Aug 26, 2026

Sharly Chess 5.0 released

Version 5.0 of Sharly Chess is a major evolution of the application, with the following additions:

  • full support for team competitions
  • championships combining tournaments across multiple events
  • better compliance with FIDE rules regarding player titles and title norms
  • a partially redesigned web interface that is more intuitive and, above all, much faster
  • new pairing and acceleration features
  • numerous other improvements throughout the application
  • simpler and standardised application updates on Windows and macOS

Team competitions

The biggest addition in version 5 is full support for team events.

Players can now compete as members of teams, teams can be paired against each other, and rankings can be calculated using team scores and dedicated tie-breaks.

Sharly Chess 5.0 introduces:

  • six team pairing systems — Swiss, Round-Robin, Two-game Round-Robin, Scheveningen, Two-game Scheveningen and Molter
  • team scoring using match points and game points, together with a range of team tie-breaks
  • team documents and screens — including match sheets, Berger grids, team rankings, and team check-in, match and ranking displays

👉 See the new Team events section to get started.

Molter, for everyone

The Molter system is a fixed-table pairing method designed for small team events played over a limited number of rounds: everyone plays in every round and nobody sits out.

It is named after Charles Molter, whose 1978 documents were turned into ready-to-use tables in 1991 by international arbiter Jean-Claude Templeur and distributed by the Fédération Française des Échecs. Despite its usefulness, the system has remained little known outside France.

Sharly Chess now generates Molter tables automatically for any supported number of teams, making the system easily available to organisers everywhere.

👉 Read Molter tables to learn when and why to use it.

French team competitions

For French events, the FFE plugin adds dedicated rule sets for several official team competitions:

  • Jean-Claude Loubatière Cup
  • Women’s Championship (N1F / N2F)
  • Mixed Cup

It also provides the official Loubatière pairing sheet.

Championships

Version 5 also introduces championships, allowing results from several tournaments to be combined into an overall competition.

A championship can span multiple tournaments and multiple events, whether individual or team-based. This makes it possible, for example, to organise a season-long series of tournaments and automatically determine an overall winner.

Sharly Chess:

  • automatically aggregates competitors across the different tournaments
  • calculates the overall championship ranking
  • supports a wide range of configurable ranking criteria and tie-break systems
  • generates partial rankings based on categories such as age, gender, federation, etc.

Individual tournaments remain independent while contributing towards the overall championship.

User interface

The user interface has received numerous improvements:

  • The console has been revamped and now includes new tabs.
  • Administration pages can now use a list view instead of the traditional card view for events, tournaments, prizes, screens, menus, timers and more.
  • Numerous interface elements have been redesigned to make the application more intuitive.
  • The web interface is now significantly faster than in previous versions.

FIDE titles

FIDE player titles are now handled accurately.

  • Players now have separate FIDE titles for the open and women’s categories, allowing a player to hold both simultaneously (for example IM and WIM).
  • Titles are displayed intelligently: both are shown when they are relevant (for example FM and WIM), while the women’s title is hidden when the open title supersedes it (for example GM rather than GM/WGM).
  • When the FIDE database is installed locally, players retrieved from it — including through an FFE search — automatically have their women’s title filled in.

Pairing systems and accelerations

Version 5 adds new possibilities for accelerated tournaments:

  • a new Keizer pairing system, particularly well suited to long-running club tournaments with flexible player attendance
  • a new Custom accelerated system, where acceleration can be defined round by round
  • a new Initial score accelerated system, allowing virtual pairing points to be granted individually to players
  • pairing settings can now be prepared before generating the pairings and consulted at any time
  • arbiters are warned when the selected pairing settings result in top acceleration groups containing an odd number of players in round 1

Rankings

Points are now treated as a ranking criterion in their own right, alongside the available tie-break systems.

This provides greater flexibility over how tournament rankings are calculated.

Bonus and penalty points can also be awarded to players, with support for the TRF26 299 record.

Fixed tables

The handling of fixed tables has been substantially improved:

  • tables that players would normally have occupied are no longer unnecessarily left empty
  • any table number can now be assigned as a fixed table without causing an additional duplicate table to appear
  • fixed-table assignments can be changed during a tournament while preserving the table assignments from previous rounds
  • pairings can be sorted either by pairing order or by board number on the Pairings tab, Pairings document and Pairings screens

Fixed tables in French competitions

For French tournaments, the FFE plugin includes a compatibility mode designed to keep table numbering consistent with the FFE website.

By default, the original table is therefore still left empty when players are moved to a fixed table. In this compatibility mode, duplicate table numbers may also occur when fixed table numbers fall within the normal table range.

This behaviour can be changed in the FFE plugin section of the event configuration.

Norm reports

FIDE compliance of title norm reports has been improved:

  • norm reports generated before the end of a tournament now assume that players will play the remaining rounds for the purposes of displaying requirements 1.5.6a and 1.4.3d
  • title norm calculations now take women’s titles into account: opponents holding a WGM or WIM title are correctly counted towards the 1.4.5 and 1.4.3d requirements, even when they also hold an open title.

Prizes

Prize management has also been improved:

  • prize categories for age groups and rating ranges can now be generated quickly
  • duplicated prize categories are inserted immediately after the original
  • prizes are automatically duplicated when duplicating a tournament

Screens

Screen families have been renamed Multi-Screens.

Menu support has been completely redesigned for a better experience, and existing screens have also been improved:

  • check-in screens now correctly use the configured column count
  • vertical separators are now displayed between columns

A new Chess960 plugin allows starting positions to be displayed, either selected by the arbiter or determined by a draw.

Miscellaneous

Among many other improvements:

  • the Pairings document now has an option to include a federation column
  • HTML documents can be uploaded to a custom location
  • staff members can now be assigned as arbiters independently of the chief and deputy arbiter roles, and are included in tournament documents and Chess-Results exports

👉 Check out the full changelog for all the other new features and improvements.

We hope you’ll enjoy this new version. As always, please feel free to share your feedback on Discord, by email at support@sharly-chess.com, or on GitHub.

Update to Version 5

New Sharly Chess users can directly download and install the latest version of the software from this page.

For existing Sharly Chess users, the recommended procedure to preserve your events is as follows:

  1. launch the currently installed version and accept the update to the latest stable version 4 (4.2.8)
  2. launch version 4.2.8 and accept the update to version 5

Support Sharly Chess

Many of you have asked how you can support the Sharly Chess project.

One way is to use the Sharly-Chess.com registration platform for your tournaments and benefit from its online registration and payment features.

You can now also make a donation to the Sharly Chess association.

A huge thank you to everyone who contributes, provides feedback, helps other users, or supports the project financially. Your support helps us continue developing and maintaining Sharly Chess as free and open-source tournament management software.