Not too long ago I played a 1300 player OTB. After ~20 moves the position was equal. That's not uncommon. Stay solid and active and sooner or later they'll show you why they're rated as low as they are.
First tournaments can be tricky, don't be too hard on yourself.
One aspect of OTB chess I still struggle with is bad calculation habits. Years and years of blitz has hurt me like that. I tend to take a lot of time on the clock because of it.
Oh, and it can be especially hard if you never play on a real physical 3d board.
I try to do some kind of work on a real board at least once a week (like playing over a game), and about a week before the tournament each day I'll solve tactics by setting up the position on the board and solve from there.
Yeah I think having a real physical 3d board was a problem for me. I feel like I would've spotted stuff a lot easier on a 2d online screen. I'm going to try that. Thank you.
That may have been your sole obstacle.. I played on otb with a colleague, who I usually best on this site, and he demolished me every game.. Couldn't see the whole board, sometimes I had to stand up just to be able to see like in 2d.
The fact that it was your first-ever rated FIDE tournament might have been a factor. You haven't yet "found the groove" for playing in OTB rated tournaments.
^This^
No more, nor less. We could play some games here and OP would demolish me in every time control. Yet I've won >1500 FIDE more often than not OTB, and got some draws in the 1700-1900 range.
Here's an example of a game I played. Do you think that my opponent played quite well for a 1200 player, or did I just play awfully?
12. Nd4 wasnt good. why didn't you just take the free Knight?
You moved too many pawns in the first 12 moves - 7 - and he has 4 main pieces out to your 2. Development is key, and then he stopped you castling and continued the threats.
That game is madness, for God's sake. I could have gone either way. Maybe next time you'll score 80 per cent!
Yeah, 12. dxc6 seems a lot better than Nd4... but you could have gotten a safe advantage much earlier with 6. a3, no?
https://www.365chess.com/view_game.php?g=662506&m=11
12. Nd4 wasnt good. why didn't you just take the free Knight?
Because I was about to get forked?
1. dxc6 Nc2+ 2. Kd2 (probably slightly better than d1) Nxa1 3. cxb7 discovered check...
Only for that I would have taken, even if it was a pawn.
So I just finished my first ever FIDE rated tournament, and my results were extremely disappointing... my performance rating would've been around 1100. I lost 80% of my games against opponents rated 1100-1600.
I don't know why I did so badly. I'm 1800 blitz rating on this site, yet I was losing against 1200 rated FIDE opponents more often than not.
I had 90m + 30 secs per move to think, yet I still managed to blunder in almost all of my games. My opponents played way more solid than I was expecting. I'm used to 1200 rated players falling for simple puzzle rush tactics, but none of them exposed themselves to anything like that. They defended so flawlessly, and nothing I did seemed to work.
Has anyone else had a similar experience? Do you think I just had a bad run, or are the ratings on this site inflated by as much as 700 points?