Thanks @stefanoloberti, I'm testing it! Some of my usual tedious observations:

1. The filter is great! I assure you it's incredibly useful!
2. The email part looks fine, but we need to test it more thoroughly to spot any defects or improvements.
3. Regarding the expand button, it's already a big step forward, but I'm thinking of an expansion that lets you get a quick glance at teams with their players without necessarily opening the registration section. Let me explain: if you click "Expand All", essentially on the page you'll see a single team because it includes all the manual player registration parts, FIDE, etc. There should be an option to expand just to view the player names. Then, if needed, you can further expand that team to allow adding new players. We would need two levels of expansion: one to see only current players, and another to add them, so we don't waste unnecessary space.
4. I can't find a way to change the team's name. It seems you can only do it in the initial "Edit Registration" section, but the admin should be able to do it later when viewing teams with players. This is currently the most important issue. It's just a name—seems trivial—but you need the ability to rename a team even after it's registered.
5. The registration of unpaired players should also be an admin prerogative. I understand you might say, "if you're the admin you can directly create the team with that player," but if you want to keep moving forward and pre-register unpaired players to later pair them into a team at tournament time, it would be useful to first populate the unpaired players and only then associate them with a team when creating teams. It currently seems impossible for an admin to register a player not yet associated with a team.
6. As a system administrator, I'm a proponent of data Export/Import processes. This is less urgent, but it would be handy to export tournament data into a readable file (CSV, XML, JSON—whatever you prefer, probably CSV for accessibility), so that you can modify it without hundreds of mouse clicks, and then import it back when it's ready. That way you could edit teams and rosters "offline" and later sync them with the online tournament. This could also be useful for repetitive tournaments where most players are always the same, allowing you to handle exceptions (new participants, etc.). The import could be massive—"replace existing data" or "add to current situation"—to add a group of players in one go.

Hi,

Claudio.

Sorry, I realized I wrote to you from the shared account created for our club, but it's still me (who else could break it so much?) I take this opportunity for another observation: whoever creates a tournament should have the ability to nominate another user as an admin of that tournament. This is quite common with other online programs, where I (the club) create the tournament, and then allow another user (the referee) to manage that same tournament without creating shared accounts with password exchanges.

Hello @Claudio and @LTB

I’ll take a look at these points:

1. With the expand button, it’s already a nice step forward, but I was thinking of an expansion that lets you get a quick glance at the teams with their players without necessarily opening the registration section. Let me explain: if you click “Expand all”, essentially on the page you see a single team because there is the whole manual player registration part from FIDE, etc. There should be a way to expand just enough to see the names of the players. At that point, if needed, you can further expand “that team” to allow adding new players. You’d need two levels of expansion: one to view only current players, and another to add them, so as not to waste unnecessary space.
2. I can’t find a way to change the team name. It seems you can only do it in the initial “Edit Registration” part, but the admin should be able to do it later when viewing teams with players. That’s the most important thing right now. It’s just a name—it sounds trivial—but you need the ability to edit a team’s name even after it has been registered.
3. The registration of unpaired players should also be an admin prerogative. I understand you might say, “if you’re the admin you can directly create the team with that player,” but if you want to keep moving forward and preliminarily register unpaired players to later pair them into a team at tournament time, it would be useful to first populate the unpaired players and only then associate them with a team when creating teams. It seems currently an admin cannot register a player who isn’t yet associated with a team.

Working offline on Excel is not feasible (too delicate and risky).

Thanks, I’ll update you shortly.

Hello @Claudio and @LTB

Three key points addressed, three interventions made. Update ready for testing:

1. Double level of expansion

You’re right: with the registration forms always visible, “Expand all” became pointless at a glance. Now it works like this:

1. “Expand all” → each team shows only the player list, without add/remove forms. Perfect for a quick overview; even with many teams the page stays short.
2. On each team, a button “⚙ Manage roster” appears at a glance: clicking it takes you to the management view of that single team (with add-player form, FIDE search, X remove, drag handle, etc.).
3. Alternatively, clicking the team header does the same thing.

In practice: collapsed → expand all (names only) → manage single (edits). Three clear levels, no wasted space.

2. Rename team from admin (after registration)

Yes, that was a real omission. Now in the team management view (the one you get by clicking a single team), at the top of the body there’s a yellow box with the “✏ Rename” button. It opens an inline form to change name, abbreviation and captain all at once. Validation checks for duplicate names with a clear message.

3. Add unpaired players from admin

Also spot on: pre‑populating unpaired players so they can be paired later is the natural flow. In the “Unpaired Players” panel there’s now a “+ Add unpaired” button that opens a modal with:

1. FIDE search (auto‑fills selection fields)
2. Surname / First name / Rating / FIDE ID / Email (optional for admin) / Notes

The admin skips the email verification; the unpaired player ends up directly in “waiting for assignment” status and appears in the panel like the others, ready to be dragged into a team or used in auto‑pair.

When you can, take it for a spin and let me know if the flow works for you now. If you spot anything else that needs polishing, just write back — the module is still marked beta precisely so we can fine‑tune details calmly.

Thanks a lot,

Stefano

Great, we’re there now! While creating the registrations with these new modes I found a few things that could improve (sorry if they sound silly, but I’m just being thorough):

1. Adding unpaired players: great, you can register them easily even from the arbiter’s side. Two small issues: when I click “+ Add unpaired”, a dialog opens and I have to click with the mouse to insert the player. It would be better to set focus directly on the “Search FIDE player” field so I can start typing immediately, saving time. If after filtering the list narrows down to a single player, that player could be inserted automatically instead of forcing me to select it from a drop‑down menu. Then the focus could move to the “Add unpaired” button so pressing Enter would add the player right away. That would save a lot of time!
2. Unpaired players dialog: I’d like to be able to sort them by Elo (as you’re doing) but also alphabetically. Think about an arbiter who has to create teams and wants to pair Donald Duck and Pluto, whose Elo he doesn’t know. Having to search through 50 or more names becomes difficult. Alphabetical order would make it much easier.
3. More important: there’s no way to delete an unpaired player from the list. I need to be able to remove one by clicking on it (just like you do for “New team from selected”) and then selecting a “Delete player”. I found a workaround: create a dummy player, pair them in a team, then delete that team :) But there should be a straightforward way to just delete a player!
4. I really appreciate that when you click “New team from selected” you can leave the name field blank and it automatically creates one like “Team n”. That’s exactly the right approach: ask only what’s absolutely necessary to get started, then let me change it later if I wish.
5. Allow dissolving a team without necessarily deleting its players: when you enter a team, there’s a “Remove” button. You could add a “Disband” or “Dissolve” button so the players would return to the unpaired list without being removed from registrations, avoiding the need to re‑register them.
6. Suggestion: when you click “Expand all” to get an overview of teams and their members, put the “Manage roster” button on the same line as the team name; that would save a lot of space in the view, letting you see more teams at once without scrolling too much. Or better yet, just remove the button entirely! If you click on the team, instead of doing nothing (and collapsing everything again) it could jump straight to the roster‑management section, as it already does when you click the team name in collapsed view.

Thanks as always. We’ll revisit the export/import discussion with more calm later; I’m sure I can convince you to consider it and we’ll find a foolproof way to avoid data corruption! :)

Bye,

Claudio.

@Claudio @LTB

First of all, thanks again — these are not nonsense at all; they’re exactly the things that make a difference when you have 50 tables to manage. I’ve taken them all five, and they will appear in v4.7.1 with the next deployment (in production at 5 pm):

1. Modal “+ Add Unpaired” — Keyboard UX

When the modal opens, focus automatically goes to the “Search FIDE player” field, so you can start typing right away. When the filter narrows the list to a single player (after at least 3 characters typed), I select it for you and move focus to the “Add Unpaired” button: press Enter and you’ve inserted it. I set the threshold at 3 characters to avoid unwanted auto‑selects while you’re still typing.

2. Sorting unpaired players

The toolbar in the panel has two buttons: “By Elo” (default, as now) and “Alphabetical”. Exactly for the case you mentioned: you want to pair Donald Duck and Pluto without having to search through 50 names.

3. Remove unpaired player

A X button on each chip, with confirmation. No more “team‑sneak” tricks :) It works for both players who registered online and those added by the arbiter.

4. Dissolve team (preserve players)

A new “Dissolve team” button next to “Remove” on the expanded team card. The team is deleted but the players return to the unpaired list, without having to re‑register. Available only during the registration phase, of course.

5. Click on the card → roster management

You’re right, that was redundant. I’ve completely removed the “Manage roster” button. Now clicking any card (whether in compact view or “Expand all”) opens the full management screen with add/drag/remove forms. Saves vertical space and one less click.

Keep me posted! When working in Excel I’ll never put a form to upload files!

Thanks!

Stefano

Hello, we are holding our first tournament, 23 teams! So far everything is fine, we're on the third round, hoping for the best! :) New considerations will come! The registration was chaotic, with a lot of people to pair at the moment; without the latest changes it would have been impossible to manage.

At the moment I'm realizing that once a tournament has started I cannot change the number of rounds. Maybe we only addressed this issue for individual tournaments, I don't remember. But we need to remember to allow it!

Another thing, we registered a team with the wrong lineup. Every round you have to remember to flip the lineup; I couldn't find a way to change it permanently. Whether you change it from the lineups or in the current round before or after confirmation, each round reverts to the wrong lineup. Sorry, I'm using this forum to report things as they happen :)

We have encountered a serious bug: a team received two Byes, which is obviously impossible! This issue definitely needs to be fixed! I will provide evidence of the problem later.

Hello, tournament finished. Unfortunately it was a disaster; after the third Bye of a team in the last round, we tried to correct the situation by deleting the round, withdrawing a team that had not yet taken any Bye, and attempting to regenerate the final round again. At that point everything stalled, and the round stopped generating with an error “Pair engine error,” for which I took a screenshot (if you tell me how I can send it to you). It’s easily reproducible—just enter our tournament and try to generate the last round. Moreover, there is no way to re‑enter the withdrawn team. The result was that I had to create the final round manually and calculate scores and tiebreaks by hand. Unfortunately the experience was traumatic, with 46 people waiting. I honestly wasn’t able to calculate the board prizes. How do we proceed now? Identify why a team received three Bys, and figure out why withdrawing a team caused everything to lock up. I hope not to lose the tournament (hence the need to be able to export the situation for possible restoration...), because if we unlock it I can still try to regenerate the last round and obtain the single‑board standings. For now, goodbye.
Hello, Claudio.

Hi @LTB

I’m mortified by what happened; it could be that yesterday’s changes introduced a bug or something else went wrong. I’ll check and get back to you.

hello @Claudio @LTB

first of all, sorry for the disaster. I worked this morning on your tournament and identified the cause: the many changes made yesterday to the teams module introduced

some unforeseen interactions with the mid‑tournament team withdrawal flow — combined with other specific elements from your day created the block you saw. I released a couple of improvements this morning:

1. New button "Re‑enroll team"

When a team has been withdrawn by mistake or to unlock a situation (as you had to do yesterday), there is now a clean way to bring it back online. In the Teams tab click on the card of the withdrawn team (red badge "Withdrawn"): full management mode opens and at the bottom you'll find the green button "Re‑enroll team". The points from past rounds remain unchanged, the team re‑enters the pairings for subsequent rounds. This will be directly useful for the “Philosophers” of your tournament, and will also be generally handy.

2. More stable pairing engine with withdrawn teams and historical BYEs

It’s an internal fix that you won’t see directly, but it makes generating a round much more reliable in complicated situations.

For your tournament “Blitz Teams”:

At this point you can enter the tournament, re‑enroll “I filosofi” with the new button (they’re still withdrawn) and then click “Generate round 7”. It now works.

⚠️ An important warning though: the pairings that the system will generate now won’t be the same as those you played physically on Saturday. At that point you have two options:

- (A) Let the system generate its own pairings and enter the results as if they were the ones played. The final standings and tournament prizes will be consistent, but won’t exactly reflect

what happened on the field.

- (B) Enter round 7 manually with the real pairings — let me know if that’s the path you prefer.

Tell me which works best for you. Even with (A), the board prizes that you couldn’t calculate by hand should come out of the tournament export.

Thanks again for testing it under real conditions, and it’s exactly for situations like this that the teams module is still in beta. Your reports are by far the most useful I receive. Write to me at info@chesspairings.org so I can share my phone number with you.

Stefano

Hello Stefano, thank you for your quick feedback. I noticed that “I Filosofi” had already been reinstated; I didn’t find them withdrawn as you mentioned. Anyway, I regenerated round 7 (the last one), and it worked (phew!), but as you rightly point out, the round in the latest boards is different from the one actually played. What did we do “by hand”? We looked for the first team without a Bye (I Filosofi), removed them, and tried to generate the seventh round, encountering an error that prevented us from proceeding. So we had the “Partisan” play instead of the Filosofi, against the “Liggi”, and as you say it differs from the current seventh round, which pairs the “Partisan” with “I Karateki,” giving a Bye to “I giovani rinsaviti.” No problem—I can reset the round manually to reflect how we actually played. The issue is that I don’t see the “Manual Round” option in the seventh round, which I did see in previous rounds. So I can’t restore the situation.

Could you please check why the manual round option isn’t available in the last round?

Thanks and goodbye,

Claudio.

@LTB the manual round comes before generating the seventh round. Once generated you will no longer have that manual one (but you can go back and delete it).

Please let me know if that works for you

I understand, I thought the "Manual Round" referred to the current round. That is, I'm at round 5/7, I click "Generate Round", I see round 6/7, something looks wrong and I decide to make it manual with the "Manual Round" button. Instead, I'm at round 6/7, I enter the results, I click "Generate Round", and it generates round 7. I notice a problem, so I click "Delete Round", go back to round 6/7, and then I click "Manual Round", which refers to round 7/7. Okay, I misunderstood, sorry; what made me doubt is that if you're at round 6/7 and you click "Manual Round", in the top left you still see the label "Round 6/7", and the manual round would then refer to round 6/7. We could, to clear up doubts, add a note to the title "Manual Round" indicating that it refers not to the indicated round 6/7 but to round 7/7. I say this because often you don't want to do an entirely manual round; sometimes you just want to change a couple of boards or fix a problem like the one we had yesterday; so it would be nice to fill the "Manual Round" with the automatic round and allow selective changes. Could you add, next to the "Auto-fill (random)" button, a button to auto-fill the round with the automatic round, so that only the desired modifications are made? Thanks and sorry again, I'll try this way. Also let me know if it makes sense for us to continue this conversation on the forum, which should be dedicated to proposing new features, or if you'd prefer moving the discussion elsewhere. For me, naturally, there is no problem.

@LTB all the help you’re giving me makes a huge difference! Let me know if you’d like to keep chatting here or prefer email/WhatsApp. I really don’t know how to thank you and apologize for what happened last night.

If that works for you, it works perfectly fine for me here! We managed to restore everything and enter all the results. However, I don't see the board rankings; it seems there's only the overall ranking…

Hello @LTB if you go to https://my.chesspairings.org/torneo_squadre.php?id=39:

scroll down to the overall leaderboard → find "Leaderboard by board" with a table for each board (1st, 2nd in your case, since the tournament has 2 boards).

Each table shows:

- Position

- Player (with title if they have one)

- Team

- Rating

- Games played

- Points

- Percentage

Let me know if that works.

Hello @LTB

At first it was there but you didn't have permission to see it.

Sorry again. With this leaderboard did you manage to complete the tournament? There was a dear friend of mine among the participants