We understand that the first time signing up for and going to a tournament can be confusing. Chess has it’s own lingo. Let us explain what you are reading. This way when you are navigating the different tournaments, you will know what is being offered. 

1.  Time control: Chess tournaments use clocks during the games. Different kinds of tournaments use different settings on the clock.  X/dX is the format used to represent this time. “X” represents the minutes played and the “d” stands for delay of time. If the time listed is 25/d5, then it means there will be 25 minutes played with a 5 second delay for each move. 
2. Delay: Delay is just that. Let’s use “25/d5” as an example. Once your clock is pressed, you will have 5 seconds before the 25 minutes starts counting down. This will occur with each move and it will slowly add a little more time during your game. 5 seconds doesn’t seem like a lot, but each player gets that on every turn. After move one has taken place, the game will go another 10 seconds. After 30 moves are played, it will add 5 minutes to the game.  
3. Swiss system: This is a type of tournament format. Let’s say you have 10 players in the tournament. In Round One, the top half will be paired with the bottom half. This means that the highest rated player will play against the highest rated player of the bottom half. Board one would have player 1 and 6 on it. Board two, would have player 2 and 7, and so forth. Each round will be paired like this based on their score from the previous round. This style normally has 4-6 games played in the event at the scholastic level.
4. Quads:  This is another tournament format. Unlike the Swiss system where all the players play in that section, Quads are broken into groups of 4. Lets say we have 12 people signed up for a quad tournament, then there will be three groups of 4. Each player will play one game against everyone in their group. This will bring the total games played for the tournament to 3. Since there are only 4 people in your section, you will never play more than 3 games at this event.