I ran my first rated tournament on Saturday, September 13 as the Assistant TD. We had 17 players if you also count one of the players leaving after round 1 and another player who came late that had a 1/2 point for round 1. The tournament was quite enjoyable. We had 3 rounds of Swiss G/30, d/5. There was only one claim to me which only needed a rule clarification and a misbehaving clock which was fixed by basically taking a battery out and putting it back in.
The Head TD and I used the variation for not calling illegal moves. There apparently happened to be one which was not seen by the perpetrator, but the game ended in a draw. We had about 8 unrated players most of which were in the lower rated section. There were 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners for 2 different sections.
We used Chessnut software and our USCF filing attempt had no errors but did have Warnings and Alerts which were cleared in 2 days. Now, the cross tables are shown on the USCF website. Our 2 sections had 8 and 9 players respectively and there were no problems having too many people tied for the winning places in each section. This tournament was fun and I am looking forward to another rated tournament. Perhaps, we could have 4 rounds in the next tournament.
Being an assistant (often unpaid) at events is how most of us gained experience.
You can practice various paring issues, back before pairing programs I carried around stacks of blank playing cards (or just 3x5 pieces of paper) and would fill them out with various pairing scenarios. One of the TDs I worked for would create pairing situations during the down time while a round was under way and ask me to pair them, then critique my choices. I didn’t always agree with his choices, and defending them could become a learning exercise for both of us.
You can do that with pairing programs, as well, and it’s a good idea to become familiar with the mechanisms for doing that in the pairing programs you use so you aren’t fumbling around trying to make a last-minute change to pairings before posting them. IMHO, far too many TDs (and not just new ones) don’t really understand how to pair these days, they just trust the computer to do it right without know why it’s doing what it’s doing.
Ruling situations are hard to prep for, because they can be simple or incredibly complex and can get emotional. With many ruling issues the key is getting the players to accept your ruling, which comes down to interpersonal skills that you can’t learn from the rulebook.