tournaments are a whole different beast . you ' re suddenly evaluating how good you are based off of wins versus people you have no idea who they are , so you get more in your own head on evaluating what you ' re doing . depth in gameplay only gets to come out when you ' re able to be comfortable with how your opponent plays , and if you ' re not comfortable reading an opponent that isn ' t one of your friends assuming you get to play with people ? not sure about this and playing around your opponent ' s ability . most people that go to tournaments aren ' t good at melee so just remember that since you have tech skill , you can suddenly control the game in a completely different world that others might not expect if you tell them you ' re new to tournament play . that being said , it ' s all about having fun and trying to avoid being concerned with how poorly you think you might be playing . that said , you can ' t really control how well you ' re playing because you can ' t control how well your opponent plays . to say that you got wrecked because of your mindset is disingenuous , the truth is probably closer that you got wrecked , and you didn ' t feel good about it . next time you play in tournament during a game , pay attention to how your mind tricks tends to trick you into thinking that you should have done better , been a better player than you are . just try to accept things as they come , going through your own personal process of improving . tournaments can be a whole different beast because improvement doesn ' t feel linear . sorry for the rambling but i hope this can help you . i didn ' t have too many points going into this but if you want me to expand on anything i probably can .