The Check-in Process
Using Sharly Chess to manage player check-ins helps ensure your tournament gets off to a smooth, organized start.
You have several ways to handle check-ins:
- You can check-in players directly from the admin interface.
- If you have tablets or computers available for player use, players can check themselves in via a dedicated input screen.
- Alternatively, if you have multiple machines but prefer to restrict player access, staff or volunteers can use input screens on those devices to assist with check-ins and help distribute the workload.
If you have a projector at the venue, consider displaying a live list of players and their check-in status. This gives participants immediate visual feedback.
Opening the Check-in Process
To begin check-in, go to the Players page in the admin interface and click the Check-in button. You can choose which tournament(s) to open check-in for.
Once active, each player’s check-in status will be shown in the table:
Not yet checked in
Checked in
Absent
Click the icon to toggle a player’s status.
To manage check-ins from other devices (like tablets or secondary computers), see the Screens section.
Closing the Check-in
When you’re ready to start the tournament, close the check-in process by clicking the Check-in button again. If any players haven’t checked in, you’ll be asked how to handle them:
- Assign a zero-point bye for the upcoming round, or
- Assign zero-point byes for all remaining rounds in the tournament.
This action updates the Papi database directly. Affected players will appear greyed out in Papi and will no longer be paired — a major time-saver compared to managing this manually using Papi directly.
Re-opening Check-in
For multi-day events for which only checked-in players are paired at each round, you may want to re-open check-in at the start of each round. When re-opened, all players’ statuses are reset — they’ll need to check in again.