When I started playing poker, I had to think for every move. It took me more than thirty seconds for me to decide whether to call or raise. The small timer that shows the amount of time to make the decision, seemed to go off every hand. With experience, I learned to make quick decisions. Now, I usually play more than one table at a time, and it feels boring to be playing just one game. My usual dose of multi-tabling hovers around four to six tables, though I have played far more tables simultaneously at times. In this article, we will discuss some of the intricacies of multi-tabling and how a beginner should approach it.

Best Online Poker Multi-Tabling Software

The players above put in tons and tons of volume -- sometimes playing as many as 20 tables simultaneously. While that alone is quite difficult to do, they actually manage to be among the most profitable online multi-table tournament players in the world. All of them have lifetime earnings in excess of $1 million dollars and some of them are even sponsored by online poker rooms.

Why multi-table?

If you are a winning player at the low limits, you are probably playing at a ~20% ROI (in tournaments) or ~4BB/100 in ring games. If you are playing only one table at a time, this roughly translates into a 2-5$ per hour profit. That's a meager income by any standards, and if you want to make more money, you will have to play higher stakes. However, at higher stakes, you may not have the same edge and may perform much worse. The secret of winning more money is to multi-table these low-limit games.

Beginners often find it amazing that some people can actually multi-table ten games at a time. I once thought the same, and this article will show you the necessary things you will need for multi-tabling.

The basics

Multi-tabling is often referred to as playing more than one table at a time. You should understand the basics before you attempt to start playing more than one table. Tournaments are much easier to multi-table than ring games, because reads are not that important, and you don't usually have to watch every piece of action to gauge your opponents. Almost every popular poker site allows their players to multi-table, however you should note the amount of time that is given to you for making the decisions. For example, Ultimate Bet is one of the fastest site, and their timer rings off much quicker than other sites like Party Poker.

Once you got the basic strategy right for tournaments or cash games, start out with two tabling. In the beginning, you will find yourself being constantly engaged in the poker, and can at times be draining. If you think you are making bad decisions, try to start tournaments at different blind levels and cash games in different positions. For example, you start a tournament and wait for it to reach the middle games (25/50 or 50/100 blinds), and then start another tournament. Now, you have two tournaments running at different levels, and if you are following the good tournament strategy, you would be folding most of the hands in the second tournament, and will be easier to make decisions in the first one. Similarly, in cash games, you can sit at different positions (relative to the blinds) in two games to make sure that you don't have two games waiting for you to make the decision at the same time.

Computer Hardware Required

As you gain experience, you may feel that you can easily multi-table (>two tables) low buy-in (11$) tournaments. However, when you have more than two windows, they are usually overlapping at a standard resolution like 1024x768. The display adapters (also called video cards in common lingo) that are usually seen in commodity PCs can only display resolutions up to 1152x864. Some sites (notably Party Poker) lets you resize the windows, but the font may be too small for your eye. The recommended solution is to get a bigger monitor, more than one monitor, and a better adapter. Each setup is described below:

One Large Monitor

If you are buying a new computer, or upgrading one, and have the money to buy a large monitor, then go for a monitor that can display resolutions up to 1600x1200 without making the font too small. There are CRT displays that can do these resolutions, but they can be bulky. The popular choice is flat panels and LCD monitors, and a wide range of options are available if you have the money. The Dell 2001 FP is one of the most popular LCD flat panel used by many poker players. However, make sure that your video card can support the resolutions that can be displayed by these large monitors.

Dual-monitors

If you cannot shell out the big bucks, or have a spare monitor, then you can simply have a second monitor hooked up to the computer. Standard PCs usually come with a display adapter that can support one monitor only. You will have to buy an adapter that can support two monitors or install another adapter to hook up both the monitors.

See adapters section below for more details.

Once you have the adapter that can support two monitors, it is quite easy to setup Windows to use them. Follow the instructions below

• First make sure that the proper drivers are installed. This can be seen from the device manager in the display adapters section. You will see two adapters if you installed an extra video card.
• Open display properties.
• Click on the second monitor. Check the "Extend my Windows desktop onto this monitor" option.

This is the most technical part of multi-tabling and causes problems to players who are not comfortable with manipulating computer parts. A complete discussion of various choices is beyond the scope of this article, but I will try to give a quick run through various options.

There are a bunch of powerful cards that are available from popular vendors like NVidia, Matrox and ATi, that can support high resolutions, and are very fast with prices ranging well above 200$. These cards are designed for fast gaming, and you don't really need these cards for playing poker.

Then, there are a bunch of cards that fall in the range of 70-200$ that are not as fast but support high resolutions and two monitors. I don't want to recommend a particular card, because there are too many good choices in this range, but NVidia's GEForce FX cards are quite popular.

If you are planning to connect two monitors, make sure that your adapter can support two monitors.

The software

One irritating thing about multi-tabling is that tables continuously keep popping up as they need attention. Some sites (notably PokerStars) wait for you to make the decision before popping up the next active window. Also, registering for multiple tables can be a pain with some poker software. There are some tools available that take care of these problems, and provide a bunch of nifty features like colored borders etc.

MTH (Multi Table Helper is one of the most popular multi-tabling software, and has many features including an SNG opener, queued tables, and colored borders. There is a free alternative (with no fancy features) developed by 2+2er turbojunge. See this 2+2 forum post for details.

Tweak UI, which is a part of the Windows Powertools allows you to do various nifty things. One useful feature of Tweak UI is to set the activation of window to follow the mouse. With this feature turned on (see the left image), you don't click on a window to activate it. You just have to hover your mouse over it.

PokerTracker combined with PokerAceHud is widely used for displaying stats for your opponents. You can see stats indicating pre-flop-raise percent etc., and can quickly identify patterns in opponent's play. These tools can be quite useful while multi-tabling as you cannot get many reads on the table.

Table mods are skins that can be used to change the way the table, chairs, cards and other visuals appear. Though, I personally never used table skins, one of our veteran posters goofyballer's setup is quite impressive with different colors for each suit. These table mods can be easy on your eyes and help make decisions quickly, while multi-tabling. Various skins are available for most popular sites and can be found by .

The strategy

So, you have all the gizmo software and hardware, but the most important part of multi-tabling is to profitably play more than one table and not go insane at the same time.

What are the strategy adjustments that are needed while multi-tabling?
Different people have different views about this, but the usual consensus is that you want to cut down the number of tough decisions you have to make. This usually means you are playing much tighter than usual, and won't be making any fancy plays based on some observations, which you cannot accurately make while multi-tabling.

One of the common strategies employed by multi-tablers is to fold if you haven't put any money into the pot yet, bet/raise if you have been the aggressor. Don't use this advice indiscriminately though.

Tournament strategy

The basic tournament strategy outlined here is good enough for multi-tabling, though you may want to reduce the number of steals. One of the things I normally do is to start four tournaments, and then wait for them to reach middle level, and then start another four.

Ring game strategy

It is usually tough to heavily multi-table (> 4 tables) ring games, because of the read-dependent nature of some plays. Limit games are much easier to multi-table, though there are some people who can 8-table NL games as well. Again, follow a tight-aggressive style and stick to basics. Naturally, this kind of play is suited to low-levels only.

Continuous vs Sets (tournaments only)

On the forums, you usually see people referring to playing continuously or in sets. In continuous mode, you usually maintain a specific number of tables (say 6) all the time. So, if you bust in two of the tournaments, you immediately start two more to keep the number of running tables at 6. Some people prefer playing in sets, where you play a set (usually 8) games to completion, and then start another set.

There is always a debate on which strategy is best, but you should try both and see which one works for you. I tend to do continuous mode if I am playing less than 6 tables, but play in a set, if I am 8-tabling, as it is quite draining to play 8 tables continuously. Playing in sets allows you to take a break after a set, and is easy on your brain.

Conclusion to Multi-Tabling

The key to multi-tabling is to get your basic strategy right, and learn to make quick and consistent decisions. Happy multi-tabling!

If you're ready to multi-table, Tight Poker recommends PokerStars, which gets the highest software ratings for being multi-table friendly.

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