Warming up before league play and tournaments is very important and worthy of our final topic. You should at least do half an hour of concentrated warm-up before important league matches or tournaments. E.g. the pros playing the World Championship are warming up for several hours (!) before the match. Eric Bristow used to feel ready for battle only when he got 4 or 5 hours of practice before one single match (which then lasted even shorter than his practice session before). He won the title five times so he seemed to know what he was doing.

Once you know your most common problems you will develop your own warm-up routines, like hitting each double at least once or twice or playing round the board and so on. Of course warm-up is also a situation where you may, and should, go for increased scoring practice, but still doubles are more important. If 'diddle for middle' is the rule or if cricket will be played, bull is important as well.

Remember, before the tournament or league it is still solitaire that rules! It is especially dangerous here to do too much matchplay during warm-up because warm-up is a situation where you need to get rid of possible technical problems as soon as possible. This requires your full concentration, and warm-up matches are very likely to put your concentration on winning them instead of fighting your problems! You can of course switch to playing them once your feeling and technique are set for the day, but not earlier!