Sharly Chess for 223 schoolchildren!

On Friday, June 13th, 2025, a tournament took place in Domloup, bringing together 223 schoolchildren, who had little or no experience with competition.

Sharly Chess made easy the players’ check-in and reduced the time needed between each round thanks to alphabetical pairings (without displaying opponents to limit the number of screens needed).

Sharly Chess also helped to limit the time needed to enter the results, done by the children with the help of adult volunteers.

A pre-release 2.8 was used end-to-end without the use of Papi, with Sharly Chess’s internal pairing engine (bbpPairings).

The network configuration used was:

• the shared connection of a smartphone to create a local Wi-Fi network (the internet connection was not used);
• the server, used by the arbiter for screen configuration, check-in, and pairings;
• three computers displaying pairings in alphabetical order (with three display controllers on three rotators);
• two computers used to enter the results.

Except for the Sharly Chess server itself, all other computers used are outdated (20 years old) computers with a minimal operating system (Linux Mint) and a web browser connected to the server.

Thanks to this system, the children were able to play 5 rounds with a time control of 7 minutes + 3 seconds per move from 12:45 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. People used to such school competitions know that this is a real feat!