Ok, I've played hundreds of games of chess both OTB and online yet I've never played in a torunament. I was just wondering if there's any specific way of castling in tournaments, do you indicate to your opponent that you're castling or which side you're castling if you situation came about, do you have to lift the king first or is it just a simple matter of doing it how you would normally do it in a non-competitive situation?

You MUST lift the king first, two squares.

Yeah, generally move the King to the appropriate square and then bring the appropriate Rook to the correct place. If you touch the Rook first the opponent may try to claim you intended to move the Rook when you really intended to castle.

One other thing: the rules require each move to be made with only one hand, so once you've moved the king, you should move the rook with the same hand. This probably isn't so important in practice (I can't really imagine anybody complaining if you do things otherwise), but you may as well do it by the book to be safe.

Yes and make sure that the squares tha you are going to move your king is not under siege,contraire to the rook!

wise up maddog....

OTB??? HA! you're funny mad dog, where'd you learn that? I'm OTB too. Off to bed.

move king first

Yeah, in an OTB tourney, you touch the rook first and the touch-move rule applies and you can be forced to move the rook instead of castling.  Most OTB players won't actually force it, they will probably point it out though.

Some people castle by taking the king and rook off the board and then place them both in their castled positions, which is (or was) considered legal.

Definitely no need to announce it though.  Technically, you don't even need to announce check either.

Over The Board