I recently started playing at FTP. I have heard that if you want to make more $/PH you should play multiple ST SNGs instead of just playing one games at a time. I tried this the other day I with just two games to start. I felt like quality of play took a dive because I couldnt focus on table enough. Any ideas on how to play multiple games at one time well?

Practice. Were you good at poker the first time you sat down? How did you get better? Practice.

Use a HUD if you don't have one. Get more poker experience under your belt so the routine decisions become routine. If you're still at the point in your career where you're asking advice in the Beginner's forum, multi-tabling might not be the best idea. It's IMHO well above the beginner level.

Stepping stones, or baby steps. Learn to play 1 table completely correct. Then add 2 in and practice with that, and keep adding in 1 more at a time until you notice its not profitable anymore.

And sometimes, multi-tabling isn't for everyone.

Saying its more profitable to increase tables is only true until a certain equilibrium is breeched. Look at like this playing 1 table you have an roi of 20%, and you play 1 an hour, and you play for 4 hours. They are 10 dollar tournaments.

So 4 x 10 = 40 ; 40 x 0.20roi = $8 profit

Now lets say you have an roi of 10% when you play 5 tables at once, and you can play 5 in an hour, and you play for 4 hours. They are 10 dollar tournaments.

5 x 4 = 20 tournaments played. 20 x 10 = 200 ; 200 x 0.10roi = $20 profit.

Do you see why in this situation, that even though your return on investment was cut in half by playing 5 tournaments instead 1, you still made more profit?


Now lets do a reverse situation where its not profitable to multitable. We will use the same numbers and situation for just playing 1 table.

4 x 10 = 40 ; 40 x 0.20roi = $8 profit

Now lets examine having an roi of 3% when you play 5 tables instead of 1 with the same buy in of $10, and 4 hours of play.

5 x 4 = 20 tournaments ; 20 x 10 = 200 ; 200 x 0.03 = $6 profit

In this situation its unprofitable to play 5 tables instead of 1. In this situation you would drop down to 4 tables and see where your roi was at that level.

Now to take this into consideration you have to be a winner at 1 table to even think about playing more than 1. Also you need thousands of tournaments played to find a solid win rate.

As your game improves, more and more of your decisions become trivial and will need little or no thought. Also as you improve, you are able to process information faster and more accurately. As you free more and more time in this way, you can add more tables.

A lot of people can play 20+ tables profitably at a time. Personally I max out around 12, but my play drops dramatically after 6 or so. I can 4-table as effectively as I 1-table. I may actually make MORE profit/table playing 4 tables than 1 as it prevents me from getting bored and playing more hands than I should.

I tried multi-tabling about a year and a half ago when I was just starting out and god I had so much trouble with it. Stacked off like nobody's business.

But, my game got slightly better after time, and I actually attempted multi-tabling today for the first time since out of boredom. Mind you it was 5NL 6-Max, but it went really well. It just takes practice. The more you do it the better you'll get.


I play on Stars so I'll just use their format (not sure what FT's is) Instead of playing $5+.50 ST SNG's, try multi-tabling some 1+.20's or whatever the buy-in is. The competition is softer and if you lose it's not a big hit.


I really don't know what you play at though so that could have been useless advice.