How did Sharly Chess come about?

Sharly Chess began life as Papi-web, created by Pascal Aubry in 2013 as a companion to the tournament management software Papi, the official arbitration tool of the French Chess Federation.

Its development started from a few simple observations:

During tournaments, many arbiters spend a significant amount of time at their keyboards entering and verifying players’ results. This takes away from supervising games — which is, after all, the core duty of arbiters!
When the arbiter enters the results, it’s often a source of mistakes — either in slow time controls due to errors on the score sheets, or even more so in fast time controls when players write their scores on paper and the arbiter then enters the results into the arbitration software.
You have to wait until the end of the round to see the results, which makes it difficult to communicate about the sporting aspects of a chess event…
In fast-paced rapid opens (typically 9 rounds with 12 minutes + 3 seconds per move), delays pile up throughout the day due to result entry time, lunch breaks are shortened, and prize ceremonies are inevitably delayed…

Papi-web was thus created in September 2013 for the 7th edition of the Domloup rapid open, and its use was reported in issue no. 135 of the BAF (Bulletin des Arbitres Fédéraux). Since then, the software has continued to evolve thanks to contributions from — and the drive of — its users.

First use of Papi-web in an official tournament in 2013

Sharly Chess

In 2025 Papi-web underwent a major overhaul of its code base, and saw the inclusion of many new features thanks to a larger development team. In its drive to become a fully self-contained arbitration tool, it was time to leave behind it’s heritage and take on a new name: Sharly Chess.