Six Multi-Tabling Tips

Poker Tips for Successful Multi Tabling

Do you want to clear your poker bonuses faster ?

Do you want to make more money in the same amount of time playing online poker ?

Or do you just get bored by only playing at a single poker table ?

Then you need to learn how to multi-table !

Multi-tabling isn’t difficult

Multitabling might seem to be impossible the first time you try it: you haven’t made your decision about a hand on one table yet or another starts beeping for your attention. You decide to click the fold button but suddenly a table pops up and before you know it you missclick called a pre-flop all-in bet wit J7 off-suite. While still recovering from this unexpected and costly event you hover your mouse pointer to the raise button at another table where you’re looking at pocket aces, only to see your hand get folded as you time out.

At this point you might not believe it, but multi-tabling is easy! All you need to do is follow these six multi-tabling tips:

Multi-tabling tip 1: don’t start multi-tabling too quickly.

Successful multi-tabling is a skill that consists of two main elements. One element is playing winning poker or: making correct decisions. The other element is successfully managing to make the higher amount of decisions you need to make in time or: not timing out.

Although you will play more hands per hour by multi-tabling this doesn’t mean that you will pick up the skills to play winning poker faster. This is because multi-tabling allows you less time to play each individual hand and therefore you won’t be able to learn as much from every hand you play.

Because of this it is very important to be able to make correct poker decisions before you start trying to make as many of them as possible by multi-tabling. Just like you need to learn how to walk before you can run.

Multi-tabling tip 2: stop trying to follow all the action in a hand !

The human mind is a curious one. And although you understandably feel the urge to follow the action in a hand you also have to take care of other tables where you can already act. You simply can’t allow yourself to stay focused on that single table (only satisfying your curiosity) while there are other tables in more urgent need of your attention.

When multi-tabling you should make it a habit to constantly look for opportunities to make a decision at any one of the poker tables you are seated at.

Now you might be thinking: “I will notice when I have to act at other tables when they start beeping, so who needs to keep looking like that?”

Okay, so you’ll hear a table beeping. But what if five tables start beeping at the same time? Then all of a sudden you’ll have trouble to make all your decisions before timing out.

By not actively looking for opportunities to act at other tables you don’t allow yourself to make decisions when you have the time to do so comfortably. If this decision results in pre-selecting the fold option, then that’s one table less that can interfere with a big decision during the next minute. And even if you can’t directly make your move because it’s not your turn yet, you can already think about what you are going to do when it will be your turn. And this allows you to act much quicker and therefore to multi-table more effectively.

Multi-tabling tip 3: train your decision making speed.

So, we’ve already seen one ‘multi-tabling trick’ to increase your decision making speed and that is to look for opportunities to make decisions ahead of time. Another very important aspect in order to be able to make decisions quickly is to recognize standard situations and knowing how you have to act in these situations.

The most important way to learn to recognize standard situations will be through experience: simply play a lot of hands. But you also need to play them consciously to learn how to act in those situations and hence, you shouldn’t play too many tables too quickly to rack up those hands. See the importance of multi-tabling tip 1?

Multi-tabling tip 4: use the right multi-tabling software.

Multi-tabling can be incredibly facilitated by the use of Autohotkey scripts. With these scripts you can bet the pot with one mouse button, fold with another mouse button and call with yet another button (if you have any left). And you don’t even have to exactly click on the small action buttons as just hovering your mouse pointer somewhere over the poker table at which you want to make the action will be enough.

Needless to say that those scripts are a must for every multi-tabling grinder as they tremendously increase the speed with which you can act.

Multi-tabling tip 5: experiment with your table layout.

The way in which you arrange your tables on your screen can help you in keeping up with all the action when multitabling. There are three possible ways to arrange your tables: you can tile, cascade or stack your tables.

By tiling your tables you arrange them side by side and one above the other so that there is no overlap. Tiling allows you to scan all your tables to see if you can already act somewhere and allows you to follow other players’ actions when you have the time to do so. Tiling your tables will be a very good option if you are playing up to around ten tables. One disadvantage of multi-tabling without overlapping tables is that it will take a lot of desktop space. Therefore you’ll need a large poker monitor if you want to play many tables using this layout. But then again, large monitors are really nice anyway.

If you cascade your tables then you do allow them to overlap for the most part and with the stacked lay-out you let them overlap each other completely. Although you will only be able to see one table at a time and can’t make decisions before a table pops up this way, you greatly increase your action speed because you don’t have to move your mouse pointer and your eyes as much. On top of that you can play many tables without the need for a large poker monitor. The cascaded and especially the stacked table layout are very suitable for playing more than ten tables.

If you can’t seem to multi-table more tables at one point while tiling your poker tables then try cascading or stacking them instead.

Multi-tabling tip 6: play a little tighter when things go too fast.

You can make multi-tabling easier by simply playing fewer hands. Mostly you’ll play tighter automatically when multi-tabling. But when all of a sudden you have to make several tough decisions for a big pot, then just fold some other marginal hands that you would have otherwise played. This will help you to focus more on those big decisions instead.

Multi-tabling tips wrap-up

Multi-tabling is a skill that you need to develop. Start slow by playing only one or two tables simultaneously and really focus on learning to make correct decisions and recognizing standard situations and their required actions. Then slowly start to add one table at a time and try to make it a habit to scan for any tables at which you can already make a decision instead of trying to follow hands from the beginning to the end. If you also use some helpful multi-tabling software, train your decision making speed and experiment to see which table lay-out works best for you, then you can call yourself a multi-tabler before you even know it.

Out with the boredom, in with the poker bonus money !

Author Credit: www.firsttimepokerplayer.com – A guide to playing poker online

4kingpoker.com – Poker Strategy & Best Poker Tips

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