Staying consistent throughout a tournament

[Flightless Steller's jay]

Here attached is my individual stats for State Line Showdown that I went to yesterday in Bristol Virginia.
https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/8 ... chiLedford
I got overall 1st place and 3rd place as a team all while playing alone so I did quite good. But looking at my scores through out the day you can see my scores start really high and slowly start to progress lower through the day. I know that part of this is due to facing harder teams later in the day vs earlier in the day, but not all of it is. Is there any way which can I remain consistent in my playing in the day? And to stave away the so called playing fatigue i get from playing so much in one day?

Sincerely, Flightless Steller's jay

[Cheynem]

So I usually have the reverse (I get better as the day goes on and am bad to start), but I think this advice can apply:

-First, you have to decide if the issue is fatigue, playing style, or both. If you do feel fatigued, there are some obvious pieces of advice (get more sleep the night before, eat and hydrate, stay loose).

-Sometimes concentration can help. Take notes or keep score if you don't usually don't do that.

-If you do think playing style is an issue, think about what's happening in the games you do worse at. Are you playing more conservatively or passively? Do you just have rounds where you know nothing? Sometimes I go back and look at notes--there are rounds where I just didn't genuinely know a lot, but there are rounds in which I was way too passive. You don't want to turn into a neg machine there, but perhaps feel free to be more aggressive in these playoff matches (or if you're negging too much, ease up).

-Finally, you can also realize that inconsistency in a tournament is very natural unless you're one of the best players. I think back to the ICT my team won. I had two excellent games in the playoffs, including getting like five tossups in the de facto finals. But in the team's best performance...I scored nothing. Zilch. These things happen. As you play more and get more comfortable and experienced, ideally you are more consistent, but you shouldn't get too hung up about round to round variation.

[quizbowlchamp1]

Hopefully, this tournament (and other tournaments for that matter) had a lunch break. Use that time to rest. Don't read practice questions. Eat (don't starve yourself to death). Use it as a break, not as practice. Also, don't get discouraged if you are beaten by a team. This happened to us at a tournament. We lost to the best team in our pool right before the lunch break. We got discouraged and lost our playoff game. Hope this helps and that you continue to do well at your tournaments.

[iaquiz]

The issue here clearly seems to be that you are scoring less in games against better teams. That should be expected and doesn't necessarily suggest any problem that needs fixing.