Poker Warm-Up Routine: Pre-Session Checklist

## Pre-Session Poker Warm-Up Routine A warm-up routine transitions your brain from daily mode to poker mode, improving the quality of your early-session decisions. Without a warm-up, the first 30-60 minutes of play often feature suboptimal decision-making as you mentally adjust. A simple warm-up: review 3-5 interesting hands from your last session (10 minutes), quiz yourself on preflop opening ranges for each position (5 minutes), visualize yourself making patient, disciplined decisions (3 minutes), and set specific focus goals for the session (2 minutes). The warm-up habit is most effective when consistent. Perform the same routine before every session so your brain associates it with the shift into focused poker mode. Over weeks, this Pavlovian conditioning noticeably improves your early-session performance. ## Mental Game and Rakeback A strong mental game helps you play more consistently, which means more volume, more rake generated, and more rakeback earned. The psychological stability to grind through variance without tilting or quitting early directly impacts your rakeback income.