiss pairings

TournaChess now pairs USCF events with a dedicated USCF Swiss implementation, served by its own API and backed by a test suite of real tournaments. Every pairing comes with a pairing report — the score groups, the color decisions, and the rules applied — so a director can see exactly why board 4 is board 4. The pairing system in use is shown on each section's card and on the public registration page.

Details are in the Running Tournaments guide.

Teams

Team and grade are now fields on a registration, with autocomplete so that "Lincoln Middle" does not become four different teams by the end of the night. They flow everywhere a registration goes:

  • The public registration form and the director's registration dialogs
  • The registrations table and detail view
  • CSV export, tournament duplication, and the Stripe checkout flow
  • The USCF converter, which can avoid pairing teammates against each other (USCF Rule 28N)

Whether the team and grade fields appear at all is a per-section setting, so an open event does not ask questions that only a scholastic event needs.

Import from Caissa

Clubs running on Caissa can import an event directly: registrations, sections, pairings, and results, with team assignments carried across. A Re-sync from Caissa action pulls later rounds in incrementally, so an event can be imported mid-tournament and topped up as it goes. See the Caissa import guide.

Timezones

Clubs and tournaments now carry a timezone, and dates are computed in it rather than in whatever timezone the server happens to run in. A club in Seattle and a club in Charleston both see their own local round times.

Elsewhere

  • FIDE ratings refresh on a schedule, and both USCF and FIDE ratings force a refresh at the month boundary when new lists publish
  • Custom field answers are included in the registrations CSV export, and in the director's registration notification emails
  • Pairings are hidden from the public API until the round is confirmed
  • A chess.com username can be stored on a managed player profile
  • The clubs list is a virtualized table, so browsing every club on the platform is instant