Sometimes the adrenaline at the beginning of a big tournament can be a little overwhelming. Especially if you happened to satellite your way into a tournament that may be outside of your usual bankroll.

When it comes to big online tournaments, the upcoming partypoker MILLIONS Online will undoubtedly be the biggest for some time to come. It’s $20 million guarantee will make it the largest online tournament of all time, exceeded the current largest tournament by a massive $7.5 million. In order to just meet that guarantee, the tournament will need roughly 4000 runners. That means that before you make the money there’s going to be plenty of poker to be played.

“Early levels just play a lot like a cash game,” said partypoker ambassador and regular High Roller tournament player Jason Koon. “You’re playing really deep and you’re playing for chip EV because you’re not concerned about any pay ladders since you’re so far away so you are just trying to accumulate as many chips as you possibly can.”

As the saying goes, you can’t win the tournament in the early levels but you can set yourself up for good things to happen down the line. However, Patrick Leonard, another elite player in partypoker’s stable of pros, cautions that the only thing you should expect early is the unexpected.

“The structure is as close to a live tournament as you can find,” said Leonard. “Its so good it has multiple days and often when you qualify for a tournament you get so excited, you think about it all the time. You can’t sleep thinking about the exciting prospect and then things go the opposite of how you imagine and you fluster and screw it up.”

Patrick ‘pleno1’ Leonard knows the life cycle of online tournaments better than most. The #10-ranked player in the world has nearly $6 million in online tournament earnings and has been a member of PocketFives since 2010.

“Be ready for disappointment, I’ve never played a tournament where everything has gone super smoothly, there is always ups and downs, its how you react to the downs that can make the difference between making a comeback and winning $2m or going out in level 3.”

Koon offers some additional practical advice when navigating through the early levels.

“For players that haven’t played a lot of deepstack poker, don’t overplay your overpairs on boards…say if you raise and two people call you and the flop comes 9-7-5 you shouldn’t be in a hurry to get in your 200bb stack with pocket aces on a board like that. If a lot of money has gone in at any point in the hand you’re probably going to be near drawing dead.

“So, don’t overplay your big hands and be more careful about getting your stack in – try to make the nuts. If you’re playing big pots try to be drawing to the nuts rather than playing a big pot with an overpair bluff catcher. It’s way more valuable to be drawing at a nut open-ender or a nut flush draw when you’re playing a huge pot than having two kings and a bunch of money getting shoveled in on a nasty board.”

Of course, there are multiple Day One’s for the MILLIONS Online should something go really wrong early on. But if things don’t appear to be going your way early, don’t panic and find a way to keep your head about you.

“I would highly recommend starting mediating as part of your daily routine and especially before the tournament,” said Leonard. “This will really help your chances of staying chill and zen throughout.”

The partypoker $20M guaranteed MILLIONS Online runs from November 25 through December 5 with five staring flights and $2.5 million guaranteed for first place.