Chess on ComCom Games: how the leaderboard format works

Chess is the one title on ComCom that doesn't use a bracket. Instead of pairing players off and eliminating the loser each round, a Chess Leaderboard tournament has everyone play a full schedule of games: every result adds to a running score, and the final ranking, not a single do-or-die match, decides the result.

Here's the mechanic: every game is played live right on ComCom Games. Open your match from the tournament page and the board is right there, with the clock the tournament page shows (10 minutes a side unless it sets another), no outside site involved. The tournament page says how players are paired. In a round robin, everyone plays everyone, which suits a small field (ComCom's Season 1 opener was a 4-player round robin, 6 matches in all). In a Swiss tournament, used for bigger fields, players are paired one round at a time: players on the same score meet, nobody plays the same opponent twice, and with an odd number one player sits a round out and gets a free win (a bye). A win is worth 3 points, a draw 1.5 points to each side, and a loss 0; the field is ranked by total score, with ties broken by Buchholz score, the total points of everyone you played. There is no bracket to advance through and nobody is knocked out after a single loss; a bad round costs you points, not your spot in the tournament.

That makes chess the most forgiving format on the platform if you're still learning tournament play: one loss doesn't end your run, so there's real value in playing every round out even after a rough start. It also means the leaderboard keeps shifting until the very last round is recorded, unlike a bracket where the outcome of an early match is locked in the moment it's played.

You can check your live rank and score from the tournament page any time during the event. Every game is checked for engine use after it ends; play that looks engine-assisted is flagged for an admin to review, and a player found cheating loses the match and any prize. The Chess rules have the full fair-play policy.

Every open Chess Leaderboard is listed on the Tournaments page: free entry, cash prizes.