My First Chess Tournament

I have my first tournament coming up and i want to prepare for it.  any help will be greatly appreciated. The tournament is on the 25th this month and is G/45 TC.  Im working on sicilan against e4. and mainly doing e4 openings as white. Im not sure i want to try kings gambit or the piano against e5 but im liking smith-morra against c5.

I was asking almost exactly the same question a few weeks ago; I ended up at 3rd in my tournament!  Here's a link to the thread.

My reccomedations:  It's going to be a bit difficult to come to a good understanding of an opening.  I'd reccomend remembering the main lines, and if you have time why each move in that line is a decent choice.  Also try to find what the underlying theme or goal is behind each opening you play.  For example, in the sicilian, I like to think of it as "whomever gets there attack first wins first".  Last but not least, brush up on your tactics; this is key!  Chess is 90% tactics, and 10% strategy!  (Or was it 99% tactics, and 1% strategy?  Either way tactics study is the way to go!)  Review mating patterns you often come across in the endgame.

Best of luck,

photray94 

you look fine, by the way, which rating section are you playing in? if you are constantly beating 1700 rated players, then you should probably be playing in the under 1600 section, at least.  If you are playing in anything under, just be wary that every game will be a fight!

im entering as an unrated player. But in the chess club im in im rated 1669 and have beaten players in our swiss system up to 1950.

Ill post every game of the tournament here for analysis after ive done. win/draw/lose cuz playing over the board is not like seeing the board on the computer.

For White studing these openings:

Fried Liver Attack

Smith-Morra Gambit

Evans Gambit

For Black Studing these openings:

Sicilan Defense

Benko Gambit

Caro-Kann

Might look into  Slav Defense or Englund's Gambit against weaker players.

5 days til tournament and looking good. Studing to play slower and not play as quickly.

Tournament is tomorrow so Im nervous as usual. Hoping to do well. My first uscf rated tournament. Ive been playing mostly evans gambit if i can or fried liver attack as white if i get the opportunity.

Tournament to start in few hours. Been concentrating on thinking before playing to avoid any serious blunders. I will post every game up tonight/tomorrow for analysis. 

good luck - tactician_prodigy

Tournament is over and im gonna post the games up for everyone to see.  Im going to post it in the analysis forum and i will put a link up here.

Here is the link to page. http://www.chess.com/forum/view/game-analysis/my-first-chess-tournament-games