Tournament Director Guide

Your Account

Register at the login page with your email address and a password. Once logged in you land on the Dashboard, which lists all your tournaments.

Navigating Torneo

On desktop a sidebar appears on the left. On mobile, a tab bar shows Tournaments and Club Members; your profile is the person icon in the top-right header.

Creating a Tournament

From the Dashboard, click New Tournament.

The tournament is created in Draft status.

Tournament Status Flow

Draft → Registration Open → In Progress → Completed

What can be edited and when

Adding Players

Manually

From the Players tab, click Add Player. Fill in name (required), rating, federation, club, email. As you type a name, Torneo suggests players from your previous tournaments — select one to pre-fill the form.

Optional fields: FIDE ID, USCF ID, phone, birth year, gender. Phone is used for SMS notifications. FIDE/USCF IDs are only needed for federation exports.

CSV Import

Click Import CSV. Supported columns:

name, rating, federation, club, email, fide_id, uscf_id

Only name is required. Rows with bad data are reported; valid rows always import.

Late entries

You can add players after the tournament starts. They are included in pairings from the next round onwards, starting with a score of 0.

Withdrawing a player

Click Withdraw next to a player. They are removed from future pairings but stay in the standings with their accumulated score. Click Re-enter to reinstate them.

Public Registration

When you advance a tournament to Registration Open, public registration is automatically enabled. Players see a prominent banner on the public page with a Register now → button.

Capacity and waitlist

Set a Max players limit. When reached: with the waitlist disabled, new registrations are rejected. With the waitlist enabled, new registrations are held at no charge — waitlisted players only pay if promoted.

Reviewing registrations

Prize Fund

Advertise a prize fund on the public page to attract players. Display-only — Torneo does not handle prize payouts.

In the tournament edit form, enter the total amount and click + Add prize for each schedule row (e.g. "1st Place — $500"). The schedule locks when the tournament advances to In Progress.

Listing on the Tournament Calendar

Torneo hosts a public discovery page at torneo.org/tournaments. Tournaments do not appear there by default.

To list a tournament: go to the Registrations tab and toggle on "List on Torneo tournament calendar". The toggle is only available once the tournament leaves Draft status.

Entry Fees & Payments

Set an entry fee when creating the tournament or via the Edit button at any time. Players submitting the public registration form are redirected to Stripe Checkout before their registration is submitted.

Promo codes

Revenue dashboard

Click View Revenue to see collected, refunded, net, and outstanding totals. Issue full refunds from the same screen — Stripe processes them immediately.

Player Check-In

In the Check-In tab, enable Check-in enabled and optionally set a minimum player threshold before Round 1.

QR code self check-in

Click Show QR Code and display it at the venue entrance. Players scan it, find their name, and tap Check In. Each link is cryptographically signed to the player — only the correct player can use it.

Manual check-in

Click Check In next to each player in the table. Use the search box to quickly find a player in a large field. Click Undo to reverse a check-in.

Click Regenerate QR codes at any time to invalidate existing check-in links without affecting anything else.

Sections

Sections divide a tournament into rating-class divisions (Open, U1800, U1400 …). Pairings, standings, and tiebreaks are computed independently per section. Sections are optional.

Setting up sections

Add sections during tournament creation or from the Sections tab (available while in Draft or Registration Open). Drag the ⠿ handle to reorder sections.

Assigning players

Manual — each player row in the Players tab has a Section dropdown. Auto-assign — in the Sections tab, click Auto-assign players; Torneo assigns each player to the most restrictive qualifying section.

Sections and round generation

A single Generate Round N click creates pairings for all sections simultaneously. Board numbers restart at 1 within each section.

Running Rounds

Advance to In Progress before generating pairings. In the Rounds tab, click Generate Round N. The Swiss algorithm groups players by score, balances colours, avoids repeat pairings, and assigns a bye to the lowest-rated unpaired player.

Editing pairings

Click Edit Pairings before publishing. Use ⇄ Colors to swap White and Black on a board, or click two boards to swap their assignments. Click Done Editing when finished.

Publishing

Click Publish Pairings to make the round visible on the public page. Players can then look up their board assignment at /t/{slug}.

Recording Results

Click the result for each board. Standings update automatically. The round completes once all boards have results. The bye player receives 1 point automatically — no entry needed.

Standings

Standings recalculate automatically on every result entry. The public tournament page shows the same standings in real time.

The Public Tournament Page

Every tournament has a public page at torneo.org/t/{slug} — no login required. Share this link with players. It is mobile-optimised so players can look up their board during the event.

It shows: current round pairings, live standings, the player list, tournament info, and the registration form (when open).

Email Notifications

Federation Exports

In the Export tab, click Check to run an export readiness check before downloading. It flags missing dates, ratings, and federation IDs.

If your tournament has sections, use the section filter on the Export tab to download a per-section file.

Federation ID Validation

Torneo verifies FIDE and USCF IDs against the monthly rating supplement. Validation is a soft warning only — a badge never blocks player entry.

Uploading a supplement

• Go to Federation Data in the dashboard sidebar
• Click Upload Supplement
• FIDE: download the ZIP from ratings.fide.com/download_lists.phtml (updated ~23rd of each month). Upload the ZIP directly.
• USCF: affiliates receive the supplement via the MUIR portal. USCF validation requires affiliate access.

Validation badges

Inviting an Assistant

In the Registrations tab, find the Invite Assistant Organizer panel. Enter the assistant's email and select their permissions:

The assistant receives an email invitation. Once accepted they have access to that specific tournament only — not any others.

Staff Activity Log

The Staff Activity tab shows a chronological log of actions taken by assistant TDs — check-ins, approvals, bulk emails, etc. Your own actions are excluded so you can audit assistant activity cleanly.

Emailing Players

From the Players tab, click Email Players to compose a message to all active players (or one section). Players without an email are skipped. The send counts against your daily outbound email limit.

Merging Duplicate Players

If the same person was entered twice, click Merge in the Players tab:

• Click the player to keep (green highlight)
• Click the player to drop (red highlight)
• For each field, click the value you want to keep
• Click Merge Players and confirm

Archiving Tournaments

On the Dashboard, use the action menu (⋮) next to any tournament and select Archive. Archived tournaments are hidden by default — toggle Show archived to see them. All data is preserved and the tournament can be unarchived at any time.