Top Tips For Chess Organisers

Organizing chess for amateur play can be tough. This Wikibook can help!

This is a book about how to get ordinary amateurs to sit down and play chess with each other, without throwing the pieces at you in frustration.

It covers some of the problems chess organisers before you had to think about, and some of the solutions they came up with. For example: if you've got 10 teams in your chess league and one of them plays all their matches at the same venue, is it better for them to be team 1 in the draw or team 10? (There is a right answer, which is in Chapter 1.)

Since you'd rather be organising chess than reading this book, it won't cover the things that an educated 10-year-old could have thought of, like "It is important to ensure that there is enough light". No-one has ever set out to provide not enough light.

Table of Contents

1. All-play-all Tournaments and the Berger Tables
2. The Swiss System
3. Knockouts and other Peculiar Beasts
4. Breaking Ties
5. Eligibility Rules in Team Tournaments
6. Rating Systems
7. Chess Clocks and Time Controls
8. Other Equipment
9. The Laws of Chess: FAQs
10. Running a Chess Club
11. Ideas for Teaching Chess