Chris Hani Chess Association Logo

Chris Hani Chess Association

CHCA Pairing System

Run a real tournament, with ease.

Pairings, results, standings and printed sheets for any chess event in the district - a club league, a weekend open, a rapid. Free, no licence, nothing to install.

It takes about ten minutes to pick up, and there is no pairing theory to learn first. Everything is already joined to the association's own player and rating database, so entries arrive with the right rating and an approved event feeds straight back into the district ratings - nothing to export, retype or email to anyone.

Entering results - three buttons a board
R0What it costs to use
3Taps to record a board
1Person who can change ratings
How a round goes

Three steps, in the order you already do them

1
Enter the players

For a team event each club enters one squad, strongest first - that is the whole entry, and the A team, B team and reserves come out of it. For an individual event it is simply a list of entrants. Either way you are searching the association's player list, so ratings come with them.

2
Tap who is here

Someone did not arrive? Tap them out. Everyone below moves up a place, so the top board is always the strongest player who actually came, and a club cannot weaken its own first team by resting somebody.

3
Enter the results

Big buttons, one board at a time. The match score updates as you go and the standings look after themselves. Print the pairing sheet for the wall on the way past.

Why it is built this way

Made for the room the chess is actually played in

Works when the internet does not

Venues in Cradock, Middelburg and Cala do not have reliable signal, and a system that stops when the bars run out gets abandoned. Results are kept on the device and sent the moment the connection comes back - never twice, never lost.

Pairings you can defend

Round robin uses the published FIDE tables. Swiss uses the same engine the endorsed programs use. If a pairing is ever disputed, the answer points at the rule book rather than at our own code.

Joined to the district database

Entrants come from the association's own player list, already carrying the right rating for the event's time control. When the event is approved it feeds straight back into the district ratings. No exports, no spreadsheets, no retyping a crosstable at midnight.

You cannot break anything

Create as many events as you like without asking permission. Only the Ratings Officer can rate one, and rating is the only thing that touches the district's shared numbers. That is why accounts can be handed out freely.

Anyone can follow along

Every event publishes live as you enter results, marked provisional until it is rated. No login, no app - just a link to put in a WhatsApp group.

Prints on any office copier

Pairing sheets, result slips, standings and team cards. A4, black and white, readable from two metres, straight out of the browser. Nothing extra to install.

An alternative to Swiss-Manager

Anyone running an event can use it

Swiss-Manager costs money, runs on Windows only, and assumes an arbiter who already understands FIDE pairing rules. The result is that district chess either does not get rated at all, or gets run by whoever happens to own a licence - which puts a whole region's chess in one or two pairs of hands.

This does the same job in a browser, for nothing, whether you are a club secretary running a winter league, a school entering four teams in a Saturday open, or an arbiter running an open. The rating decision itself stays with the CHCA Ratings Officer, which is exactly why accounts can be given out to anybody who asks.