Read enough poker magazines and you’ll hear about megastar online poker players that play 6 tables at once spread across 4 computer/TV screens. And as with all things since the poker boom like wearing sunglasses or listening to music at the table, the rest of the community wants to jump in and be like the pros. However, if you don’t know how to adjust your game correctly to play multiple tables at once, the only thing that’s going to happen is that your losses will quintuple.
Multiple table play can be tedious work, requiring a ridiculous amount of concentration. Because of this, most players will remove themselves from playing super advanced theory and strategy and instead switch gears and adopt a much tighter style. Playing bad cards and trying to bluff opponents is hard enough when you just have one table to focus on, but if you constantly have to watch 3-5 other tables at the same time, you’re not going to be able to play anything less than strong cards.
To decide whether or not you should attempt playing more than one table at once, you need to evaluate how well your doing at your current limit. If you typically play $4-$8 limit and are dominating the tables, go ahead and bump up to two tables at once, but come down to like a $3-$6 limit to start. This way you’ll put a little less of your bankroll at stake and can get the hang of playing your usual strategy across two games. If you’re losing too much money but want to keep learning how to play multi-table cash games, come down to a even lower limit, maybe even micro-limit. The goal is to not win right off the bat, the goal is to learn how to find a style that suits you when playing more than one table at a time.
