4 things you can do to prepare for a big Sunday session

BE HONEST

The first you should do when you’re heading into a big Sunday session is be honest with yourself.

How hard have you worked this week to increase your chances of getting good results? If the answer is very, then, whatever happens, you can at least feel satisfied that you did everything you could to put yourself in a position to win.

But if the honest answer is that you haven’t worked hard at all, you’ve got to be realistic. When you haven’t improved your skills, you really shouldn’t have big expectations.

“I study a lot and there’s a reason for it,” says BBZ founder Jordan ‘bigbluffzinc’ Drummond. “Today I’m a stronger player than I was yesterday and for that reason, I deserve to win more often than I deserved to yesterday.”

In the future, try using our Poker Mental Scorecard.

It allows you to keep track of everything you’re doing throughout the week to give yourself the best possible chance of winning.

At the end of each week, you score yourself (and be honest!) based on the work you put in, how you applied what you learned etc.

Find out more about the scorecard from the man who put it together, BBZ Performance coach Frank Hamel:

The Poker Mental Scorecard: How to put yourself in the best position to win

STUDY

As BBZ said above, the absolute best thing you can do before any big session is study. A lot.

Studying makes us knowledgeable, comfortable and equipped to deal with whatever spots come our way. But most importantly, it makes us confident in our decisions. The outcome might not always go our way, but if we’re making good decisions, it’s only a matter of time before things turn around.

But how should you study poker as a recreational player in 2022? What are the best and most effective ways for us to improve?

That’s something BBZ broke down for us recently.

Find out how BBZ thinks recreational players should study here.

SET A ROUTINE

It’s always important to have a warm-up and cool down routine in place, but this is especially true on Sundays when the tournaments are at their biggest.

Some players opt for a light warm-up. This could mean refreshing themselves on a certain subject–checking charts for button open ranges, for example, or watching a video from one of BBZ Poker’s Bundles–without going into too much depth and expending energy they’ll need for their performance shortly afterwards.

Other players like to go a bit more in-depth with their warm-up. This could mean watching a minimum of two hours of BBZ’s Daily Seminars or going over at least 50 spots on an app such as DTO before beginning a session.

As for cooling down, some players like to review marked hands, analyse their databases, or detach from poker as fast as possible.

If you don’t feel like you warm-up or cool down correctly, then check out this article and build your own routine:

Poker warm-up and cool down: How to build a routine around your sessions

REFLECT

Whatever happens at the tables, it’s important to remember that it doesn’t impact who you are as a person.

To help you with this, you might want to write down some “I am.” statements before your next session.

Using “I am” statements to reflect on who you are, where you are, how you got there, and what you’d like to become can be very powerful for poker players, as Hamel showed in a recent BBZ Daily Seminar.

“The seminar is about exploration and is a self-awareness exercise,” he says. “What can you learn about yourself by answering a couple of questions and making statements?”

Take the time to reflect on who you are and what you do today.

Check out our article: “I am” statements: How to reflect on who you are in poker and life