How many tables at a time?

[thetank]

The following article, I originally wrote in March 2004. Back then I religiously stuck to playing one table a time. Since then I've changed my approach and am now playing on 4 tables instead. Despite this I still believe the following to be true.


The multiple table player(MTP) believes that more tables at once, means more hands/hr greater overall win rate, even if the win rate at individual tables will be slightly reduced.

There are a lot of people who play multiple tables and I don't doubt that their win rate is indeed higher. It can be argued that unless your play is concentrated on one table your game isn't going anywhere. It's standing in the same place playing all those tables so mechanically.

This might be adequate for someone who plays at a certain low limit, happy with their win rate and have no ambitions to move on to bigger and better things, playing the best poker they can.

There may be some MTPs that simply don't have a very large concentration span, they need the action that three or more tables gives them to stay focused, at a single table they'd simply get bored waiting for hands .
Concentration and patience though, like all things in life needs working on to get and maintain. MTPs who lack these qualities arn't going to get themselves out of this hole anytime soon with six tables at once to get
those big pairs more often.

You miss so much not concentrating your play to a single table, especially in terms of the psychological aspects of the game, MTP's can't get into 27 players head at the same time. When desicions creep up on you, you need to weigh many things into consideration, not just the cards. That's the sacrifice that MTPs make and for many, they're happy with that, that's the little they give up to get a bigger overall win rate.

It's these key desicions though that are critical at the higher limits and you need as much practice making them as possible, more hands per hour mean more of such desicions will crop up, however, MTPs are kidding themselves if they believe that they are correctly evaluating them as well as they could.

If you're a MTP think what you want from poker, to be the best player you can, to play winning poker at high limits/ buy-in tournaments. If so, think about switching to one table (make sure it's a good one) and maybe even a slightly higher limit.

I'm glad I went back and read this. I've decided spend a few days playing one $200+$15 SnG at a time instead of four $55+5 tournaments simultaneously. I'll see how I get on

[matt674]

From about August upto about mid november i was playing upto 5 mtt's at a time on pokerstars in an attempt to firstly secure my position in the top 150 on the yearly tlb then in november make the top 100 tlb for the month to enter the WPT-PCA freerolls that pokerstars were offering.

However by mid-november Pokerstars had introduced 180-player sit and go's and were awarding tlb points to the top 15% which made finishing in the top 100 for the month virtually impossible and i decided to make my poker new years resolutions early in an attempt to go back to playing my most profitable poker possible.

One of those resolutions was: Play no more than 2 tables at a time.

I often find that if i play more than 2 tables that i often miss vital information about players even though all the tables are clearly visible on the screen if i'm playing a $100 rebuy, a $50 f/out and a $20 f/out i often find that i spend all my time watching the $100 rebuy table, glancing at the $50 f/out and ignoring the $20 f/out all together. If i play 2 i place the tables side by side and find i can watch the two simultaneously and not miss anything. So far its working and my profits from mid-november have rocketed

p.s. and for the record i broke my resolution yesterday as i was already playing 2 tables on pokerstars when the blonde freeroll started (though did manage to finish in the money in the $50 f/out on pokerstars 23rd of 319 and in the points in the blonde freeroll 18th of 88!!)

[M3boy]

I have always limited myself to 3 tables. Either 1 MTT and 2 cash, or 2 MTT and 1 cash

When late stages of a MTT, i will sit out of the cash

Any more than this and its a nightmare!

[thetank]

Party upgraded their software a couple a month back to enable playing 10 tables at once.

This same week their bad beat jackpot had risen to well over $600,000. I recall frizzing my brains out in a Brighton internet cafe playing ten $2/$4 limit tables at once. I had three 4-hour sessions trying to catch the jackpot. Remarkably finished up 20 or so big bets to the good. It was crazy though, you'd no idea if you won a pot or not. If you called someone's bet on the river or made a value bet another table would pop up before you could see the outcome.

Difficult to go on tilt if you have no idea whether you won or lost most of the hands you'd played. Another thing I found even more remarkable was that I only mis-clicked once and was timed out less than half a dozen times over the course of the 3 sessions.

Never again though, it totally blew my mind (in a bad way)

[Div]

I think the state of your computer hardware, and also the actual game you are playing have an influence too.

I've sometimes played four cash limit hold em tables simultaneously. Usually when grinding through some sort of sign up or reload bonus. My PC has a 15" monitor, so the screen can get very crowded doing that, but it's bearable in the short term.

I don't think it would be feasible (for me) to play four no limit hold em, or pot limit Omaha, games simultaneously, due to the additional decision making time needed.

I know many of the truly hardcore online pros play eight (or more) tables simultaneously, but most will probably have an advanced video card and two 21" monitors hooked to the PC, so that all eight screens are constantly visible and there's no risk of misclicks or tables disappearing at the crucial moment.

[Nem]

16 tables

[Nem]

20 tables

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[byronkincaid]

I thought you said you used to 8 table 15/30 Tank? I 6 table 6paks or 8 table 10 seat STTs. More tables = more rakeback and seeing as I don't seem to be able to win anymore I need as much as I can get.

[Highstack]

Fries my brain to try too many and you can't really concentrate (especially at the business end). I like to two table while surfing the net and writing on forums.

[Div]

16 tables

A picture is worth a thousand words! I still don't fancy it myself.

The key point is that for some people multi tabling to that extent can work in cash games, where players come and go, and there's no end game.

I can't imagine anyone being able to run 8 or 16 MTTs simultaneously and get down to the money in several of them and continue to play well.

[thetank]

I thought you said you used to 8 table 15/30 Tank? I 6 table 6paks or 8 table 10 seat STTs. More tables = more rakeback and seeing as I don't seem to be able to win anymore I need as much as I can get.

I 4 tabled $15/$30 on the most part.
I experimented with 8 tables (using two computers) but not for long.
 

[byronkincaid]

I can't imagine anyone being able to run 8 or 16 MTTs simultaneously and get down to the money in several of them and continue to play well

Scott Fischman, Gigabet, Gank.......

[matt674]

I 6 table 6paks or 8 table 10 seat STTs. More tables = more rakeback and seeing as I don't seem to be able to win anymore I need as much as I can get.

maybe you aren't winning anymore because you multi table too much.........

[matt674]

I can't imagine anyone being able to run 8 or 16 MTTs simultaneously and get down to the money in several of them and continue to play well

Scott Fischman, Gigabet, Gank.......

Taking Pokerstars mtt results from beginning of 2004 onwards from www.thepokerdb.com the results for gigabet (and darrell77 - which was gigabet's name prior to him changing it recently) he's won about $50k in mtt's on stars. I subscribe to the site and therefore can also see players losing tourneys and whilst i cannot divulge any of the information from the subscription service i can say that his estimated profits aren't as good as people would think.

Its the same with gank, his winnings are phenomenal in the same time period but because he's played so many tourneys his estimate net profits are nowhere near as good as they should be or what other people perceive they may be.

emptyseat88 however does show a decent estimated net profit - but he doesnt play anywhere near as many tournaments as the likes of gank and others.

Obviously this is just for mtt's on pokerstars, they all play on other sites as well - but normally you find that trends on one site usually run true on others as well, also the likes of gigabet play big stake stt's and live cash games as well as mtt's online. I would like to wager though that if the likes of gank concentrated their energies on less tournaments but picked tournaments that would be more profitable to them instead of trying to 10 table $5 and $10 mtt's then they would probably make just as much in winnings but would make far much more profit.

[thetank]

That's what I thought, but didn't want to be cheeky.

Monkeys are allowed though.