Just get your feet wet with this first tournament. You will probably see lots of new openings and styles so experience is the best way to learn.
First Tournament
Sort:
You may seen people who know tons of openings or people who know what pawn they push on the first turn and improvise from there.
Realistically you will see garbage in an unrated tournament (gambits, e4-e5 with an early Bc4 or d4, and a "novelty" that your opponent plays that you've never seen before on the third move). My recommendation is to study tactics leading up until the tournament and make developing moves whenever your opponents throws a random move at you (if there isn't an immediate tactical refutation). I have spent too many hours of my life prepping tournament openings (in my case it was playing through a dozen GM games for each line that I played so that I would get the positional ideas) to have my opponents play 1. d4 e5 or something that there is no point studying (beyond your first few moves to play against it in blitz). Good luck in your tournament!
I took up chess about 2 years ago with some seriousness, and am now wanting to enter tournaments for the first time. As I would be starting in the Non-Rated class, what should I expect as far as my competition level, etc.