Multitabling Confessions

Nice to know a Pro can suffer ths same kind of problems as microfish like me. I only have 11,000 hand under my belt at LHE ring games. When I moved up a level I thought my 4 table routine would work. quickly realised that even up 1 level at micro stakes there appears be a slightly better quality player and my winning sessions turned into a few bad losing sessions.

I cut back to 2 tables and saw a marked improvement in my decision making. So… I prefer to build my confidence with steady if not exciting wins – rather than have the variance multi-tabling seems to bring me so far.

I wonder if anybody made the same experience as me: when I went from 1 table to 2 tables I found that I played with more concentration than before. I haven’t gone past 2 tables yet, but so far the increased action keeps me from being distracted/bored while out of the hand.

Greyzy

I think that you do need to play a different style of poker the more tables that you have open at once. (read: tighter and simpler)

You hear of people doing up to 24 tables cascaded, which must make it near impossible to do anything other then binary all-in/fold decisions with a small stack

Ed given how much analysis you seem to do im not surprised that you’ve having some difficulty with 6 tables. A simple pleb like myself is fine with 6 because i’m generally just working with predefined plays.

I find it useful to check how many tables each player at my table is playing. Often you will find people at 8+ tables which often means they can be manipulated because they have so little time to make a decision – this might be a raise to push them off a marginal hand, or a shove with a very strong hand knowing they do not have the time to work out pot odds or what is going on. Although you’d think multi-tablers would be good players I often find they are action junkies and play very badly. What do you think Ed?

I’m curious if anyone multi-tables without using any software-assitance (HUD’s and such). I single table because I feel like when I play more than one table I just can’t get a read on my opponents. However, I don’t use any software to assist me.

I think in order to maximize your play when multi-tabling you have to play tighter. If you eliminate all the marginally profitable hands, you give up very little. However, you reduce the number of times you have to play 2-3 hands at the same time. In addition, most of the marginal hands are the type that put you in a position of having to really concentrate in order to avoid a large mistake.

There’s no question in my mind that my game starts to deteriorate after 2 tables (and I don’t have much of a game to start with – lol). It’s also a hell of lot less fun and satisfying playing semi-robotic poker in an effort to make an extra few dollars. I might as well get another job.

I think the only time playing a real lot of tables makes sense is when you are working off a bonus or getting some other form of rebate that is tied to the number of hands you play. Then the faster bonus probably offsets the additional mistakes – but it’s still no fun and not the least bit satisfying.

I’m curious about how you would have played the hand with more time to think about…

I’ve be playing 2 tables for the last year, and my 1k is now 2k. Then 2 weeks ago I wanted to add another table, but was having problem with the screen display for 3, so I went to 4 tables which work for my screen. After quickly winning $50, in a week, then lossing $70 in 3 days, I spent some time on Poker Tracker looking at my plays. When I was playing 4 tables, I lost track of my position, and was playing out of position too often. The other problem I had was calling River full pot bets when it was cleared that my middle hand was not good. The last area of a problem for me was not Value betting on the River, I was checking hands down that I should have bet. So I’m back to playing 2 tables again, and making better decissions. Thanks for all you do for teaching me to play better poker, your books, video, and Stoxpoker Videos.

Thank you so much for this. I have been playing two tables for six months but then when I read about kids playing 24 tables on 18″ laptops I feel really, lets say, “challenged”.

So I jumped up to 4 tables for a couple of days but then I did so badly (stupid, stupid plays) I’ve fallen back to two again.

What makes this even more stupid is the fact that my target is not, for now, financial. I have a good full-time job and the wins and losses at NL25 and NL50 make no difference to my lifestyle.

My aim is to be a better player, and I’m sure that thinking more about fewer tables is a better strategy. I guess I gave in to a kind of peer pressure or, what is surely worse, wanted to show that I could keep up with the young folk. How sad is that?

If i play fewer than 4 tables, I get so bored that I play too many hands or have to read the forums or something. 6 tables is fine as long as the tables don’t keep breaking, but i find usually I am constantly doing table hopping/table so I try to keep 5 tables going. If I could play and never have tables break and never have a shortstack sit it a bad relative position and never get a LAG sitting to my left, then 6 tables isn’t so bad, but all that other stuff makes it too hard. 4 tables is easy as pie.

Ok, I’ll be the clueless kid in the corner. What was the mistake? Should you have called the river with no pair? or not bet the turn?

from semi-clueless to clueless-

i’m shutdown after the flop call by villain. like you said-
don’t bet the turn.

tobori