UniversityFinished2024

En Passant, Chess Tournament Platform

Built for the EN PASSANT Chess Tournament hosted by the sports club, this platform replaces manual tracking with an automated, live updating pairing system. The application features a clean, highly appealing user interface that was showcased live during the event. It uses a custom Swiss pairing engine to match players programmatically based on multiple tournament variables, ensuring fairness and professionalism. The platform's visual design and core systems were later adapted and redeployed with a new aesthetic for the Olympole event.

En Passant, Chess Tournament Platform

About This Project

Replacing manual chess tournament management with an automated, visually striking live dashboard and a Swiss pairing system that matches players fairly across multiple rounds.

Engineered a web-based tournament manager with a custom backtracking-based Swiss pairing algorithm, real time leaderboards, and an administrative dashboard.

Successfully powered the tournament with a highly praised interface shown on stage. The underlying tournament logic and matchmaking engines were later adapted and customized for the Olympole event.

Role

Lead Developer

Year

2024

Status

Finished

Type

University

Technology Stack

Next.jsReactTypeScriptTailwind CSSSupabasePostgreSQL

Project Story

The Challenge

Replacing manual chess tournament management with an automated, visually striking live dashboard and a Swiss pairing system that matches players fairly across multiple rounds.

The Approach

Engineered a web-based tournament manager with a custom backtracking-based Swiss pairing algorithm, real time leaderboards, and an administrative dashboard.

The Outcome

Successfully powered the tournament with a highly praised interface shown on stage. The underlying tournament logic and matchmaking engines were later adapted and customized for the Olympole event.

Insights & Takeaways

Highlights

  • Features a custom Swiss tournament matchmaking engine.
  • Successfully utilized live during the Chess Tournament, displaying live matches and tables.
  • Core engine was reused and visually refactored for the Olympole event.

Challenges

  • Implementing fair, variable-based Swiss pairings (Buchholz, color-balancing, rematch avoidance).
  • Rendering live updating dashboards during a fast-paced live sporting event.

Lessons Learned

  • Designing tournament-grade systems requires rigorous testing of edge cases (e.g., odd player count byes), and building modular pairing engines makes them easy to adapt for other club events.

Related Work