Multi Tabling Strategy Tips

The temptation to start multi-tabling enters ever poker players mind at some point. Most players aren’t exactly sure where to start off or what the advantages and disadvantages are in terms of making money. That’s why I’m going to cover a few ground rules and basics below.

Multi-Tabling Variance

Daily variance is much bigger for players who multi-table more cash games at a time. I can tell you that my friend regularly multi-tables 15 NL100 games at a time and suffers a great deal of variance from this. The lack of concentration means you’ll end up in many coinflip situations. You can lose up to 5 – 10 buy-ins per day meaning you might be up $2,000 one day and down $2,000 the next. To put that in contrast with playing up to 4 tables, you’ll rarely suffer a swing of 3 or more buy-ins per day. You need a bigger bankroll and greater mentality to multi-table at higher levels, however the rewards can be huge – there’s a reason most online pro’s multi-table up to 15-20 games at a time. Obviously the daily variance will pan out over the weeks or months but it still requires a lot of gumption to not be put off by daily losses.

BB/Hour vs. BB/100

Choosing to whether or not multi-table is a cost-benefit analysis. The truth is that your bb/100 win-rate decreases for each additional game that you add to your screen. This is obvious for many reasons but essentially you end up playing a TAG game and playing fewer hands on each table. On 1 table I can profitably play about 30% of hands but this will drop to 15% when I start playing 5 or more games. However, while your bb/100 decreases, your bb/hr profits increase massively. For example, playing 10 tables at 2bb/100 yields more profit than 4 tables of 4bb/100. If we play 50 hands per hour, than playing 10-tabling equals 40bb/hr as opposed to 4-tabling which equals 32bb/hr.

Multi-Tabling Strategy

By multi-tabling rather than moving up the stakes your game can suffer from stunted growth. This happens when you stay at the same level for an extended peiod of time and become complacent with your current game. You fail to learn new moves and concepts such as float-play, 4betting and buff-raising. By multi-tabling rather than moving up the stakes to grind the same levels of profit your game can also become stale, robotic and predictable (especially when multi-tabling).

The only way to multi-table 5 or more games successfully in my opinion is to use a range of poker hud (heads up display) software which display stats on your opponents. By looking at their 3bet% or VPIP% these stats massively help you to make quick-fire decisions about players. They’re especially useful for gaining an edge on opponents or when you haven’t been concentrating on a table. Multi-tabling in many ways is claimed to be about becoming a “stats junkie”, in that your game becomes dependant on the stats and figures as opposed to the real texture of boards or holding cards.

One final tip for multi-tabling is to play across the same stakes on all of your games. It can be difficult making decisions with regards to raising and calling if each of your games is at a different level (e.g. NL25 and NL100 on one table).