Starting playing in some local tournaments with a long term goal of being > 1399 OTB.   Current rating as of the last supplement is 1199, but should bump to a whopping 1229 here in Feb.    Last Saturday I ended up with a disappointing 2.5 / 4 score in the under 1250 division.  In this group I get paired up with kids and beginner adults.   A fair number of these kids are much, much stronger than their rating would suggest as they are vectoring up.    First game, I didn't feel warmed up.  I tried a few tactics beforehand on the tactics trainer and couldn't get any.   Round 1 I was black on the top board and in move 11 as black - absolute chess blindness / insanity.  I hung a knight on a5.   Lol.   Sadly the White Queen was sitting on D2 and I dropped my knight for no compensation.   My opponent later asked if I had something in mind, if I saw a tactic or trap.  Nope.  Just a blunder.  Ended up losing. 0/1.  2nd game I was White against a Pirc Defense: Classical Variation.  Solid game until my opponent missed a knight fork that ultimately led to the win.  1/2.   Third game was interesting. Played someone ranked slightly over 1000 in a Ruy Lopez.  Putting the game into chess.com for analysis, their CAPS rating was 97.1 and found the best move 67.7% of the time.   Ended in a draw due to some time pressure and both of us thinking the other person had a win.  1.5 / 3 Final position in FEN if anyone is interested.

 8/8/1pp4p/2n1k3/p1P1Pp2/5PP1/3R3P/6K1 w - - 0 36  I did not see the "winning" plan of  avoiding 10-15 knight forks, walking my king towards the center and my king sides pawns outracing their queenside pawns.  Final game  was a Sicilian that both sides played well in the opening and made more dubious moves in the middlegame.  My opponent gracefully resigned down significant material.   2.5 / 4.  I was targeting 3 points or better so not exactly what I was hoping for.   Will be doing more tactics and start to look at endgames.   All advice welcome.   At some point I would like to find a coach (inexpensive! :-) ).