Watch this support video (Daily tournament instructions start at 2:30) or read on below!
Whether you have a group of friends, a club, or a class, there are many reasons you may want to create your own tournament. First, you must meet some requirements:
To create a tournament, you must be a Premium Member and meet the following criteria:
Must have at least a 10% win ratio.
Must have no more than a 15% timeout ratio.
Additionally, to create a Live (Bullet, Blitz or Rapid) tournament, you must be a Coordinator, Admin or Super Admin of a Club. To see more about creating a Live tournament click here!
Creating a Daily tournament
All Daily tournaments on Chess.com are simultaneous round-robin knockout tournaments with groups. Some players from each group will advance on, until there is a single group. The winner of the final group wins the tournament. As TD, you will select how many players are per group, and the computer will decide who plays who.
Winning the tournament, important note: Since players will earn points each round, the final winner of the tournament may not be the player with the most points over all. Whoever wins the final group wins the whole tournament, regardless of if they have the most points in the 'standings' list.
To create a tournament:
From your homepage, under ‘play’, click Tournaments
From the Tournaments page, on the right sidebar click ‘Create Daily Tournament’
This will bring you to a new window with a list of options for your tournament:
Options
Tournament name - name your tournament!
Days Per Move - this will be the time setting for all the games in the tournament
Group Size - this is the number of players who will play each other in each round. Choose between 2 and 12. A higher number here means more simultaneous games for each player.
Max Players - the maximum number of players, choose between 5 and 250!
Advance per Group - this is the number of players who will move on to the next round from each group, choose 1, 2, or 3.
NOTE: The maximum players who can advance from a group is equal to (group size/2) rounded down. So, for a group of three, the max who can advance is 1. For a group of five, the max who can advance is 2, and so on.
Rating - put a range here to restrict your tournament to players of a certain rating.
Description box - write something about your tournament! Who is it for? Who should want to join?
After filling out the above options you can go ahead and click ‘create’ at the bottom of the page to create your tournament and get started! However, if you want some extra customization, you can dig further into your tournament with the advanced options.
Advanced options
Click ‘advanced options’ to reveal the below options:
Start date and Time - By default, tournaments will auto-start whenever registration is full. Fill out these fields if you want the tournament to start at a specific date and time, whether it is full or not.
Concurrent games per opponent - Each pairing will have two games, one where each player is black, and one for white. This setting determines whether they will play those games at the same time or not.
Minimum games - Use this field if you want players to have played a certain number of games before they can join your tournament.
Max Timeout % - This will restrict players with a timeout percentage of more than whatever you enter here.
Player Move Speed - Change this field if you want only players with fast move speeds to join.
Game Type - Choose standard chess, Chess960, or choose one of many book openings for all games in the tournament to start with.
Games are Rated - Turn off this toggle if you want your tournament to be un-rated. New tournaments are set to be rated by default.
Use Tie Breaks - Turn off if you do not want to use tie breaks. This is on by default for new tournaments. Click here for more info on tie breaks.
Auto Start tournament when registration is full - By default, new tournaments will start when they are full. If you do not want the tournament to start until a specific date, turn this off.
Allow Players to use Vacation time - Turn this off to prevent players using vacation time in the games in this tournament. Many tournament hosts choose to turn this off because one or more players using all their vacation time can delay the tournament by weeks or months.
Only allow premium members to participate - Turn this on to restrict your tournament to premium members. This is off by default.
This is an Invite Only tournament - Use this feature if you want to have control over who joins your tournament. If this is on all players will have to be invited by you to join. Off by default.
Use Custom Trophies - Enable this if you want to use your own images for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place trophies. Click on the Images to upload your own image from your computer.
Once you’ve made all your choices, you are ready to click on ‘create’ and bring your tournament into the world!