Chess-Results: where tournament tables live

A website that publishes tournament data - starting lists, round pairings, standings and cross tables - uploaded by the organizers of the events themselves.

• It is an archive, not an organizer. The site does not run tournaments and does not compute anything: it displays what the tournament program sent it.
• It covers an enormous range. From elite events to small regional opens, across most federations.
• It is free to read. No account is needed to look at a table.
• The data comes from the software. Almost always uploaded directly by Swiss-Manager, which is why the two are so closely associated.

For a player the most practical use is the first one: looking up an opponent's recent events before a game tells you more than a rating number does.

Publication is a function of the tournament software rather than something done on the site by hand.

1. 1Run the event in a program that supports upload - in practice this means Swiss-Manager
2. 2Register the tournament on the site and obtain the credentials for it
3. 3Upload after each round; the standings appear publicly within seconds
4. 4Upload the final table at the end, which is what remains in the archive

Which means the real prerequisite is the software, not the site - about Swiss-Manager.

• It is not a rating list. Ratings are administered by federations; the site only shows what an event produced.
• It is not a pairing tool. The pairings are made by a program before they are uploaded - where pairings actually come from.
• It is not a registration system. Entries are handled by the organizer elsewhere.
• It is not proof that an event was rated. Anyone running the right software can publish; rating is a separate process through a federation.
• It is not a place for a club evening. Nothing forbids it, but an archive of official events is not where your regulars will look for last Thursday's standings.

A club evening has a different requirement: players want to see the table on their phones between rounds, not after the event in a public archive.

• An app. Standings update as results go in, and everyone sees their own place and next opponent - how it works.
• A group chat. A photograph of the table after each round costs nothing and works.
• A page on your own site. If the club runs a season, its own archive is worth more than a listing among thousands of others.

Publishing on a public archive becomes worthwhile once your events are rated and players want the results attached to their record - which is a different stage of a club's life - starting a club.