The best way to win tournaments is the hardest - you have to get better at chess.
Knowing how a tournament works isn't going to really improve your results, short on stopping yourself from breaking the rules and losing from that.
Judging from your performance in your games, you're still a complete novice to the game, and you have a lot to learn. If you want to win a tournament, start trying to improve seriously, and take the game more than just a game.
In my school chess tournaments I've never placed in the top 3, despite beating some of the placers multiple times before. Obviously this hurts, but today was the final chess tournament before high school.
If I can't even win a middle school tournament, what makes me expect I can win a high school one? So, I would like some details on how these work in high school.
In the USA it varies very much from one school district or one county/city to another. Before I give you maybe more details than you need, let me point out that you may have a better chance in high school, assuming your tournaments are open and involve multiple schools, because a lot of new players you can feast on join the USCF in high school.
These tournaments use the Swiss System and if you're any good, there's a good chance you won't face the top players in round 1 and if you lose round 1, you're likely to see a pretty weak player in round 2. Of course, if you're lucky your high school chess club will have a coach/sponsor who has played tournament chess, who knows enough to help you improve your game, and who may bring high rated players in as guest speakers to help you. THAT is one way you can win in high school. The other way is studying on your own - especially tactics, including problems here or at chesstempo.com and watching videos here or on YouTube.
Here's how the tournaments actually work.
In some, one of the local high school chess club sponsors gets named Tournament Director by the USCF and the schools run area-wide low-cost tournaments where the profits go to the participating clubs and there are often a lot of trophies. Player have to be USCF members to play.
In others, a private for-profit group runs the tournaments and they are pretty much open to any school student who has/gets a USCF membership and wants to play.
Both systems generally run Swiss System Tournaments. These generally run 4-5 rounds in one day and there's initially 30 minutes on each player's clock, though some tournaments have longer times and run for 2 days.
In the Swiss System, the Tournament Director, either with index cards or a computer program, the players initially are divided into two groups: the half with the highest ratings and those with the lowest ratings or unrated.
In round 1, the highest rated player in the top half is paired with the highest rated player in the low half. In other words, if there are 30 players, the #1 rated player is paired with #16, #2 with #17, etc. If there are an odd number of players, the lowest rated player sits out the 1st round and is given credit for a win. After that, the lowest scoring player generally sits-out and gets a win in odd # player tourneys and no one sits out more than once.
White and Black are determined randomly at first - though an attempt is made to keep it as even as possible with players from the same team. Afterward, players who had White more than Black will get Black in the next round unless it's not mathematically possible - that usually slightly alters the standard top half/lower half selection routine.
In each subsequent round, players with the same record play each other and the pairings are done the same way: top half/lower half where trying to ensure each player gets each color a roughly equal number of times modifies the pairings. So, in round 4, players who are 3-0 play each other, 2-1 play each other, etc. If there's an odd number in any group, the lowest rated player is kicked-down to the next lower group.
After the tournament is over, some tournaments break ties to determine the trophy winners by whoever was undefeated the longest or whoever had opponents whose ratings were a higher total.
In the high school tournaments I TD'd, the tiebreaks for the trophies were determined by an unrated 5-minute blitz game.
Just make that weird face you have in your profile pic. They will drop dead and you will win on time.
I'm currently on high-school and I want to get into tournaments and have an elo to take care of. But here's the thing. I'm in the Philippines, and where I am living isn't exactly a chess enthusiast place. Hence, l Barely get into tournaments and such.
This grade, I'm finishing my junior and about to go into senior. But I fail to join the only chess tournament (ish!) in our school. Which only happen in intrams (Which if you're not familiar, it's an all around sports event in a school where everyone would compete in their respective sport of choice, then the winner will get to play into divisions.) and I don't know if there's going to have any chess tournament in my senior. I know it's based on what school I'm going to enroll. But with my choices, I don't think there's any chess based events or even club in there.
And this is why I'm asking here. For those who has experience, where do you guys think I can start joining in tournaments?
In my school chess tournaments I've never placed in the top 3, despite beating some of the placers multiple times before. Obviously this hurts, but today was the final chess tournament before high school.
If I can't even win a middle school tournament, what makes me expect I can win a high school one? So, I would like some details on how these work in high school.