My first chess tournament

Over the last 9 days I played my first over the board chess tournament. At the age of 32. I certainly don't have any dreams of becoming a GM or so, but I wanted to check my chess level since I started to study chess on my own in March. 

It was a FIDE tournament, but fortunately also player without a FIDE ID could register, provided they are members of a chess club. So, I also signed up to a chess club. Also, there were several rating categories, with the lowest being <1700 and, of course that's where I played. Right now I would like to write down a few conclusions. 

From the 9 rounds, I won 3 matches and I did a draw, accumulating 3,5 points. To be honest, I am pleased with it. 

I was able to beat 2 players rated around 1550 and one around 1350. The draw came with a player around 1525. All the losses were by players over 1670. 

So a first conclusion would be that the chess.com daily chess ratings are somewhere at around 150 points off the real FIDE ratings. Since here I am rated at around 1690 right now, but I didn't manage to grab any win with players having an ELO higher than 1555. I think this may also vary by country and the corresponding chess tradition. I can only assume that maybe an 1500 player from Russia may play better than a 1500 player from Romania. 

Another conclusion is that I tend to play way better when playing stronger opponents. I will share in another post what I consider my best game. It is a loss by a 1699 player. On the other hand, I had a loss with an 1520 player that came out with his queen on the third move and since I was stubborn to play the Sicilian Dragon I somehow manage to lose it, even if I still think I am a better player that my opponent. 

A third conclusion was that I tend to do very good during the openings since I invested a lot of time in studying openings. However, I am really bad at end games. I had a game with an 1661 player that I could draw. On the 67th move, there was only one move making a draw, with all other moves meaning a loss. Even if it was not a difficult one, after 3 hours of play, I manage to miss it. So I have to concentrate on endgames. 

Overall, it was a very cool experience and I'm looking forward to participate in other tournaments too.