Multi-tabling Poker Tips

To make money playing poker you want to play with players which are a good deal worse than you. To play against worse players you are required to play in low limit games where the competition is not as tough. To play in lower limit games, whether it be ring games, multi-table tournaments, or sit-and-goes, and still make a decent amount of money, you must play multiple tables.

The logic goes as following, the money you make from poker in the long run is directly proportional to the difference in skill between you and the other players. One of the huge benefits of playing online poker is that you have the ability to multi-table. Most popular online poker rooms have multi-tabling functionality, allowing you to play 2-tables to 24-tables at any one time.

In order to play multiple tables effectively, you must play the most number of tables which will maximize your poker win rate without negatively effecting it, and this will be different for each player. For some players, it is impossible for to play 8 tables at one time, while for other players it is possible to play 12+ tables. You need to find the number of tables which is optimal for your play.

It is always advantageous to play multiple tables of lower limits than less tables of a higher limit. For example, playing 2 tables of 200nl would be more profitable then playing 1 table of 400nl. The reasoning is that generally the 200nl players are much worse than the 400nl players, and playing 2 tables of 200nl is equivalent to playing 1 table of 400nl so you might as well play with the worse players. In fact, the players are so much worse that it more than makes up for your concentration being divided by 2. The same reasoning goes up to as many tables as you can play without your skill completely deteriorating.

The second advantage of multi-tabling is that it reduces the chance of going on tilt, and as you would know, tilting affects even the best poker pros. With multi-tabling you play so many hands that a single pot is inconsequential, you won’t care as much about the fish who sucked out on you on the river. You won’t have time to worry or dwell on things because you will be always busy playing in a hand.

In addition, playing multiple tables will decrease your variance. Playing 8 tables is no different to playing 1 table 8 times as long, just as long as playing more tables doesn’t negatively impact on your play. Imagine your profit as a win/loss graph, high variance makes a very spikey line while low variance makes a more tame one.

When you are multi-tabling, full-ring cash tables is preferred to sit and go’s because it would be very difficult to play more than 4 of them at the same time. Late in tournaments it becomes very shorthanded and even heads up which will require a lot of your concentration. There are also not enough high level sit-and-goes to satisfy a higher level player.

The other main advantage of multi-tabling in poker is that you will learn the game at a faster rate. Some players argue that since your attention is divided between tables, it’s not possible to learn as quickly in comparison to playing one table. I think this to only really relevant for some players, especially with regard to how to deal with certain types of players, which is really only a tiny bit of your profit unless you are playing the utmost high level of poker.

By playing 4 times the hands (or even more if you are 12 tabling, etc) everyone else is playing, you get to see every poker situation 4 times as much, and this is where you really learn the game, by identifying similar spots and learning from the mistakes you have made, which is why its critical to have a good memory if you are a poker player.