How to Prepare for Your First Over-the-Board Chess Tournament

Playing an over-the-board tournament is a rather different experience from playing online, and almost nobody explains it beforehand. The good news is that what is hard the first time is not the chess: it is the mechanics. And the mechanics are learned in an afternoon.

How a tournament works

Almost all open tournaments use the Swiss system, which has three properties worth understanding:

Nobody is eliminated. You play every round, win or lose. That is the best thing about the format for someone starting out.

You are paired with someone on your score. Win, and next round you face someone stronger; lose, and someone closer to you. After two or three rounds you are almost always playing people at your actual level.

Colours alternate. The system tries to give you White and Black in turn.

At the end, whoever scores most wins — 1 for a win, 0.5 for a draw — and ties are settled with tiebreak criteria based on the strength of the opponents you happened to face.

What to bring

• A pen. It sounds like a detail and it is not: the scoresheet is filled in by hand.
• Water and something to eat. A tournament day can run six hours.
• Something warm. Playing halls tend to be cold and you sit still for a long time.
• Your own clock, only if the tournament asks for it. Confirm in advance.

Boards, pieces and clocks are usually provided by the organisers.

The scoresheet

In long time controls, writing moves down is compulsory. You record both moves — yours and your opponent's — in algebraic notation.

It serves three purposes:

1. It is part of the rules.
2. It lets you claim a draw by repetition or by the fifty-move rule.
3. You keep the game to analyse afterwards, which is the most valuable part.

One practical tip: write the move down after playing it, not before. Writing it first is legal under some rulesets and not others, and it also invites you to change your mind while looking at what you wrote — which is exactly what the rule is trying to avoid.

The clock

Two things that surprise people the first time:

You press it with the same hand you move with. And you press after moving the piece, not before.

Almost every modern time control has an increment. A typical one is "90 minutes plus 30 seconds a move": every time you press, you gain thirty seconds. With an increment you do not lose on time in a winning position, which is an enormous improvement on what came before.

The five differences from online

1. Your opponent is right there. They move, breathe, stand up. In your first game that is quite distracting; by the third you stop noticing.

2. Nobody tells you it is your turn. There is no highlight. You look at the clock.

3. There is no premove and no undo. Touch-move applies: if you touch a piece, you have to move it if it has a legal move. It is taken seriously.

4. You shake hands before and after. It is a real custom and its absence is very noticeable.

5. The silence. Nobody talks in the hall. If there is a problem — an illegal move, a rules question — you stop the clock and call the arbiter. You do not argue with your opponent.

How to prepare in the fortnight before

Play two or three long games with a board and a scoresheet. Even against a friend or the computer. The goal is not the chess: it is for the mechanics of writing and pressing to stop consuming attention.

Review your repertoire to move eight. No further. Theory is not what decides your first tournament.

Review the three basic mates and king-and-pawn endings. That is where the most half points get dropped in a long tournament, once you are tired.

Sleep well the night before. It is the dullest advice and the most effective: calculation degrades from poor sleep before anything else does.

Tournament day, hour by hour

Technical preparation is half of it; the other half is logistics, and that is what ruins the most first tournaments. Here is how to organise a day of competition:

Arrive forty minutes before the first round. You need to confirm your entry, look at the pairings, find your board and settle in. Arriving on the hour means starting the game with your pulse at a hundred and twenty.

Look at the pairing and do not look your opponent up online. It is a real temptation and it almost always works against you: if they are stronger you shrink, if they are weaker you relax, and both cost more than knowing informs.

Eat between rounds, even if you are not hungry. A two-round day is six or seven hours of concentration. The drop in performance in the second round is such a consistent phenomenon that it is worth treating as a logistics problem rather than a chess one.

Do not analyse the previous game between rounds. It is the commonest error and the most expensive. If you lost, reviewing it will keep you angry for the next one; if you won, confident. The previous game gets analysed at night or the next day.

And walk. Ten minutes outside between rounds does more for the second game than any revision.

The rules mistakes that cost points

None of this is chess and all of it costs games in a first tournament:

Not writing the moves down. It is compulsory in most long time-control tournaments, and the scoresheet is the only evidence if there is a dispute. Also, if you run low on time an incomplete scoresheet can cost you the game.

Writing before moving. Under many current rules you must move first and write afterwards. Writing first is considered taking notes during the game.

Forgetting to press the clock. Your time keeps running. It happens constantly, and one rule helps: always press the clock with the same hand you moved with.

Not signing the scoresheet at the end. Both scoresheets get signed: it is the record of the result. Unsigned, the result can end up disputed.

Having your phone on. In most federations, a phone ringing in the playing hall is an immediate loss. Off, not silent.

Talking during the game. Only three things may be said: offering a draw, "I adjust" when straightening a piece, and resigning. Everything else is said to the arbiter.

What to do with the result, whatever it is

And a part almost nobody prepares for, which decides whether there is a second tournament: what to do with whatever happens.

If it went badly, look at the right number. The result of a first tournament depends heavily on the draw and on one or two games. The informative number is not the score but how many games you lost to something you already knew you did badly. That one tells you what to work on.

Keep the scoresheets. They are your games, written by you, with the time you spent on each move if you noted it. It is the best study material you will have for months, and it gets lost with astonishing ease.

Analyse one a day, not all six on Sunday night. Tired and with the result fresh is the worst possible moment.

And write down one single thing for next time. Not five. One: "next time I do not play the first move of the round before looking at the clock", or whatever it was. A tournament that leaves one concrete lesson is worth more than one that leaves six vague impressions.

Enter the next one before the effect wears off. It is the most practical item on this list: the second tournament is far easier than the first, and the window in which you feel like playing it closes within a few weeks.

What to expect from the result

You will lose games. Almost certainly more than you would like, and probably one to someone who would look weaker to you online.

That is normal and it is not a signal of anything. A first tournament is played with three extra tasks on top — the clock, the scoresheet, the nerves — and that costs points that have nothing to do with your level.

What is genuinely worth keeping are the scoresheets. Four or five of your own long games, written down, against real opponents, is probably the best study material you will have all year.

Related questions

Do I need a rating to play a tournament? No. Almost every open accepts unrated players and assigns a provisional rating; after a few official games the first number comes out. The federation usually does require an annual membership.

How many games are played in a weekend? Between five and seven, normally two a day plus one on Sunday. At ninety minutes per player, each day is six or seven hours of concentration, which is the part that surprises people.

Can I withdraw from a tournament halfway through? You can, and you should tell the arbiter, because an unannounced absence disrupts somebody else's pairing. Withdrawing from exhaustion in a first tournament is completely normal.

Which time control do I choose if there are several sections? The longest you can sustain. A rapid tournament is more comfortable and teaches considerably less; long games are the ones that produce material to analyse for weeks.