Leaving a Competition
Plans change — illness, travel, a season that got busier than you expected. How you leave depends on whether the competition has started, because once play is underway your departure affects other people's schedules and standings.
Everything starts in the same place: the registration panel at the top of the competition's page.
Which button you get
| Your registration | Competition hasn't started | Competition is under way | | --------------------------------------- | -------------------------- | ------------------------ | | Confirmed | Withdraw — immediate | Request withdrawal | | Waitlisted or awaiting approval | Withdraw — immediate | Withdraw — immediate |
Withdrawing before it starts
Click Withdraw and confirm. Your spot is freed immediately and you're no longer entered. If the competition has a waitlist, filling your spot is the organizer's decision — nobody is promoted automatically.
The same applies at any time if you're still on the waitlist or waiting on organizer approval: you were never in the field, so you can leave without asking.
Requesting a withdrawal after it starts
Once the competition is under way, a confirmed player's button becomes Request withdrawal. You can add a reason — optional, and useful context for the organizer.
Filing the request changes nothing by itself:
- You stay entered, stay in the standings, and can still be paired.
- Your registration panel shows a Withdrawal requested note explaining that you're still entered until the organizer approves it.
- A Cancel request button sits right there, so changing your mind costs one click.
The organizer then either approves — you're marked withdrawn and dropped from future pairings — or declines, and you stay in. If you entered as an individual you're notified either way. Team and party entries get no notification on either outcome, because the message goes to the entry's own account and a team or party has none — see Teams and parties below, and watch the competition page for the outcome.
Organizers see the request on their Participants tab; the flow from their side is in Managing Events.
What happens to your matches
Matches you've already played are kept. Results never disappear when you leave — your opponents' records and tiebreakers still have to add up.
Open matches are settled by the organizer, not automatically. Nothing is force-forfeited the moment you withdraw. Your organizer works through any unfinished match you were in and either awards it to your opponent as a forfeit or cancels it. If you know a game can't be played, saying so in your request saves them the guesswork.
Future rounds skip you automatically. Once you're withdrawn, pairing generation leaves you out. In a Swiss stage there's an extra safety net: if a round's pairings were drawn up before you left, releasing that round is refused outright and the organizer has to redraw it. Other formats have no equivalent check, so a pairing that already existed when you withdrew is something your organizer resolves by hand.
What happens to your standings
- If you never completed a match, you disappear from the standings entirely. No leaderboard shows a player who didn't play.
- If you did play, you stay visible with your results intact, but you move to the bottom of the table, lose your rank number, and get a Withdrew badge.
Rankings above you close up as the competition continues. Competitions that had already finished aren't renumbered retroactively.
What happens to your rating
Nothing. Forfeits and byes never move your platform rating, so a walkover created by your withdrawal costs you nothing and gains your opponent nothing. Competition standings are a separate system — points there follow the organizer's forfeit scoring. See Stats & Rankings.
(Conceding a single game inside a match you actually turned up for is different: that game still counts, and still rates.)
Teams and parties
- For a team entry, only the team's owner or a captain can withdraw the team.
- For a party entry, any member can withdraw the party — and doing so removes every player in it, not just you.
If you're on the waitlist
Being on the waitlist means you're queued, not entered. Withdrawals and drops don't pull you in automatically; the organizer promotes from their Waitlist tab when they decide to fill a spot. Your registration panel reflects your status as soon as they do, so it's worth checking the competition page rather than waiting for a nudge.
Coming back
If you change your mind after being withdrawn, you can register again whenever registration is still open. That's a new registration — you go in at the back of the queue, and if the field has filled up since you left, you'll land on the waitlist.
If you'd rather keep your original entry — same registration, same group — ask the organizer instead. Reinstating brings your existing registration back rather than creating a new one, though it returns as Pending, so the organizer confirms you a second time. Your seed isn't restored: seeds close up when someone leaves and don't reopen on the way back, so expect to be re-seeded rather than slotted into your old position.
If you can't find the button
The withdraw controls only appear on competitions that are published or running, and only while you're registered. For anything else — an event that's already finished, or a registration you can't reach — message the organizer. They can remove you directly.