Player import, PGN Import, take-me chess and round status (draft, published, live)

I was a little bit slack with my release notes (preparing to win FIDE selection for World Youth & Cadets!) and didn’t share the updates we made last week. There are quite a lot of rather important updates in this one, so please take your time to read through this, despite being so long!

1. Feature: Player Import via CSV

Importing players into a Tornelo tournament just got a whole lot easier!

You can import a CSV file into any division by clicking the Import CSV link in the division menu.

Requirements
Your CSV file must include a header row with column names. Supported column names for import are:

• First name (required)
• Last name (required)
• Email
• Group name
• Tornelo ID
• FIDE ID
• Gender
• Year of birth
• Rating
• Federation
• Title

Including an email address will either link the existing user to the player, or create a new user account and send an email to that player inviting them to create their password for Tornelo. Title (means FIDE Titles) and other fields should use the standard TRF formatting.

Upload your file

Check the preview

Click Import entries

The import will ignore duplicate names, so you can re-import the same list as an update at a later date.

2. Feature: PGN Import Board Numbers for Team Events

A PGN File stores the board numbers for Team Events as [Round “1.1.1”].

Tornelo now recognises these to mean Round.Match.Board

And will import PGN headers to create pairings and display board numbers accordingly. Eg:

3. Feature: Our virst variant (Take-me chess)

Just for a bit of fun, and to see if we could. ???? We implemented Take-me Chess (also known as losers chess or anti-chess) as a chess variant… so now you can run a scheduled Take-me chess event, and charge an entry fee! We even made a short video. Let us know which variants you think might be “event worthy”.

4. Feature: Personalised User Dashboard

Clicking on the Tornelo logo in the top left corner (when signed in) will take users to their Personalised Dashboard. This dashboard provides a quick overview of Players you own, as well as Organisations you belong to, or manage. There are shortcuts to events you are playing in and your most recent results.

5. Feature: Round Status (Draft, Published, Live)

Originally developed for Round-Robin events where you want to display all rounds for an event, but only allow players to play in the ‘current’ round. However, we found many events where it is useful to display pairings, but not allow players to start their games.

Draft – An arbiter can see the pairings and edit them, but players and spectators in the Tournament Lobby do not see anything about this round. You can even ‘hide’ a round mid-way through the event.

Published – Pairings are visible in the Tournament Lobby but there is no Play Now button, so players may see their opponent’s from the Round tab, but not start their games.

Live – As soon as you click Start round the Play Now button is displayed in the Lobby and players can start their games.

6. Feature: Dead Position (insufficient mating material)

Tornelo now automatically declares a draw in positions where neither player has mating material. FIDE rules of chess are often incorrectly implemented on online platforms to facilitate a ‘hands-off’ player experience. We have implemented in such a way that players may need to call the arbiter to have a draw declared (just as in over-the-board chess).

To see exactly when the game is declared a draw please see our Help Files

https://tornelo.tawk.help/article/draw-by-insufficient-mating-material

7. Updates and improvements

• Upgraded our database
• Improved our on-site search results
• Display more clearly to the user when they are moving into, or not moving out of check
• Fixed some rather hillarious bugs (which you may not have found so funny if you saw them during a game)
• Prevented duplicate FIDE ID’s generating duplicate player profiles

WORKING ON

• We are hiring! Recruiting for a European Representative to promote Tornelo.
• Ability for players to customise the chessboard (colors/pieces)
• Improved security for us and for our users
• Faster performance of database and server

​As always, we’re keen to hear your feedback, feature requests or bug reports.

Kind regards,

DAVID CORDOVER
Founder