Team tournaments

A team tournament is one whose format is Swiss (teams) or Round robin (teams): tick Team tournament when you create it. Teams play matches; a match is a set of individual games, board against board. The individual games are ordinary games everywhere else (results, player cards, the FIDE rating report), and the team layer is built on them.

Keizer cannot be a team tournament.

Setting up#

1. Create the tournament with Team tournament ticked.

2. Teams (a tab next to Players, shown for team tournaments only): add each team with a name, an optional short name for narrow columns (it labels the tie-break working and is not published), an optional captain, an optional series and an optional club. A team can be deleted while it is in no round; a team that is in a paired match is withdrawn instead.

3. Register the players on the Players page as usual. The add form and the registration dialog have a Team select (No team or one of the teams), so a player goes straight onto a team, at the bottom of its line-up; or put each one on a team later from the team's card. The Players list has a Team column (team and board, sortable, on by default in a team event), and so does the printed player list. The order of a roster is the board order: board 1 first. The arrows move a player to a higher or lower board; Remove takes them off the team. Players beyond the match size are marked reserve.

4. Boards per match (on the Teams page; default 4) is fixed when round 1 is paired.

5. The order of the teams. The order of the cards becomes the teams' pairing numbers when round 1 is paired. Move teams with the arrows or press Order by rating. Teams you did not move by hand are ordered by rating when round 1 is paired. How a team's rating is worked out is the Options page's Team rating for the order of the teams (advanced): the default (Olympiad rule) is the average of the highest-rated players, one for each board; the alternatives are the average of the first boards in board order, the average of the whole roster, or a rating typed for each team. A team's rating can also be typed on its card, which then wins. An unrated player counts as the rating set in Rating of an unrated player (1400 by default).

   Draw the order by lot puts the teams in a random order, for a competition whose rules draw the team numbers (C.04.6 Art. 1.1.2 leaves the method to them). It is offered only when the team rating is Typed in for each team: with any other method the numbers are meant to follow the ratings, and Order by rating or a regeneration after round 1 would undo the draw. An order you set yourself (or an earlier draw) is replaced only after a confirmation, and a restore point is saved first. The Teams page says when the order was drawn and the audit trail lists it; moving a team or ordering by rating afterwards removes the note, since the order is no longer the draw. Possible until round 1 is paired; the draw does not leave FIDE mode.

6. Match points (Settings, Scoring): 2, 1, 0 by default. A league that scores 3, 1, 0 changes them here. Game points count board results. In FIDE mode they cannot change once round 1 is paired: the competition's rules state the scoring in advance (C.04.6 Art. 1.2.1).

   Ranked and paired by, in the same card, is the primary score: Match points first (the FIDE default, C.04.6 Art. 1.2.2) or Game points (board points) first, for leagues that rank board points above match points. The team standings are sorted by it first, the printouts and OpenResults follow, and a team Swiss is paired in score groups of it; the other score decides colours between teams on the same score. Reset to FIDE default on the tie-breaks then starts with the other score (GP, MP, DE, BB, SB). Article 1.2.1 lets the competition's rules choose, so either value keeps the tournament in FIDE mode; like the points, it cannot change once round 1 is paired there.

7. Tie-breaks (Settings, Tie-breaks): a team tournament is offered the team tie-breaks. The FIDE default is MP, GP, DE, BB, SB.

Every action on the Teams page is an ordinary button with a spoken name, and the result is announced.

Line-ups#

Options, Line-ups: Required (the default and the FIDE procedure): a team plays with the players of its roster in board order, a reserve moves up for an absent player, and a board that a team cannot fill is a forfeit win for the opponent.

Options, Board order: Fixed by the roster (the default and the FIDE procedure): a player listed lower on the roster never sits above one listed higher, so a line-up can leave players out but not reorder them. Chosen for each round: any player of the roster, reserves included, may sit on any board of a line-up, which suits leagues that let the captain set the order each round. The pairing still seats a team in roster order; you change the order on the match's Line-ups page, before the first result of the match is entered. The TRF26 report needs nothing extra: each player's line names the opponent and colour actually played, so the line-ups as played are what it carries. In FIDE mode this setting cannot change once round 1 is paired.

Pairing#

Round robin (teams). Pair the whole tournament pairs every round at once from the Berger table. The team named first has White on board 1 and on every odd board and Black on the even boards; the colour of a team in the match is the colour of its board 1.

Swiss (teams). The program pairs each round team against team by the rules of FIDE C.04.6 (February 2026).

A team Swiss that was already paired player by player in an earlier version continues that way.

Each pairing is a match. The Pairings page shows a table Matches - round N above the boards: match number, number of boards, the teams, the game-point score so far, the match points once every board has a result, a link to the match's line-ups (Line-ups) and the Forfeit by decision controls.

• Line-ups: the page of a match sets who plays on which board; a line-up keeps the team's board order (unless the Board order is chosen for each round); it can be changed only before the first result of the match is entered.
• Forfeit by decision: To Team A / To Team B makes every board of the match the forfeit result of that team, and Neither team records a double forfeit (both lose). Withdraw the decision gives back the old results. A restore point is saved first. The boards of a decided match show the decision's result and take no result of their own: withdraw the decision first.
• A double forfeit the pairing wrote itself (both teams out of the round, or neither able to field a player) has no old results to give back. Withdraw the decision then seats the match again, as the pairing would seat it now - so mark the team or its players available first. While nobody could be seated it is refused.
• A board added by hand (two players from the not-playing list) joins its teams' match when the table number, the colours and the board orders fit; when it does not, it is marked no team and counts for no team until you make it a board of the match.

A match forfeited as a whole. Settings - Scoring - A match forfeited as a whole says what such a match pays the team it is awarded to in game points: One per board it seated (the default: a team that seated seven of eight wins 7-0, and a team with no line-up 0-0 - the match points are right either way) or The full board count (8-0 on eight boards whatever was seated, for regulations that fix the score of a team forfeit). It applies to a match forfeited by decision before any game of it was played, and to a match against a team out of the round as a team. A match forfeited after games were played keeps the sum of its boards, and a single forfeited board is always one board's point. The extra game points belong to the team: no board's result changes and no player's board statistics move. The setting travels with the tournament's export; a TRF has no record for it, so a tournament read from a TRF comes back on the default.

A team can be marked absent as a team for a round on its card (before the round is paired); a team that withdraws is shown as withdrawn, results not counted in the standings (round robin, under 50% played, FIDE General Regulations 6.6). When two teams that still had to meet both withdraw, their match is a double forfeit, whichever withdrew first; reinstating one of them gives it the forfeit win back.

Results and standings#

Results are entered per board on the Pairings page, as in any tournament (Results). The team standings (Standings page) show the rank, the team, matches played, won-drawn-lost, match points and the team tie-breaks, each with its working (for each round the opponent and what it was worth, a forfeit, a bye). The page also shows board statistics: per board number, the players who sat there, with games, points, percentage and performance.

Series and club#

A team can carry a series label ("Series 1", "Reeks 2": free short text) and a club, both on its card. A series is only a label: teams of every series are paired together, as one Swiss. When any team has one, the team standings (page and printout) gain a Series column. The club is stored and shown on the card.

Keeping teams apart#

Settings, Forbidden pairings has rules for teams, as it has for players: Teams of the same club (the club on each team's card, compared without regard to capitals or spaces at the edges; a team with no club is never grouped) and Teams I choose (a group that must not meet). Each is a rule or a wish (if possible), for every round or a window of them.

The club-based rule can only see a club that is filled in. With a Teams of the same club rule in place, the Forbidden pairings page says how many teams have no club, so the rule does not apply to them, and puts a club box beside each one. When most of a team's players (at least two with a club, three quarters of them) are from one club, that club is offered as a button, here and on the team's edit form; it is only filled in when you press it. The Teams page's forms say the club is needed for that rule, but it stays optional. For players, a Same club rule has the same notice for players without a club, with a link to the Players list filtered to them.

A rule is handed to the pairing as absolute: to the C.04.6 procedure a forbidden pair is a pair that has already met, so nothing else moves. A wish only decides between pairings the procedure ranks equal, after [C10], and never costs a colour, a floater or the bye. Neither is C.04.6, and the documents say so.

If the rules leave a round with no pairing where it would pair without them, the round is not paired and Pair round N says which groups are in force and which of them, lifted on its own, would let the round through.

The engine's TRF dialect writes them as XXO team-forbidden 3 11 16 @1-2 and XXO team-soft-pairs ... (team numbers, rounds optional), so a pairing checker replays the file with them; a TRF with these records imports them back as rules for the named teams. A team event never writes XXP or 260, which name players. The TRF26 report itself carries no team records.

Correcting the order of the teams#

Until round 4 is paired a team Swiss's team numbers can still be corrected, as players' numbers can (Players and ratings, C.04.2 2.3). On the Teams page, Team numbers… opens the list:

• Exchange swaps the numbers of two teams with the same team rating (the rating the Team rating for the order of the teams option works out, or the one typed on the card);
• Regenerate from ratings renumbers every team by that rating, keeping the order of teams of equal rating. If two or more numbers change, a confirmation lists whose first.

Rounds already paired used the old numbers, so a pairing checker will no longer reproduce them. Each change is written to the audit trail, and neither takes the tournament out of FIDE mode. Until round 4 the Pairings page warns above Pair round N when the numbers no longer follow the team ratings, and Regenerate from ratings… opens the list. From round 5 nothing renumbers. A team round robin is excluded: its table was drawn over the numbers.

The round is the Options page's Team numbers can be corrected until round (advanced, Teams card; 4 by default). An earlier round only locks them sooner. A later one is not C.04.2's rule - C.04.6 Art. 1.1.3 leaves the Chief Arbiter room, but a setting that makes it the rule for the whole event is still a departure - so saving it asks the two Leave FIDE mode? questions first and lists it on Settings - FIDE like any other departure. Adding a team in a later round has nothing to do with this: a late team is always numbered after the others.

Average rating fielded#

The average rating of the players a team actually fielded (unrated players are left out of the mean) is shown for each match on the Pairings page (Avg. Elo, both sides), on the match sheets and the printed team pairings, and in the team standings as the value of the team's latest match. It is for information only: the order of the teams and the pairing do not read it.

Individual ranking#

On the Standings page of a team tournament, Individual ranking shows every player who played: rank, name, rating, team, series, games, points and percentage. With series in use, a Series filter keeps one series. The printout (Individual ranking on the Print page, or Print under the table) follows the filter.

The order is points, then percentage, then rating (higher first), then name; players level on points and percentage share a rank and the rating only orders them. Points are the ones the board statistics add up, a forfeit win included; Games counts only games actually played, and a player who has played none is not listed.

Team tie-breaks#

MP (match points), GP (game points), DE (direct encounter), BB (board points weighted by board), SB, BH:GP, EMGSB, EGMSB, EGGSB, EDE (extended direct encounter), TBR (top board results), BBE (bottom board elimination), SSSC. The rest of FIDE's Mandatory Tie-Breaks table is offered too, /P and /K<n> forms included; Standings and tie-breaks lists the suffixes. The unplayed-game handling of C.07 Article 16 applies to byes, forfeited matches and withdrawn teams in a team Swiss.

• Won, drawn, lost and the tie-breaks read a match by its match points: a match awarded to a team that seated nobody is 0-0 on the boards and still a (forfeit) win.
• DE counts a match decided without a game - forfeited, or a double forfeit - only in a round robin, where C.07 Art. 15.2 makes forfeits games; in a team Swiss it is no encounter (Art. 6.1.1). The number shown and the order agree.
• BB counts a team Swiss bye as a win on every board, as Board Count does (C.07 Art. 12), although its game points are a drawn match's.

Printing#

The Print page lists team pairings, team standings, team cross table, match result sheets, team rosters, board prizes and the individual ranking (Printing). The Standings page has the same as buttons: Cross table, Match sheets, Rosters, Board prizes; the individual ranking has its own view there.

Match result sheets are one A4 page per match of a round: both line-ups with board, colour, player, rating and FIDE ID, a box for each result, the average rating each team fielded, the match score, and signature lines for both captains and the arbiter. Line-up forms (blank) are the other half of the paper: one page per team for a round, for the captains to fill in before the round. Once the round is paired a form already names the team, its opponent and the colour of each board; before that the opponent is left blank. It has a row for each board, rows for reserves and a captain's signature. Both are for one round (?round=n), and a single team or match can be printed on its own.

Reporting and publishing#

The TRF26 report carries the teams and their board orders (records 310 and 013, 362, 320 for the bye and 330 for a forfeited match), and a team file can be imported again. A team Swiss's 192 names its primary score - FIDE_TEAM_TYPEA_MP_GP, or FIDE_TEAM_TYPEA_GP_MP with game points first - and an import reads it back. A team round robin's Berger code has no place for it, so a team round robin read from a TRF comes back on match points. Team files are imported with the matches rebuilt where the boards say it unambiguously. Team tournaments are published to OpenResults like others (Publishing).