Going to participate in my first chess tournament...

Everyone has good and bad chess days. Sometimes, a 1200 rated player can play like 1600. Other times, the 1200 rated player can play like 800. 

It is up to you to be in your best state, and be that 1200 rated player playing chess like 1600, or at least better than you play on average. 

I find mood, confidence, and physical state key factors into playing the best you can. After all, if you have 3 and a half days, it is best you spend some of that on playing your best, and the remaining time on training!

I find it best to wake up in a good mood on the day of the tournament, as I am usually in a good mood for the rest of the day unless something goes terribly wrong. Preferably, get a good knight's rest but make sure to still have some fun and entertainment as well! If you have fun and entertainment the evening before the tournament but you fail to get a good night's sleep, you will likely be in a bad mood. If you do get a good knights sleep but fail to have fun and entertainment before doing so, you also won't likely be in a good mood. Maybe eat a great dinner, on my best days, I ate pizza, and maybe watch a special movie, play your favorite video games, play some unrated games of chess, watch your favorite content creators or streamers, listen to some music, read your favorite novels, or basically do anything else you enjoy. Remember of course, that you must get a good knight's rest. Use no artificial sleeping pills or any of that (but you may drink/eat something natural that helps you), and avoid caffeine or anything that can keep you up. Do your laundry (I know) and have fresh sheets and preferably fresh pajamas and towels as well. Take time washing (I know lol), and have a nice relaxing bath, best of course if not taken too early. But of course if somehow you fail to have a good night's rest, you can always stay up, do something else, and then sleep late. But again, nervousness before and during a tournament is an important concept, that may likely just stop you from having a good night's rest and make you a wreck during the tournament! So that leads me to the next concept, how to be confident, as confidence is crucial, especially if you are under 1600.

I remember I had this tournament once, an online tournament on Chesskid. You needed to pay a fee to enter, and there were really good prizes but were drawn randomly using raffle tickets. I don't remember exactly, but I think a win was 2 raffle tickets, a draw was 1, a loss was 0.5, and if you finish the tournament and play all of your games, you get a bonus of 2 raffle tickets. Prizes included top-tier membership on Chesskid for a month, an invite to a chess training camp with titled coaches including several IMs, and maybe a few GMs or one GM coach(es), merch, a chessboard, and a lot more prizes I can't recall. In that tournament, I had a week to practice for. Keep in mind though, I was barely a 1400 rapid player at that time, I had an unstable opening repertoire, a hate of middle games, positional play, a love for endgames, a poor endgame understanding, a poor middle game "technique" understanding, and basically, I was horrible at chess but didn't hang anything, blunder mate had a decent visualization, and a somewhat good understanding of tactics (compared to my opponents). And as you can imagine, I had a huge lack of confidence. Yet I was determined and I trained and trained. I didn't know at that time that a good mood or anything to do with the mental condition and physical condition of a player, was important at all. Yet I still managed to build the confidence I didn't know I was building until after the tournament. I worked on the openings first. I started off by finally deciding on an opening to play as white (I believe this was the opening I picked after 3 months of looking for the perfect opening for me. I decided on the Queen's Gambit, for reasons I won't go into in this writing. I then decided on the Sicilian Najdrof against e4, KID against d4, and the Dutch Defense against c4. And then, I studied the most popular lines using the opening explorer and I memorized them. But that was only a small fraction of my study of the opening. Most of the time, I watched @GothamChess (on youtube) and any material he had on each of the openings I choose. Of course, I occasionally (but rarely) watched any other material I could find on YouTube. I did chess.com lessons on this opening as well, and that perhaps helped me a lot. Then, it was time to study the middle game. I mainly just did tactics, all forms of puzzles, and watched a lot of @GothamChess 's middle game-based YouTube videos, did some chess.com lessons, and got a somewhat (but extremely tiny compared to now) decent understanding of some of the "techniques". And then, it was time for the endgame. I reviewed key endgame positions and watched @GothamChess's endgame-based Youtube videos, but what helped the most, and what I did mainly, was chess.com's endgame lessons, which really helped, especially as a 1300 or so rapid player. And after all of this, my confidence was high, I took 7th among some of the best players in the kids-only tournament, and keep in mind, this tournament was international. I got a score of 5 out of 7 games, in a time control I never played before. I ended up winning a prize, in the end, a top-tier membership to Chesskid. 7th may not seem good, but there were 75 or so players there, and there were some really good players from around the world. Without my confidence, I would have performed worse, so I suggest you try to be confident in your chess skills before the tournament starts. 

And lastly, ideal physical condition! All I can recommend is to be ready for the tournament physically, the good knight's rest, the big meal before the long tournament, and the endurance needed to sit at the board and play (you can improve it by simply playing more online games sitting for longer periods of time). Best of luck!

Also sorry if my English or spelling is bad, this took me 45 minutes to write lol.

I can't provide any advice as I've never participated in any tournaments but I'm wishing you all the luck!

And don't forget the old quotation - Out of difficulties, grow miracles!

And don't forget the old quotation - Out of difficulties, grow miracles!

Old quotations? Here's another:

May the Force be with you!

Best of luck for that Tournament!

And if you're playing Schwarzenegger in the 1st round, tell him, "I'll be Black".

And don't forget the old quotation - Out of difficulties, grow miracles!

No tournament is problem-free, but experienced directors/arbiters are used to handling them.  As one, my old saying is "if have have a problem then you have a problem, but if you have two problems then you may have a solution". (one missed check-in or erroneous check-in or entry that never arrived is one person without a first round game, but two of them may allow both players to get a rated game in even if it will be in an extra games section for that round).

You may not be the only player in your first in-person tournament.  If you opponent is violating he rules then call the director/arbiter over to resolve the confusion, and realize that it is often merely confusion (very likely only confusion for kids tournament).  If the arbiter emphasizes resolving any confusion then that also reduces the emotional levels of any dispute ("my opponent was confused" is a lot let stress inducing than "my opponent was cheating" as is "my opponent thinks I was confused" versus "my opponent thinks I was cheating").

You can regularly see forum posts where players thought their opponents were doing something illegal even when the site automatically keeps every move legal.  In person there is no such automatic enforcement and players can play moves that don't get them out of check, move bishops to the wrong diagonal, move rooks to the wrong file, move knights diagonally, etc.  Those are almost always simple oversights (chess blindness - how often have you tried to make a move on-line and had the site stop you and point out that your king was in check?).  Call over the director/arbiter to resolve the confusion.

Remember the three parts to the touch move rule.  Almost everybody knows that if you release a piece on a (legal) square then your move is determined.  Many do not know that if you touch/grab a piece of your own (in a way that can be seen as intending to move it) or do so to a piece of your opponent's then the first such piece must be moved or taken (and if you do it with both one of yours and one of your opponent's and your piece can take the other one then that is the move you will play).  If you need to re-center a piece then that will be a touch/grab that looks like you want to move or take it, so you must first say "I adjust" or "j'adoube" before touching it, and please make sure your opponent hears you (or an arbiter if your opponent is not at the board).

Thanks for recalling, i literally forgot about the touch-piece rule!

And as a special rule, if you want to castle, you've got to begin with your king. If you touch your rook first, you've got to move it as usual.  

And don't accidentally kick over your king, that's the gesture you'll resign.