How to Add Online Players to an Over-the-Board Chess Tournament

Your tournament happens in a room, at real boards, and that is the whole point. But every so often a couple of players cannot be there: a pupil off sick, a colleague on the other floor, a regular who moved away. You do not need to turn the event into an online tournament to include them. This guide shows how to keep almost every game over the board and put just one or two boards online, with every result landing in the same standings.

Keep the Event Over the Board

The easiest hybrid event is one where almost nothing changes. Players still sit at tables, you still pair rounds and post results, and the TV still shows the standings. The only difference is that a few boards are played on Lichess instead of on wood.

That is how ChessHost treats it. Turning on online play puts no board online by itself. Every board starts at a real table, and you choose the one or two that will be played online. If you want the bigger picture first, our guide to online vs in-person chess tournaments compares the two formats.

How to Add Online Players to a Chess Tournament, Step by Step

1. Run Your Rounds as Normal

Register everyone, remote players included, and pair the round the usual way. A Swiss pairing does not care where a player is sitting, so a remote player can be drawn against someone in the room. That is fine: the player in the room simply plays that game on a phone or laptop at the venue.

2. Turn On Online Play

On the round screen, open the Tournament menu and choose Play Boards Online. On a phone it is the Online Play tile in Options. The control turns green once it is on, and nothing else changes yet: every board is still at a table.

3. Tap Online Under the Boards That Need It

Find the board with a remote player and tap Online under it. That creates the Lichess game on the spot and gives you a White link and a Black link. There is no separate create step. Do the same for any other board that needs it and leave the rest alone.

4. Hand Out the Links

Copy each link and send it to the right player yourself, for example in your club or class chat. ChessHost never emails anyone. If you would rather players fetch their own, switch on Show online game links in Invite Players. The join page then shows each online board with both names and a Play as White and Play as Black button. It is off by default, so you stay in control of who gets which link.

Nobody needs a Lichess account. Lichess shows both players as Anonymous, so the game title carries their real names, for example "Alex vs Priya, Friday Blitz R2 Board 3". That is how each player checks they opened the right board.

5. Let the Results Come In on Their Own

There is nothing to type and nothing to refresh. While you have ChessHost open, the round checks Lichess every few seconds, and a finished game is scored in about 15 seconds. Standings and the TV display follow straight away. If you close the app, nothing is lost: reopening the round catches up on games that finished in the meantime.

Each online board shows where its game is: Waiting for players if nobody has opened it, Playing once it is under way, Game not started if it was aborted, and Link expired if it needs a new one. Only a finished game scores itself. A game nobody played is never scored for you, so you decide what happens to that board.

What Stays the Same for Everyone

• The clock. An online board uses your event's own time control, per player, with no increment. A 15 minute event means a 15+0 game on Lichess. If you are unsure what to pick, see our guide to chess time controls.
• The standings. Online and table results go into one table, with the same tiebreaks.
• The screens. The TV display marks online boards with an Online tag, and the printed pairings sheet keeps the board number with an Online marker under it, so nobody goes looking for Board 2 in the room.
• Your word is final. If you score a board by hand, Lichess will never change it back. To undo it, score it by hand again.

Honest Limits of Online Boards

Online boards are built for casual events, and it is worth knowing the trade-offs before you use them:

• Games are unrated. They do not count toward anyone's Lichess rating.
• Links are not private. No account means anyone holding a link can use it, so share each one only with its player.
• No anti-cheating checks. Nobody is watching an online player's screen. Use online boards for school, office and club nights, not for events where verified identity or fair-play controls matter.
• Keep the app open. Results arrive while you have ChessHost open. Reopening it catches up, so a closed laptop only delays results.

Run Your Next Event With a Few Online Boards

The room stays the main event, and the players who cannot be there still play their rounds. Online play is part of the free plan in free chess tournament software from ChessHost, alongside pairings, standings and the TV display. New to organising? Start with how to run a chess tournament.