Chess tournament bracket
Chess and the Swiss system grew up together: many rounds, nobody eliminated, and the field sorted by results rather than by an entry fee.
Editing is designed for desktop. On this screen you can view the bracket; open the tools below if you need to change something.
Everything stays editable: type your own team names, set scores and dates, then export the bracket as an image — a PNG in three sizes, no watermark.
Why Swiss is the default in chess
A round robin with 16 players is 120 games. Swiss gives the same field a decisive ranking in 4 rounds — 32 games — by pairing players on the same score each round, so the top of the table meets the top while the rest of the field gets competitive games.
In this editor the round count follows the field size automatically: 3 rounds for 8 players, 4 for 16, 5 for 32. The pairing list comes out as a table you can print or export as CSV, with one line per board.
Draws are a result, not a gap
A drawn game is recorded as a draw, counted as one for each player in the standings, and it does not disturb the pairings — the next round simply pairs both players by their score.
For knockout-style events (a club championship bracket, for instance) a drawn game can be resolved by advancing either player by hand, which covers armageddon, a coin toss, or a match decided on a board-1 tiebreak.
The honest limit: tiebreak systems
Chess tournaments usually separate players level on points with Buchholz, Sonneborn-Berger or a performance rating. Those are not computed here, and we would rather say so than print an approximation.
What you do get is the raw material: a standings table of wins, draws and losses, plus the full pairing list of who played whom — enough to work out the tiebreak you use, in your own spreadsheet, without re-typing the cross table.
Frequently asked questions
- How many rounds does a Swiss chess tournament need?
- About log₂ of the number of players: 3 rounds for 8, 4 for 16, 5 for 32. This tool sets the round count automatically and keeps the field paired on equal scores.
- Do you calculate Buchholz or Sonneborn-Berger?
- No — tiebreak systems differ by federation and event, so we do not invent one. You get the standings and the full pairing list, which is what those tiebreaks are computed from.
- Can I run a club round robin instead?
- Yes, up to 16 players, single or double. You get an n×n results matrix, a standings table and the fixture list — the classic all-play-all cross table.