At this point, multi-tabling might seem like a better alternative to moving up a limit where tougher competition awaits. That being said, here’s a look at everything you need to know in regards to multi-tabling – including what multi-tabling is for those who have no idea what the term means!

Simply put, multi-tabling is playing more than one table at a time. As long as you have two tables on your screen at the same time, this is considered multi-tabling. You can multi-table in both poker tournaments and cash games, but most people have a preference towards one or the other. Multi-tabling is allowed at every poker site and the total amount of tables you can play depends on how many the room supports.

For most players, deciding to multi-table is purely a financial decision. More tables means the potential to make more money…..provided you’re good of course. Going further with this thought, many people choose to multi-table because they know it’s their best chance to make poker worthwhile.

To illustrate this point, think about a player that can comfortably make an average of 5 big blinds an hour in $0.50/$1 Limit Hold’em ring games. This means that the person is making about $5 an hour, which makes them a winning player….but not enough to consider leaving their day job. 

Some players might consider moving up to the $1/$2 stakes at this point. And this is fine provided you can make a nice profit at the next limit. However, some players actually do worse after moving up a limit, and would be better off sticking to their current stakes while multi-tabling. In short, multi-tabling is a good alternative for successful players who want to make more money without moving up in stakes.

Anybody can open up a few extra tables while playing poker and consider them self a multi-tabler. But just because you can multi-table doesn’t mean it’s a good idea so you need to study your playing sessions to see if playing more than one table will be profitable. 

You should start by figuring out how much money you make an hour when playing single-table sessions. Whether you are mainly a tournament player or a ring game player, you should be able to find an average by keeping track of how many hours each session is and how much profit you made. After you come up with this number, you should play enough two-table sessions to find out how much you make when multi-tabling.

Let’s say that after keeping track of $1/$2 ring games for 50 hours, you find that you make 7 big blinds an hour. Likewise, you find that after playing 50 hours of $1/$2 ring games while multi-tabling you make 9 big blinds an hour. From the results, you can obviously conclude that you are more profitable when playing two tables at once.

This same model can be used to figure out if you’re more profitable playing more than two tables. For instance, you find that you’d be more profitable playing 3 tables and less profitable playing 4 tables after a couple more 50 hour sessions.  

Just finding out that you make more money by playing a certain amount of tables in a single hour is not going to ensure success by any means. In fact, you could be losing money by playing 5 or 6 tables even if your hourly rate was better than with 4 tables.

The reason for this is everything that goes into playing more tables could exhaust you quicker and shorten your playing sessions. For instance, you might be able to earn 12bb an hour by playing 5 tables, but only be able to handle a 3 hour session before getting tired of poker. Likewise, you may make 9bb by playing 4 tables, yet earn more because you can play 5 hour sessions with this amount.

A lot of factors go into multi-tabling and it can become stressful pretty quickly. The more tables you play, the faster you need to make decisions. If decisions are coming at too quick of a rate, your hourly profit will start to take a hit.

As long as you have a working computer, you have the ability to multi-table. However, you stand to benefit more by having equipment that will give you an advantage over other players – especially if you want to play 3 or more tables at once. Here’s some of the computer hardware you should have when multi-tabling.

The optimal setup for multi-tabling is having a huge monitor that can display all of the games you’re playing at once. A monitor with a 1600X1200 display resolution is a great thing to have so that you can comfortably fit all of your games onto one screen. The only problem with monitors like this is that they are really expensive so you might have to consider another option.

Assuming you can’t afford one big monitor, another option is to use a dual monitor setup. This works especially great if you already have another monitor sitting around somewhere. Even if you don’t already have another monitor, it would be more affordable to buy a smaller one than to purchase a really large monitor. If you do opt for dual monitors, keep you mind that you’ll need a display hookup to avoid slow play and bad screen display.

As mentioned before, a display adapter is important so you can avoid slow play and keep the screen visible. If you have a couple hundred dollars to shell out, you can get a powerful display adapter that allows you to play at a very fast speed. However, you can also get a pretty good adapter for a hundred dollars or less as well.

For the previously discussed information to be of any value, you need to ensure that you can handle multi-tabling first. And these tips should definitely get you started in the right direction.

With more tables to play and less time to observe each one, you won’t have much time to analyze other players. With this being the case, you need to cut down on the amount of hands you play and tighten up your starting hand requirements. Also, don’t make any fancy plays just because you think you’ve been able to profile an opponent in between playing 3 other tables.

Seeing as how tight play is required to be successful at multi-tabling, you’ll want to stick to the lower stakes. The reason being is that higher stakes require you to read opponents and make aggressive plays based on those observations. If you don’t have time to read opponents, then you can’t make these aggressive plays, and will have a tough time stealing blinds and semi-bluffing.

Your best chance to become a successful multi-tabler is by playing consistently. This is especially true if you want to multi-table in cash games where consistent play is king. Because poker involves some chance, your results will vary through consistent play, but you can’t let your decisions be affected by this. However, assuming you make the correct plays every time, the majority of your sessions will be profitable ones.