Preparing to Play in the WSOP 2009.

For Every sports fan in America the name LeBron James is familiar, this basketball player's signature move has been immortalised by Nike- you know the advert, the one which shows him throwing a handful of magnesium carbonate powder into the air before coming on to the basketball court.

When I played rugby league in New Zealand, I had my own pre-match routine. It began with me eating a massive meal on Friday night, followed by a good night's sleep, before warm-up the next day I would plug my earphones in and blast out a couple of scores of Heavy Metal, this all helped to put me into the combative state I needed to be in order to beat the other team.

Pre-Match Rituals:

Thomas (Knightmoon) Fuller has written extensively on the subject of pre-match rituals, he recently asked the readers of his blog to write in telling him of their own pre-match rituals. And I would really like to here the rituals that Thomas was recounted in his blog, he has after all, just finished in 4th place at the FTOPS with a win of $2, 500, a two day poker tournament renowned for its challenging nature.

Personally, I have found that psyching myself up prior to a poker match, as I would in rugby, is counter-productive. In rugby I needed those adrenaline rushes I created for myself, but in poker it is a different matter, my aggressive style of poker does not require any additional fuel.

Certain players have only one plan; turning up on the day of the tournament. Others have extremely elaborate pre-tournamnet rituals. I have even seen players arriving in cars, surrounded by super-models, or dressed like General Patton, or arriving in the latest sports cars.

Make a Reconnaissance Trip:

With the World Series of Poker (WSOP) 2009, which launches at the end of this week, certain readers among you will be descending upon the city of sin, Las Vegas, arriving as a WSOP virgin. Even if you have no specific pre-game ritual to help you, there are still plenty of things you can do to help improve your odds of winning.

Firstly, if you are not yet familiar with the Amazon Room of the Rio Casino, you should definitely make time for a visit, at least a day or two before your tournament begins. The tournament for $40, 000, for example, will attract many hardcore poker fans, and you can learn a lot simply by watching them play and observing the techniques they use to win, all of which will be useful when you come to play the $1, 000 ‘stimulus special'.

Do Not Waste Time During Breaks in the Tournament:

Incidentally, concerning the larger tournaments, it is better that you register your entry the evening before. The new registration process that the WSOP are using this year has rectified many of its previous registration problems, but set backs can still arise. Why take the risk of putting yourself into a ‘full-tilt' before you have even sat down at the table, just because you have left it too late and now have to navigate a massive queue before you can register? Or worse, what if you arrive too late to register at all, and the last ticket has been sold before you even get there? (The ‘shootouts' and ‘six-max' tournaments fill up rapidly).

If you are in with a chance of surviving the first two stages of a given tournament, then you will benefit from a recuperating rest. And you will be happy that you already know the location of the bathrooms when those 15 minutes breaks are upon you. The waiting lines are always longer for the toilets situated nearer to the actual tournament, a reconnaissance mission the night before would allow you to find out where the next available toilets are, the ones that are not known of by the majority of players, they may be a little further away, but the queue will be small and you will profit from a little stretch of the old leg muscles...

In the same manner, it is particularly useful to establish beforehand the restaurant that you are going to want to eat in. Personally, I prefer distancing myself from the Rio Casino, there are many other restaurants, not too far away, such as the Flamingo. Additionally, be sure to order a light meal, an Asiatic meal is preferable for this purpose and Las Vegas even has its own Chinatown! You can find it in the road immediately after Spring Mountain.

The Dangers of Taking a Break:

These dinner-breaks can sometimes prove to be problematic for the following reason; having the time to reflect can often lead to over-analysing the situation. It is often following a break that you will see the craziest and most follhardy moves being performed. Everybody will have had time to reflect on the situation, they would have analysed the table and tried to think up a way of beating an opponent's strategic approach to the game. In consequence, the game will have a tendency, post-break, to become ‘loose' and this will endure for at least one level in the tournament- a good way of taking advantage of this phenomenon (which is always amplified on day 2 of a tournament) is to ‘tighten' your own game.

Finally, the question is not of knowing whether or not to have a game plan, but of ensuring that you have selected one that will go the distance. Each table, each player and each hand is different- it is all but impossible of creating a global strategy that can account for every variable you are likely to encounter. However, with a little bit of preparation, you can overcome most of the obstacles that will hinder you during the course of the game, and play on top-form when it is most needed.

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