Papi and Sharly Chess

The Dependency on Papi

Sharly Chess was originally designed as a companion to the tournament management software Papi, the official tool of the French Chess Federation.

Although Sharly Chess has evolved significantly since its early days, it still currently relies on Papi for generating pairings, and for providing the database file for storing some of the tournament data — including players, pairings, and results.

This dependency allows arbiters to use Sharly Chess as a complement to Papi, with the flexibility to return to the official software at any time.

The Future

We’re now rapidly approaching the point where Sharly Chess can be used as a fully standalone tool, with no need for Papi. Sharly Chess already includes all the interface features required to run a Swiss-system tournament, and experimental versions can also generate pairings independently (the pairing engine used is bbpPairings).

Soon, we’ll eliminate the dependency on the Papi file entirely. Sharly Chess will be usable anywhere, with federation-specific features provided through a plugin system.

A process is underway to request that Sharly Chess be officially recognized by FIDE as approved software for FIDE-rated tournaments.

For arbiters in France: no worries! Even once Sharly Chess stops writing directly to .papi files, we’ll continue to support FFE workflows. Sharly Chess now includes plugin support, and our FFE plugin will be able to generate a valid .papi file for submission to the federation.