Ok I've been wondering this for a while. I know that most pros, semi-pros, and evens some enthusiasts play massive amounts of table at once. How are they doing it? Are they playing based on a predetermined system with the help of poker tracker or are they actually making reads?

By making reads and using pokertracker as additional information, I could play single tables fairly well. Over 5k hands of NL50 I'm +7BB/100. After playing at a table for about 20 minutes and getting a comfortable read, I could open up a 2nd table and be OK.

However, when I try to legitimately multi-table, everything goes to hell. If I open up 2 or 3 tables at once, I simply cannot get a read on anyone. There's no way I could pay attention to hands going on at 2 or 3 tables at once.

So my question is, how to people multi table? Do they make any reads or just rely on pokertracker? Also what should I focus on, improving my game with reads on a single table or multitable without making reads?

Play premium hands, raise on the button light if the next to players have low vpip/pfr, fold if they don't. If you aren't confident with your hand, just fold and don't think about it, most players at this limit aren't going to be raising you with air or semibluffs. Play ur PPs too, just pitch them if you don't hit a set and they bet out, no point in trying to figure out what they're doing while you're 20 tabling.

You don't have to play weaktight to multi table.

to the OP: How many hands do you play? Once you've gottten used to poker scenarios and can make quick decisions, it becomes fairly easy. You cannot use reads as accurately, but you can still read hands quite well.

Also, reads aren't COMPLETELY negated when you multitable; you usually still remember things from some players after a while, just not the small things. And of course, it's more difficult to notice things where you're not part of the hand unless it's some huge cooler/badbeat.

Anyway, it's pretty ridiculous to suggest playing only PPs and Premiums, unless 78s is a premium hand, because I'm playing that a LOT, not do I check/fold when I miss as a raiser.

You have to do what is most comfortable for you and what works best for you. This might take a little "testing" is what I call it. See I tried 10 tabling and did fine at it for 10,000 hands, but my win rate was only like 3bb/100 where as I dropped it to 3 tables and my win rate has skyrocketed. See when I was 10 tabling I was a robot and did make very few decisions based on reads (software help). Everything was % of pot based this and that. Now with 3 tables I can actually outplay a little more or get more value knowing when I can value shove some idiot on tilt or steaming or can throw some well timed bluffs in there because I can concentrate a little more on each opponent more. Granted I have only been 3 tabling for 4,000 hands only compared to 10,000+ of 10 tables. But my win rate over 10,000+ hands as I said was 3bb/100, right now (smallish sample size I know but it does say something) my win rate with 3 tabling is 17bb/100. I have been running a little good but at the same time I do believe it will be in the double digits when I reach that 10,000 hand mark.

Then I will look back and see which actually is better for me hourly and go from there. Because if 3bb/100 10 tabling /hr rate is better than whatever I end up 3 tabling then I will go back to botting it up for a while to build the roll.

Being able to make the decisions you make with fewer tables while playing more tables is the ideal state; you can make the two closer by constant practice on both ends.

First, they play on a site that allows for playing massive amounts of tables. Playing on Bodog, for example, does NOT allow this feature as they allow a maximum of THREE tables to be played per account. Full Tilt or Pokerstars allow you to play massive amounts, ie 18+, 24+, etc.

Secondly, people playing some 24 tables are not playing headsup or 6max tables. They are playing full-ring games, where there are up to 9 players at a table. Full-ring includes a lot of waiting for hands --- tons of folding --- and thus players can avoid consistently getting involved in a lot of hands and complicated decisions in a full-ring game. Therefore, full-ring players can divide their attention much more readily. Half of the tables they are playing at any given time have a hand in the muck or one waiting to be placed there. Folding 9-6 of clubs in a full-ring game can be a no-brainer, whereas folding 9-6 in a headsup game can be lost profit, and therefore a leak.

Yes I realize that you could play more tables at full ring games, but most good 6max players, even the people I know in real life, could do 6-8 tables at once.

But my level of play degrades significantly as soon as I open up multiple tables. Frankly I need to figure out how to multi-table soon, because given the variance and stress in poker, grinding anything less than NL400 single table simply isn't worth my time. And it'll take me forever single-tabling to reach the point where I could play NL400.

Cascade, don't tile.

i hear people talking about cascading but it doesnt suit me. then again i play at most 6max tables of 6max.

OP, one thing to try is to open up a heap of tables at the lowest limit you can find or even play money and play some whack-a-mole poker for a while. this will be fast hectic and make your head spin but then when you back and play serious poker and less tables it will seem rather pedestrian.

dont be concerned with playing 24 tables. very very few people can do it and even they probably lose when then do and probably only make $ due to rakeback.

also in order to multitable you need to be pretty solid, so as Roseeker implies, youll have less tough decisions.

[QUOTE=OziBattler;7742072]

OP, one thing to try is to open up a heap of tables at the lowest limit you can find or even play money and play some whack-a-mole poker for a while. this will be fast hectic and make your head spin but then when you back and play serious poker and less tables it will seem rather pedestrian.

[QUOTE]

Wow. This is the first time I've heard someone else besides me suggest this. Most people go with the standard "open one table at a time till you get comfortable, than open another one."

I learned to multitable by going to the 1c/2c tables on stars and opened as many as I could handle, somewhere around 15 full ring tables, it worked extremely well. Do this! Four tables will seem slow afterwards.

Mastery of anything takes time. Start multi-tabling at the lower blinds and work your way up. It takes 10,000 hours of practice to master anything.

Eventually you MUST multitable or you will die of boredom. Too many players idle and drag out the games. You will eventually need more action.

I disagree strongly with this. Tile is very important for you to see the action. By cascading, you are playing robotically; you might as well get a bot to play. You can do this for SnGs or short stack, but if you want to play real poker, this is probably not ideal.

I was barely break even before when I did lots of tables, this is true. I stopped for a while and rolled back to 6 tables to plug leaks. After only a few sessions, my game improved exponentially (playing fewer tables) and the last 10k hands I played were at 12+ tables, and my EV winrate is almost tripled (not really that impressive when my winrate before was like 2 blinds or so....).

Personally I think a solid game will make multi tabling easy. Once you've gotten used to making quick decisions it should come naturally. Obviously, making good decisions does not neccessarily mean you make them quickly, so you probably can "train" at multi tabling, but imo you can build that up slowly by adding tables one by one and just playing a lot.

A solid game is still key, imo.

mostly the reason I do it is bored. If I'm playing 1-2 tables i'm getting bored waiting for a hand. i've had breaks of nearly 10 mins 4 tabling when I didn't do anything but mash the fold button.
If you're having trouble playing more than 1 table, what are you doing in between hands at that one table? Are you literally watching the play closely enough to keep you motivated and interested?
I'm a fan of tiling to watch the play at all the tables you're at as well.
To me, there are 2 reasons to multitable: for value and to stave off boredom, if you're doing it for another reason (ie just because you think you should) you should probably take it back to 2.

I can say the most I ever do at once is 6 tables....I know some people who do 16 (and very profitable) and I think thats nuts. God knows I do not think I could ever do it. Of course, I never thought I could play more than one at a time - but I worked my way into it.

The set-up also matters. The guys who play more than 4-6 at a time are generally not playing on a laptop or single monitored desktop. They have large multi screens that helps out a ton to play even more tables.

But, the best value of Online Poker is to be able to master playing as many profitable hands as humanly possible. So, if you can master playing 50 tables at a time, it would be the best plan to train your self how to do it!

Well I just tried 4 tabling NL50 for about 1k hands and dropped 2.5 buy ins without suckouts/bad beats, which probably indicates that I'm not a winning player multitabling at this level.

Since I can only put in 5-10 hours/week during the semester, multitabling ability is really a necessity to build any type of bankroll. I will drop to NL25 and hopefully the results will improve soon. Otherwise I'll probably have to quit poker

I think you need to learn to run over the games at the limits you play before thinking about multi-tabling. Experienced players can run over .50 games without any reads, poker tracker, stats, or previous knowledge of the players. Standard ABC poker is more than enough to beat these games, so when you are 10 tabling you can make standard decisions without thinking most of the time. You get into the habit or playing a pretty fixed range in particular positions without much thought- the players at these limits wont pick up on how you play or how tight you are. Though it was boring as sin, it is pretty easy to open up 10 full ring tables and wait to get paid off from big hands at lower levels. You wont learn much, and I think you are better off learning how to play, but its more profitable than playing one table, even if you have to give up a bit of your edge.

I play 6max, which is much different from full ring. Playing ABC won't win you money even at NL50.

who are you fooling. definately not me...most players cant even play abc poker..

You're telling me you could profit from ABC at 6 max NL50? Show me a graph.

how can we show you a graph that proves you can profit from ABC poker at NL50?

To be fair, it really depends on what you consider "ABC poker" to mean. As casino kid says, most players cant play "ABC poker" hence why most players cant beat low limit poker. A decent hand range, decent betting, and not lacking discipline, is more than enough to run over low limit games, without any need for fancy plays or advanced hand reading. I know that is a very basic definition of "ABC poker", but that is all you need to run over these kind of games

Everyone who plays ABC Poker usually will play with similar VPIP, PR, fold/bet/check flop, check/raise, etc.

I'm just saying that at 6max, if you don't steal some hands or maximize profit on others with some "advanced" plays, then you'll probably not beat the 5BB/100 rake by much, if at all.

Does double barreling count as ABC poker? Does 3betting, isolating, and stealing light count as ABC?

Becuase I don't think you can survive 25NL without ever doing so, unless you run hot and cooler everybody.

Exactly what I'm thinking. The rake is just too high at micro limits.

really?

i cant do it, but i see alot of people like it