Learning to multi-table is important

 I think that too many people in poker fall for the hype that is in the game at this time. This then means that they end up playing the wrong form of poker. I believe that too many people are playing six max poker when they should really be playing full ring. If you lack skills as a poker player then you really should be reducing the number of hands that you play and not increasing them. The vast majority of people who attempt to play poker are not psychologically cut out to play the game or they simply haven’t got enough time to study the game in depth. Also if they have personality flaws linked to point number one then that can represent a very formidable obstacle to overcome.

So if these players want to make more money then they should do so by playing less hands and not more hands. You can only do this by playing full ring where you are correctly folding a far greater percentage of your hands and in many cases then 90% is close to being correct. When you play full ring then multi-tabling is far easier. You can play ten tables pretty easily in full ring and still have time for doing other stuff. This is especially the case if you have a style of play that reduces the number of flops that you see. This is what multi-tabling is all about because if you can successfully multi-table then you will dramatically add to your bottom line. Let us look at a hand where you could be playing ten tables all at once and it is folded around to the cut-off who raises to $1.75 in NL50.

You have Jc-10c on the button and now you have to decide what to do with the hand. If you were playing a single table then calling the raise is more of an option than if you are playing ten tables and I will explain why. If you call then unless one of the blinds re-raises then you are forced into playing post flop poker. This may be optimal if you have good reads on your opponent but you will often have to face marginal decisions on the post flop rounds. Let’s say that the flop comes Q-10-5 and your opponent c-bets. You call and the turn card is the 4c and they barrel again. You only have second pair with a mediocre kicker and now you don’t really know what to do. You are going to be spending time here trying to collate data but playing so many tables means that other tricky decisions may be happening elsewhere.

The more tables that you play then the more of these situations that you will face! So getting back to the previous hand then if I were playing 10-12 tables then I would be more apt to either fold or three bet this rather than just call. I think that this style of play is more conducive to playing more tables when your decision making processes are simpler. When you three bet to say $6 then you are simplifying the hand even though your risk-reward ratio isn’t great. With only $2.50 in the pot and you raising to $6 then you are doing several things with the hand. Firstly you are looking to win an immediate $2.50 and that is a very good result. But secondly you are speculating as well that you can win the hand by using the combined power of your hand strength and your position to perhaps win a huge pot.