Multi Tabling Strategy
How should multi tabling be approached for maximum results? Poker Verdict investigate...
15 November 2007 by Philip Tuck
"Some of the full schedule tournament pros probably play as many hands in a year as Doyle Brunson has played in his life."** Help support Poker Verdict by using one of our links when choosing to download a new site **
One of the truly great things about online poker is the ability to play many tables at once. Unlike being stuck in whatever game you have chosen in a casino, the internet gives you a wealth of simultaneous poker possibilities. What I want to look at here is some of the advantages and disadvantages of playing multiple tables, as well as some strategies to help maximise your gains.
Advantages.
Playing full tournament schedules - to take advantage of all the big tourneys running on the net requires a player to play many tables at once (this is especially true on Sundays). Not only does this give you more chances at that big score, it will also greatly reduce your variance. Imagine that you estimate you can win a 100 man tournament once every fifty tries. Live you may have to play for months before taking it down. Online this could be achieved every 4-5 days playing a full schedule.
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Increase your cash win rate - by playing many tables you should be able to increase your win rate. The only real problem with this is how well you can concentrate on many tables. Above four tables most players cash performance starts to waiver slightly - it just has too many complex decisions in it (note that this is different to tournaments which are much more situational - many players can play massive numbers of tournaments while still playing very well). The software PokerTracker gives a great way for you to analyse how multi tabling affects your win rate - you can easily compare your statistics from different passages of play.
There are some other great pieces of software available to aid players keen to increase the number of tables they play. PokerAce HUD is perhaps the most useful aid when Multi tabling. This software pulls up statistics from PokerTracker and lays them directly onto the table. This allows you to quickly tell at a glance how often players are betting, folding, or calling; as well as showing how many hands they are playing. This is invaluable when keeping track of what kind of style your opponents are playing, which is usually the hardest thing to keep track of when multi tabling. PokerAce enables you to quickly tell how a player responds to continuation bets, check raises, or calling - all information you basically can never find out multi tabling (looking through so many past hand histories is just not possible to most players).
Increase your experience - every hand you play gives you valuable experience. Multi tabling enables you to gain that experience much more quickly. Some of the full schedule tournament pros probably play as many hands in a year as Doyle Brunson has played in his life. If you are looking at greatly improving your online game, increasing the number of tables you are playing should become a foundation of your learning curve. The extra knowledge gained is invaluable.
Disadvantages.
Losing focus - this is perhaps the greatest problem when multi tabling. Being able to keep yourself concentrated on many tables is extremely difficult; playing at your best with so much going on is very hard. Perhaps the best advice is to start slow and build up the number of tables you play. Gradually most serious online players can work their way up to about eight - although the sky really is the limit if you are capable (just check our Rain Khan interview to see what is possible). I would recommend comparing results from the sessions where you play different numbers of tables on PokerTracker - find your perfect number and profit accordingly.
Harder to play heads up and short handed - multi tabling heads up games or even six max cash games is much harder than full ring games. As the frequency of your decision making increases, so does the pressure of keeping up with all that is going on. As an example of this; I can easily multi table around eight full ring games, 4-6 six max games, yet only two heads up games profitably. This means that often you will start being seriously affected by multi tabling in tournaments - those eight SNGs you started don’t look so easy when you’re heads up in five of them. Really think about what could happen before opening many tournaments or short handed cash games - try and be honest about what you can really manage.
Overall, multi tabling is a great feature of online play. The challenge of making many choices in short periods of time can be really satisfying. I believe it will greatly improve both your results, and your experience of online poker, if approached correctly. Grab some great software and get out into the world of fast and furious poker action.
25/02/08
Increase your experience - every hand you play gives you valuable experience. Multi tabling enables you to gain that experience much more quickly.