Windows 7: Competitive gaming?

Hi, dunno if this is the right forum for it, but here it goes. Well, I just wanted to know how to get into Competitive gaming, I am in a clan for BF3 and other competitive games, and they sometimes competitive. They played against rivaL and lvlcap. But I just want to ask, how do you actually get matches for it? Where do you go?

Short story: Enlist your team in different tournaments on the net. If you are good enough, someone will notice and start sponsoring you to participate in other top class tournaments all over the world.

That's the most easy way for you to go, but there are many different ways too. The best way that I saw was to go to the local tournaments (which will take some time to find) than going online and doing tournaments online.