What is the biggest pain point when running Swiss tournaments at your club?

Discussion of computer chess matches and engine tournaments.

Moderator: Ras

swisschess
Posts: 4
Joined: Sat Jul 11, 2026 3:08 am
Full name: Sable Sawyer

What is the biggest pain point when running Swiss tournaments at your club?

Post by swisschess »

Hi everyone — genuine question for tournament directors and club organisers.

When you run Swiss events OTB, what's the part that consistently eats your time or causes headaches? A few things I keep hearing:

- Hand-pairing or fixing wrong pairings that the software produced
- Desktop pairing software that's Windows-only (so no Mac, no tablet, no phone at the board)
- The cost / licensing dance for paid tools
- Getting pairings and standings in front of players quickly (printouts vs. a live link)

I'm building a free, browser-based Swiss pairing tool aimed at club and scholastic events — no install, runs on Mac/iPad/phone, live shareable standings. I want to hear from the people who actually run tournaments: what matters most to you? If you had to rank pairing correctness vs. device accessibility vs. cost vs. tiebreak options, what comes first?

If it's useful as a reference point, here's a demo: https://swiss-chess-222bf76.n.egbe.app/ ... ion-thread

Not here to sell anything — it's free and staying free. I just want to build the thing that solves the actual biggest pain point. What's yours?