I joined a tournament in my local area and this is my first ever chess tournament outside of correspondence chess tournaments on various chess servers online. It was a crushing defeat to be perfectly honest. Played an opening without thinking what I was getting into, blundered and got checkmated early and realized how much the clock can incidentally mess with your thinking process for the move you to choose to play play beyond just simply tracking the time of each move and tournament play vs. club play is vastly different.
Any advice or experiences anyone would like to share for new chess tournament players for some insight?
Don't try out new openings right away in OTB tournaments. Experiment online first to see if you feel comfortable with the middlegame positions that arise. Online, its more okay to mess up, but it can be very costly in a tournament.
I first used to play the Modern Benoni. Then I tried the Grunefeld out of the blue, without studying any theory, and I got caught in a line I didn't know and lost. So I then was looking for a new opening to play against d4, since the Benoni wasn't working out too well. First experimenting on Lichess, I have since brought the Stonewall Dutch into my reprotoire.
Good luck to getting better!
What time control were you playing?
Advice is a bit different for different time controls.
For a long game (atleast 1,5h + 1,5h), the main thing is to stay calm. Use the routine of writing the notation to create rythm and calmness, also pushing the clock creates rythm. There is no rush, write down the move your opponent made without thinking too much about it. Then breath, look at the position, there is no hurry, calmly look at the position and consider your options.
If you do not see what to move, take a break from looking at the position, stand up from the table, go outside to grab some air, then come back with fresh eyes. Just leave your time running, you can take a 5 minute break.
Tournaments can make you nervous and the presence of the opponent can be intimidating. That is why you should first learn to be calm, because if you are not calm, you do not play your best chess.
So remember to breath, ask yourself, am I breathing?
Keep playing as many OTB tournaments as you can, the more you play, the more relaxed you will be in the environment. OTB chess is more psychological than online chess, so you must train to stay calm.
Staying calm and remembering to breath will help you also when you start winning games more commonly. It helps you to keep away from wishful thinking, from arrogance, from not trusting your own play style and own vision, from feeling inferior.
Also, don't be discouraged from your result. You got valuable experience of OTB tournament play and especially the psychological side of it! Don't worry too much about ratings, I have seen a kid (now a young man) go from 1100 to 2200+ over the years, we all start from somewhere.
Your next tournament will already be better, because now you know what to expect and how it feels to play competitively OTB.
So relax and have fun!
I had the same experience as I had exclusively played correspondence and I couldn't think at all in real-time, as if the brain froze. I dont play correspondence and after years of playing fast chess now I'm almost on the opposite end. My current bullet strength is better than that in slower.
So I guess the best is to mix different time controls. You'll have to play lots and lots of fast chess to get away with that uncanny presence of time-pressure - which never fully subsides but you still learn to do better.
And yes openings - coming from correspondence are a problem definitely. One doesnt get to experiment a lot with openings there. I never played French defense in corresp. and I learned its basics only by playing bullet (no books or explorers). I stuck to it for months getting crushed over and over again, until I started to improve.