Poor OTB Performance

Hi all,

After playing chess online for some time, I played in my first ever OTB tournament yesterday and did a lot worse than I expected to do. I am ~1400 chess.com rapid, but I was constantly struggling to beat players rated between 800-900. I feel like this is mostly attributed to:

1. I wasn’t ready for writing down notation before every move I played, and writing down the notation of all of my opponent’s moves.
2. I mostly play 3 min blitz here on chess.com, and sometimes 10 min rapid, but the games at the tournament were 30 mins with a 5 second delay. As a result, I managed my time very poorly.
3. I’m just not accustomed to playing on a physical board or hitting the timer after every move I play. I didn’t have a physical board or timer to train with prior to the tournament.

I don’t know if it’s worth anything, but the tournament was scholastic which seems to have a rating pool that works differently from non/scholastic.

I know that people often have trouble with transitioning from online to OTB, but I still feel like I should’ve done better against the lower rated players with my chess.com rating. Anyways, I’d like to know more about the rating pool differences and stuff and how I can train for OTB if I don’t have people to train with.

Thanks,
Supersmile_13

I guess that you could play OTB while training against bots.

Moving from faster online time controls to a slower OTB format can be challenging. Practice playing games with longer time controls to get accustomed to managing your time effectively. Analyzing your games afterward can also help identify where you spent too much time.