How do you prepare for a poker tournament?

How do you prepare for a tournament? Is there anything special you do before a tournament? If theres a really important tournament to you coming up what do you do? Anything you do before the tournament? During the tournament? How do you get your body and mind ready? Just wondering what you guys do. I tend to do good in tournaments that I dont think much about, I'm just really confident. When I overthink it I always lose. Any advice?

The debatably futile but two very important steps to preparing for a tournament are simply.....

Hold the fort for this one....

1/ Make a large cuppa coffee
2/ Roll the biggest spliff i/you can be assed to roll

If followed will guarantee complete failure in many areas not just poker

Coffee.........Every day before I start playing or studying.........
Coffee..........if not coffee........ monster energy drinks..........

If the tournament starts in 2, 3 or 4 hours a take a rest at my bed so i can play it with my mind cleared..im also playing it with a deck of cards in my hands that works

true. lots of coffee does the trick or some energy drinks. Dont overthink, whatifs and all of that. Just do your thing and play like you always do. Dont think of it as winning money just think of getting as many chips as you can.

get everything ready!!

food,drink etc!

I usually go over my early game strategies in a play chip table. Then, of course, an energy drink, haha.

I chug four expressos and put on the theme to Rocky. It makes me unbeatable. Pure genius.

pop a vicodin and smoke a grape ciagarillo does me good everytime, 60% of the time....

i put on my robe and put on eye of the tiger while shadow boxing 5 minutes before the cards go in the air

I like the post about books. You shouldn't bother playing a multi until you have read at least one book on the subject. Or at least you shouldn't play a live multi.

As for coffee....I might have a biased view on it, since I don't drink it often. Coffee and energy drinks give you a boost, but they also lead to a crash. For that reason, I avoid them when I play a multi or sit for a 12 hour session at a cash table. Unless you keep drinking them constantly, you will slow down later and lose focus and concentration. In a multi, this is suicide. You spend all that time and energy making it to the final stages, you might even get in the money, and then you crash and you misread a guy or move in before you really have to and you get popped. That's never happened to me, but I see it in EVERY multi I have ever played in. You see a guy fired up and played pretty solid decent poker all day, and then after the dinner break, he just slumps down in his chair and calls his whole stack on some hand he never would have called with 4 hours earlier.

Of course that's a stamina issue, but the coffee and energy drinks rob you of whatever staying power you might have. I say save them for sit and goes and short sessions late at night when you need a concentration boost.

I think its important to be well rested. Get a good long sleep. If not, don't play in the tourney. Also, eat small amounts of high energy food, like an energy bar or some fruit. Eat a light dinner...too much food in the middle of a multi will rob your brain of oxygen rich blood that your body will use to digest.

Stay hydrated. Some players never even take a sip of water. Your concentration lags when you run low on fluids. And you won't even notice because you're just sitting all day. Drink water or fruit juice.

Keep your mind off of distractions. Think about your life's problems after you bust out or, better yet, after you win the thing.

GL

"Stick to your game plan" "Stick to your game plan" "Stick to your game plan" - I go over and over that in my head 10 mins before the tourney starts. Most times it works, most times!

I like to distract myself by watching some WPT or PPT or Poker After Dark, etc. t.v. tournament stuff if I have a few hours to kill before a big tournament starts (if the prize pool is $100,000+). I don't want to build my stress level playing "what-if's" in my head about a tournament that hasn't started yet, or by playing cash games beforehand and getting stuck.

I find that by letting the t.v. players take a few bad beats I can still get juiced without affecting my positive eneregy toward the game.

And if I'm still too wired I have one glass of wine to create "flow".

In all seriousness my approach has been to wake up ~2 hours before it starts, eat some food, let it settle, go for a jog (~15-20 minutes or so), get some snack food (fruit, chips, w/e) in front of the computer and play. If it's live and not online you'd have to do everything a lot earlier (start ~2 hours before you have to leave the house) and skip the last step.

I like to be well rested and eat something so Im not hungry.I like to play for about 30min somewhere to get in the rythm.I also do not over-think how I will play.If your expectations are too high,you will overplay your cards,like fold winners and keep losers...Just play your game and dont get sleepy or tired,you will make mistakes every time.

good post by internetpokerdonk....im constantly drinking water....even when im not playing poker

Online, I make sure I don't have any distractions and I don't drink alcohol beforehand (or during). I've sorta laxed on that though.

For a live tournament, I used to be all about discipline. I'd try to do everything that day the way I was supposed to. Heck, I'd even floss my teeth and drive the actual speed limit. Basically, I wanted to do things the right way, and hoped to carry that precision with me to the poker table.
Also, I wouldn't drink alcohol (starting the day before) and I wouldn't eat a lot (skipping dinner for a snack) to stay a little hungry. I felt (and still do) that I pay more attention when I'm hungry.