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| Multi-Tabling In Online Poker |
When I started playing poker, I had to think for every move. It took me more than thirty seconds for me to decide whether to call or raise. The small timer that shows the amount of time to make the decision, seemed to go off every hand. With experience, I learned to make quick decisions. Now, I usually play more than one table at a time, and it feels boring to be playing just one game. My usual dose of multi-tabling hovers around four to six tables, though I have played far more tables simultaneously at times. In this article, we will discuss some of the intricacies of multi-tabling and how a beginner should approach it.
The players above put in tons and tons of volume -- sometimes playing as many as 20 tables simultaneously at many casinos on the Internet. While that alone is quite difficult to do, they actually manage to be among the most profitable online multi-table tournament players in the world. All of them have lifetime earnings in excess of $1 million dollars and some of them are even sponsored by online poker rooms.
Why multi-table?
If you are a winning player at the low limits, you are probably playing at a ~20% ROI (in tournaments) or ~4BB/100 in ring games. If you are playing only one table at a time, this roughly translates into a 2-5$ per hour profit. That's a meager income by any standards, and if you want to make more money, you will have to play higher stakes. However, at higher stakes, you may not have the same edge and may perform much worse. The secret of winning more money is to multi-table these low-limit games.
Beginners often find it amazing that some people can actually multi-table ten games and play online bingo at a time. I once thought the same, and this article will show you the necessary things you will need for multi-tabling.
The Basics
Multi-tabling is often referred to as playing more than one table at a time. You should understand the basics of online casino games before you attempt to start playing more than one table. Tournaments are much easier to multi-table than ring games, because reads are not that important, and you don't usually have to watch every piece of action to gauge your opponents. Almost every popular poker site allows their players to multi-table, however you should note the amount of time that is given to you for making the decisions. For example, Ultimate Bet is one of the fastest site, and their timer rings off much quicker than other sites like Party Poker.
Once you got the basic strategy right for tournaments or cash games, start out with two tabling. In the beginning, you will find yourself being constantly engaged in the poker, and can at times be draining. If you think you are making bad decisions, try to start tournaments at different blind levels and cash games in different positions. For example, you start a tournament and wait for it to reach the middle games (25/50 or 50/100 blinds), and then start another tournament. Now, you have two tournaments running at different levels, and if you are following the good tournament strategy, you would be folding most of the hands in the second tournament, and will be easier to make decisions in the first one. Similarly, in cash games, you can sit at different positions (relative to the blinds) in two games to make sure that you don't have two games waiting for you to make the decision at the same time.
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