Open tournament
An open tournament accepts any entrant who meets the basic entry rules, whatever their rating or title, so that beginners and grandmasters can sit in the same section.
Also called: open section
The word open describes who may enter, not how strong the field is. In an open event you do not need an invitation or a qualifying result: register, pay the entry fee and you are in. Many events run several sections at the same time, with an open section at the top and restricted sections below, so a player rated 1400 can compete for prizes against similar players while the open section carries the main prize list.
A grandmaster may still play the open section of a weekend Swiss, which is why prize funds there can be large. For the player, the draw is the main attraction: a chance to be paired with much stronger opponents, to earn a rating gain for good results, and in some FIDE events to make progress toward a title norm.
FIDE's own title series uses the label open for the titles available to everyone, with the women's titles alongside. When you read an announcement, check the entry cut-off and any rating limits. See invitational tournament, swiss system and rating category.
A neighboring idea is Scholastic tournament. A scholastic tournament is an event for school-age players, usually organized in sections by grade or age, with prizes for individual students and often for school teams as well.
Also worth reading is Sectional. A sectional is a tournament section limited to players inside a set rating range, so that each competitor mostly faces opponents of similar strength and prizes are fought for fairly.
Rating and title terms like "Open tournament" matter once you know your next step, and the improvement plans by rating band set out a weekly routine for each rating range.
Related terms
An invitational tournament is an event where the organizer chooses the participants, so entry depends on an invitation instead of a registration form and an entry fee.
In a Swiss-system tournament the number of rounds is announced in advance, nobody is knocked out, and every round pairs players who have scored about the same so far, never matching the same two players twice.
A rating category is a band of ratings, often 200 points wide, that groups players of similar strength so they can be sectioned, paired, prized and described together in a tournament.
A norm is a tournament result that meets the FIDE title standard for performance rating and opponent mix; several norms across enough games can earn a title, but one norm alone does not.
A scholastic tournament is an event for school-age players, usually organized in sections by grade or age, with prizes for individual students and often for school teams as well.
Guides that go further
What a rating measures, how FIDE, Lichess, US Chess and chess.com compute theirs, and why the numbers differ.
How the Candidate Master, FIDE Master, International Master and Grandmaster titles are earned, with every Handbook clause.
The Handbook rules for a first FIDE rating: five rated games, the 1400 floor, the two 1800 draws and a worked example.
Sources
- FIDE Handbook B.01 FIDE Title Regulations, effective 1 January 2024, Clause 0.3, read Oct 21, 2026.
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