Mine was the DBZ/GT Expanded World Tournament in 2004. It started early morning and lasted until late evening/night. We were driving from Northern Indiana (not too far from Chicago) to Columbus Ohio. We got a late start, drove 5 hours, had to register at Origins, and at our Hotel. I had to write out my deck list for the deck I was using/locked into the tournament with, afterwards it was so late that if we tried getting any rest we'd be getting only 1 hour of rest before we would have to get up and ready for the tournament.
The tournament was 8 rounds that day, you were placed against others with around the same number of wins and losses. I entered along with 2 friends, one of which lost most of his matches and was sitting at a 1 win 7 losses, or 2 wins 6 losses. My other friend broke just above average at 5 wins and 3 losses. There were 2 other guys from my home town who drove separate who both broke even at 4 wins 4 losses, I did the best out of us and had 7 wins and my 8th match my opponent dropped out of the tournament before the match begun. (He just never showed.) The games went at about 1-2 hours per match/round. An average game of DBZ could take 30-45 minutes and about 45-60 minutes if you were up against or using a Dragonball deck, ally deck, rejuving/Namekian deck, or Mill deck. Fast beatdown matches were often 10-20 minutes, if both were fast beatdown sometimes 5-10 minutes. But due to a few things we were given about an hour and a half to 2 hours per round/match. Reasons were often people getting situated, talking, reading cards more carefully, needing a judge/ruling, being up against the rare slow player/kid, or decks trying to "turtle" the time by making a fully defensive, self recovering, max deck size player milking the time clock, so when the match round ended after say 2 hours with no winner yet they'd count the decks to see who had more life to be granted the win. So while turtles were rare some players tried to seek out long games, or bribe others to throw the tournament. So clearly you were in for a long day of playing lol.
The hours flew by at first, it was fun. Halfway through it was draining to the point where it felt like 2 days not 1 lol. I remember looking forward to a quick win so I'd have an hour or 2 to grab lunch lol. On the bright side I got my deck foiled out, I got to trade, play, and beat the guy who became champ that year in a side game between matches. I got to beat people twice my age, college graduate nerds, wealthy mugs from other countries when I was still a teenager in highschool lol. Overall I made it to Top Cut, and went undefeated until someone paid off a judge, I got prizes and promos that barely more than a dozen were ever made. I got to meet the voice actors, friends and I got tons of cards signed by Chris Sabat, it was fun and worth it. After the tournament we checked out the Columbus Ohio nightlife, saw a party/festival, and had a good time with some stories to tell lol.