chesspodium Review, Pricing & Features

Chess Podium is a WordPress plugin for FIDE-standard tournament pairing, live standings, and paid online registration. See features, pricing, and pros & cons.

Category
Community Platforms
Pricing
Freemium — free plan plus a Pro Club paid tier (€79/year), from 0
Verified
Not yet
Last updated
August 7, 2026
WordPress IntegrationSubscriptionGDPR CompliantStripe IntegrationMultilingualFreemium

Chess Podium is a WordPress plugin built for chess clubs and organizers who want to run tournaments directly from their own website instead of relying on spreadsheets or third-party pairing software. It handles the full tournament lifecycle: creating events, managing player rosters, generating round pairings, recording results, and publishing live standings and pairing sheets on public, shareable pages.

Pairing and tiebreak logic follows FIDE regulations, using the same pairing engine as Swiss Manager (JaVaFo) and bbpPairings, and supports Swiss and Round Robin formats with configurable BYE points and Buchholz, Sonneborn-Berger, rating, and direct-encounter tiebreakers. Clubs can import player data via FIDE ID lookup or CSV files compatible with chess-results.com, export official FIDE TRF files for rating submission, and pull in external tournaments run on Vega or Swiss Manager.

The free tier covers core tournament flow, basic Swiss pairing for up to 10 players, a public standings page, a player/club directory, and live game analysis powered by Stockfish. The paid Pro Club plan (€79/year) removes the player cap and adds online registration with Stripe and PayPal payment collection, real-time game broadcasting from DGT electronic boards via the companion CP Connect Windows app, HTML/PDF exports, photo galleries, sponsor branding, and priority support. The plugin is available in English, Italian, German, French, and Spanish, and was created by Marco Belemmi, a FIDE-rated player and club organizer in Cattolica, Italy.

Key Features

Pros & Cons

Pros

  • FIDE-compliant pairing engine (JaVaFo/bbpPairings) with official TRF export for rating submission
  • Free tier is fully usable for small tournaments, not just a time-limited trial
  • Built-in Stripe/PayPal registration lets clubs collect entry fees without a separate payment tool
  • Runs on the club's own WordPress site rather than a third-party hosted platform
  • Live DGT board broadcasting and Stockfish analysis add real-time engagement for spectators

Cons

  • Requires a self-managed WordPress installation, so it's not a fit for clubs without WordPress hosting
  • Free plan caps tournaments at 10 players, pushing active clubs toward the paid tier
  • Live DGT board broadcasting depends on an additional Windows-only companion app (CP Connect)
  • Limited public information on the vendor beyond a single-founder background

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