The Pros and Cons of Multi-Tabling Online Poker

If you’ve ever played online poker I’m sure you’ve played more than one table. I myself play up to 8 tables of No-Limit Hold’em but that is about as much as I can handle, when I play a game like Pot-Limit Omaha I naturally play less tables because I have to use more brainpower

I constantly try to weigh the pros and cons of how many tables I play. On the other hand playing less tables enables me to have a lot better reads and it is generally more fun to play, but playing more tables maximizes how much I can earn per hour, unfortunately it makes the game less fun to play and more like a job.

The Pros:

• Getting in more hands
• Maximizing hourly “wage”
• You don’t have to have as much patience since you get premium starting hands more frequently

The Cons:

• That extra table could cripple your game and be too much
• Tilting while multi-tabling will burn money fast
• You don’t have time to think through every decision completely
• Your reads on your opponents suffer

That’s my short list of the most important pros and cons of multi-tabling. A good rule of thumb is to play 1-2 tables if you’re just starting out with poker and play those 1 or 2 tables for as long as 6-12 months, because the longer you play like that the better you will get at reading your opponents and the better your “automatic/abc” game will be when you start adding those tables.

If you start playing lots of tables right away odds are that it will take a lot longer for you to learn some subtleties of the game. A final note: when you’re adding those tables and you feel like it is too much, then it probably is too much. If you’re timing out on any of your tables even once a session you’re probably playing one table too much. Be honest with yourself, your wallet will thank you for it