Thanks to the glamorization of online poker, more and more players have taken an interest in starting to dabble in playing multiple cash game and/or tournaments at once.  Most of us figure that if our favorite pros can do it then so can we since all it’ll require is a little extra focus, right?  Well, kinda.  While yes, you will need to increase the amount of focus your putting forth in order to pay attention to more than one game, there are other factors at play that will determine whether or not you can win at more than one table at a time.

The main thing you need to realize is that with the more and more tables you’re playing at, the less and less you’ll be able to pay attention to the finer details of any one individual game.  Because of this, the majority of your strategic decisions are going to be based around hand selection and positioning.  If you do not have a very strong understanding of what to do with every possible hand combination in every position, you will make numerous bad raises, calls and folds, which will completely defeat the purpose of how many players want to multi-table in the first place.

If you’re still wanting to play at least two tables at once, the next thing you must understand is that you cannot stay at the same table limit that you were at when playing just a single game.  If your standard game is $1/$2 no-limit hold’em, then you’ll want to drop down to at least $.50/$1 if not lower when you start to play at more than one table.  The reason behind this is that it will take some time before you can comfortable play at two tables with the same effectiveness as you did at one table.  In the beginning you’ll just be struggling to keep up with two tables-worth of action, at which time you won’t want to be risking the same kind of money you were before moving to multi-tabling.

So if you’re dead set on making the move to multiple tables, make sure you have the right tools in your strategic arsenal, and secondly, have the discipline to be able to move down in table limits so that you aren’t risking too much of your bankroll at any one time.

By: Chris Iaquinta

This entry was posted on Friday, January 8th, 2010 at 12:57 pm and is filed under Online Poker. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.