Multi-tabling Questions

I'm a proficient 9-tabler in the process of moving up to 12+ tables (NL10, UB & Absolute). I'm just curious what others who play LOTS of tables do. Any thoughts on any of the points below would be muchmuchmuch appreciated.

1. Tightening up.

When you're adding tables, do you tighten up initially? My FR stats are typically 16/13, but when I added tables I found myself playing more like 13/11. After 5k hands, I'm still probably not back to my original FR game, yet. But I'm close.

2. Auto-betting scripts.

Anyone know a decent script for either UB or Absolute? Or wanna write one? I would pay someone to write/customize a betting script for those sites. Better, I would be forever grateful if someone could post a link to good one somewhere online. PM me if you're interested in writing one. But I play NL10, so the amount I can spring for would only cover a couple hours of your time - LoL.

3. How much EV can we "lose" but still be overall more profitable?

After 5k hands of 12-tabling, I'm pretty comfortable. But I still folded 99 in the cutoff with an accidental click trying to fold 63o on the table that was suddenly beneath it. How many misclicks is too many and means "play fewer tables rtf now!!"? I'm misclicking less than once per 1.5k hands right now.

4. How much "earn maximization" can we give up with poor bet-sizing when playing 6 great hands at once?

This happened for the first time yesterday. I get these six hands within about 10 seconds: AA, KK, AK, JJ, 77 and 99. I hit two sets and top two pair with AK, and I'm trying to shake all the loose change out of the villains' pockets. I'm ahead in 4 four hands, and the villains are calling down multiple streets. But betting 2/3's and 3/4's and check-raising on those tables (along with the folds on other tables) just overwhelmed the system (my brain and click speed, not the hardware). Then I pick up 2 AQ hands and AJs, all in position, as I'm fighting to keep my head above water. So I have 9 great hands I should get bigtime value out of, but I KNOW I coughed up maybe 1-1.5 BI of value in 90 seconds. The fact this has happened only once in 5k leads me to think it's no big deal and that I'll soon be fast enough to not let it get to me. But do y'all ever "misplay" big hands when they all come at once? How much is too often? Thoughts?

5. How long can you "experiment" profitably?

As you can see, I pretty much gritted my teeth and played 5k hands "come hell or high water." This was after a week of adding a table at a time and learning my system: where to place tables, how move tables around based on tight-loose, etc.

Then I played five sessions of about 1k hands each. First two sessions, down a buy-in. Third session, down 2.5 buy-ins. Fourth session break-even. Fifth session, up 3 buy-ins and "feeling it," knowing I'm playing well. Got the typical suckouts (AA vs. 77 all-in pre, KK vs. JJ all-in after 9-high flop lost to runner runner straight), but still ended up very positive. My reads were solid, calling down correctly, and pushing from ahead. All the way through, I knew I was getting better, and some of the losses were just variance. When do you guys "stop-loss" the additional tables? How long do you keep experimenting, knowing you're playing only B- poker but improving quickly? How much can you let your win rate suffer as you increase your max # of tables?

1. its natural to tighten up a bit when you are adding tables, but try to add only 1-2 at a time so you dont have to. If you can play your optimal game at 9 tables, get used to playing your 'best' at 10 for a couple thousand hands then try to add the 11th. unless you have some super pressing reason to try to up your tables it is definitely better to go slow.

2. i play on full tilt and am a computer noob, sorry.

3. um, i guess as long as you are increasing your hourly rate you can afford to sacrifice ev on a per hand basis, but you should really strive to keep playing your best poker while adding tables.

4. same as 3

5. so as long as you can increase your hourly rate, your bb/100 can suffer a bit. (PT can tell you your hourly rate) 5k hands really isn't much of a sample size but you should be able to tell if you can handle the added tables or not. if you feel very rushed in all your decisions, its probably too many tables and not worth the extra hassle. it will be easier and more enjoyable to play an extra 30 min or whatever with a few less tables to get your hands in then having to spazz out over decisions.

hope that helps, and i play 12-16 tables of 100nl.

Re #2: I've found two different scripts, one for UB and one for Absolute, but I can't either one working with Windows Vista. Anyone play those sites and use Vista OS + AHK scripts?

Rage, thanks for the insights. I was worried I was giving away too much value early on, but another 1.7k hands yesterday after posting went well. I'm hoping to "regain" full mastery at 12 tables within 2-3k more hands, then add one more table every 5-10k hands for the next few weeks.

Robb,

I moved up to 12 tables from 8 tables about a week ago and noticed that my bb/100 went way down. Was running into lots of sets and oversets though so I'm pretty sure it's just variance. I'm gonna play another 20K hands and compare my stats to see how much my bb rate drops.

I don't think I'll ever understand how or why people would play on more than 4 tables max

Does anybody here multitable shorthanded?

I don't even really play NL but I can still cope with 12 tables of full ring a show a profit, yet playing 6max LHE - my "speciality" if you like, I can only handle 4, maybe 5 tables before it all goes to shit.

Originally Posted by Jack Sawyer

I don't think I'll ever understand how or why people would play on more than 4 tables max

More hands/hr = more money/hr. It's all about volume.

Originally Posted by Pythonic

Originally Posted by Jack Sawyer

I don't think I'll ever understand how or why people would play on more than 4 tables max

More hands/hr = more money/hr. It's all about volume.

When I move up, I will cut back to 4 tables at the new level to adjust to the game, adding tables back in slowly. I agree about volume, but there's another major benefit: reduced variance.

I can play 1k hands / hr, so in just 3-4 hours I have a large enough sample that the suckouts and bad beats can't dominate my win rate. It's easier to avoid tilt, easier to stay tight when the cards run bad, easier to live with not hitting a set with 30 straight pp's, etc. Playing 250 hands per hour, you can have a miserable weekend when you're on a cooler. Playing 1k hands per hour, you rarely have anything worse than a break-even session and often are up 3 - 4 BI or more.

There's also a secondary benefit: flexbility and hand reading. This may surprise folks, but read some of spoon's HH posts and remember he's playing 20 tables at once. But he's still making reads, making notes, playing exploitively against certain fish, etc. Since I have both 6-max tables and FR open at once, and I have markedly different styles for each, each action requires thought: game, position, villain reads, image. I also play on two sites one of which is markedly more passive than the other, so a third style is required. And style isn't macro (about tables/sites), it's micro - all about specific reads on individual villains in individual hands. When I multitable, I learn flexibility in various styles of play much quicker.

Bottom line, for me, pythonic's "volume" is key: it just makes it easier to deal with the facts of poker life: variance, bad beats, suckouts, bad runs of cards, etc.

Robb,

I completely agree with you on the variance. Seems like I'm either up or breakeven almost every session. I rarely have losing sessions anymore. However I have noticed my bb/rate has gone down a little because I'm not playing as many hands as I used to. Yea I'll say it, i've turned into a f'n NIT!

I 6 table 6max, but at 10nl I can tighten up preflop.

Originally Posted by Jibalob

Does anybody here multitable shorthanded?

I don't even really play NL but I can still cope with 12 tables of full ring a show a profit, yet playing 6max LHE - my "speciality" if you like, I can only handle 4, maybe 5 tables before it all goes to shit.

Jib, I multitable 6-max 8 tables at once, and it feels like 12-tabling FR. The problem I find w/ 6-max is table management. Games deteriorate so fast that I'm jumping in and out of games every 3 minutes. That means repositioning tables, watching the lobby, and buying-in, all while keeping the other 6 or 7 tables on track.

Another issue is with the massive numbers of loose-passives at 6-max. Since you play the blinds 1/3 of the time, you get some "unwanted" action with mediocre hands. Example: you're big blind with 83s. UTG it's autofold, but 2 limpers + SB completes, you check and you're at the flop with a 4-flush, oop to 2 villains in a 4-way pot. You've got odds to play it, but you've got some thinking to do along the way.

When I get 8 tables open and play the blinds simultaneously on 6 of them, I hate it. I'm like "bet me off this crap hand someone PLEAZZZ!!" I try to counteract this by playing the SB like I'm UTG except for the premium sc's and in exceptional situations like very fishy villains. But still, you've got more actions per table that require thought and action.

I'm going to try to play a LAG style on 16 six-max tables at once. The over / under is -10 buyins.

I HATE overlapping tables, so tend to max out at 4 tables FR LHE. If I buy a bigger monitor or find some other way to do it I might increase my tables, but honestly I think additional tables have me making stupid decisions when I have too much going on.

Rob - from your post it sounds like you have your tables in tiled view?

That seems insane to me, atleast in cascade view I can just click tables as they pop up.

I would love to be able to play 10 tables of max and get 1k hands per hour but I'm starting to think it's just not do-able with fixed limit holdem.

I love multitabling, when i get bankroll for it im gonna move up to NL 100 and rake in 10k hands a day, giving me 332$ rake daily which adds to your say "2BB/100" 400$. Which gives you 732$ daily I would like that Even if you play half as much you would still have a good income

Originally Posted by Jibalob

Rob - from your post it sounds like you have your tables in tiled view?

That seems insane to me, atleast in cascade view I can just click tables as they pop up.

I would love to be able to play 10 tables of max and get 1k hands per hour but I'm starting to think it's just not do-able with fixed limit holdem.

There are different ways to set it up. I have a 19 inch and can play 12 tables comfortably. I have my tables sized smaller and have 1 table in each corner and then cascade a total of 3 tables in each corner making it 12 tables total.

Originally Posted by Robb

Originally Posted by Pythonic

Originally Posted by Jack Sawyer

I don't think I'll ever understand how or why people would play on more than 4 tables max

More hands/hr = more money/hr. It's all about volume.

When I move up, I will cut back to 4 tables at the new level to adjust to the game, adding tables back in slowly. I agree about volume, but there's another major benefit: reduced variance.

I can play 1k hands / hr, so in just 3-4 hours I have a large enough sample that the suckouts and bad beats can't dominate my win rate. It's easier to avoid tilt, easier to stay tight when the cards run bad, easier to live with not hitting a set with 30 straight pp's, etc. Playing 250 hands per hour, you can have a miserable weekend when you're on a cooler. Playing 1k hands per hour, you rarely have anything worse than a break-even session and often are up 3 - 4 BI or more.

There's also a secondary benefit: flexbility and hand reading. This may surprise folks, but read some of spoon's HH posts and remember he's playing 20 tables at once. But he's still making reads, making notes, playing exploitively against certain fish, etc. Since I have both 6-max tables and FR open at once, and I have markedly different styles for each, each action requires thought: game, position, villain reads, image. I also play on two sites one of which is markedly more passive than the other, so a third style is required. And style isn't macro (about tables/sites), it's micro - all about specific reads on individual villains in individual hands. When I multitable, I learn flexibility in various styles of play much quicker.

Bottom line, for me, pythonic's "volume" is key: it just makes it easier to deal with the facts of poker life: variance, bad beats, suckouts, bad runs of cards, etc.

This is pretty much all perceptive, IMO.

But hey, if it works for you guys, congrats

Originally Posted by Jibalob

Rob - from your post it sounds like you have your tables in tiled view?

That seems insane to me, atleast in cascade view I can just click tables as they pop up.

I would love to be able to play 10 tables of max and get 1k hands per hour but I'm starting to think it's just not do-able with fixed limit holdem.

I used to tile 9 tables, somewhat like Pythonic seems to. Now I cascade them, with three regions on my screen depending on which site they're on and how loose/tight the tables are. When one pops up, I "know" the table stats from where it's located and focus on individual villains.

Originally Posted by Robb

Re #2: I've found two different scripts, one for UB and one for Absolute, but I can't either one working with Windows Vista. Anyone play those sites and use Vista OS + AHK scripts?

Rage, thanks for the insights. I was worried I was giving away too much value early on, but another 1.7k hands yesterday after posting went well. I'm hoping to "regain" full mastery at 12 tables within 2-3k more hands, then add one more table every 5-10k hands for the next few weeks.

where did you find those scripts at?

Originally Posted by frosst

Originally Posted by Robb

Re #2: I've found two different scripts, one for UB and one for Absolute, but I can't either one working with Windows Vista. Anyone play those sites and use Vista OS + AHK scripts?

Rage, thanks for the insights. I was worried I was giving away too much value early on, but another 1.7k hands yesterday after posting went well. I'm hoping to "regain" full mastery at 12 tables within 2-3k more hands, then add one more table every 5-10k hands for the next few weeks.

where did you find those scripts at?

the OTHER poker forum's software thread - which is most easily found by googling poker AHK script or something similar. The old "Bet Pot" AHK is a year old, the recent UB redesigns have rendered it useless, as best I can tell. Google your site + betting scripts, see what pops up.

Update: maybe I was too aggressive. Here's the graph of the stats. The top of the first peak is where I had enough $$ to add a second site and begin playing 10+ tables. I'm now at 13-14 tables regularly. I think some of the downswing was negative variance, but some was playing too many tables, too. But as mentioned above, I sort of took my shot over about 5k hands, and was feeling like I was playing well. I'm playing even better now.



I really like the last third of the graph - this is all 12+ tabling. The last 5k are mostly 14 tabling. My two sites allow for a total of 15 tables. I've not really managed to get that routine working well, yet. But I will soon. 14 tables is starting to seem easy!!

Multitabling micros is overrated and unnecessary. Learn to beat the games. Playing 50K hands and still playing $10NL is just not needed. You can grind for months clearing $200 and $500 bonus's all the while breaking even or learn to beat $200NL for a buy in every 5K hands.

Even at 5PTBB/100 you should be making a buy in every 1000 hands. After 20K hands you should be moving up with bonus and RB. Why is anyone playing 8+ tables of $5NL, $10NL or $25NL unless they are grinding the BR back up previous levels? Don't give me crap about liking the micros, we all want to play the midstakes games properly rolled.

Originally Posted by Pythonic

Originally Posted by Jack Sawyer

I don't think I'll ever understand how or why people would play on more than 4 tables max

More hands/hr = more money/hr. It's all about volume.

For me, if I added tables and felt like my game was suffering because of it, then I would drop the tables and try to figure out how I could fix things so that I could add the tables back and still maintain my game. It was a slow pain-staking process, but now I can say that I can play pretty damn close to my "A" game while 24-tabling as long as it's not on the "fast" tables.

Of course massive multi-tabling is only about 25% or less of the time that I put into poker, which is something else that a lot of people don't understand. In my very over-rated-by-newbies opinion, I don't think that you can improve at poker beyond a certain extent if you are always playing a shitload of tables.

On the other hand I think that everyone playing 6-max should get to be comfortable with 8-tabling and everyone playing 9-max should get to be comfortable with 12-14 tabling just because this is the Internet and volume is a money-making advantage over live play. I'm not saying that you should play this way all of the time, but I think that you should be capable of doing it.

Every time that I have a long session of a lot of tables, I spend at least 30-45 minutes afterwards looking at a lot of specifics in my session to see if I'm drifting off towards committing a lot of mistakes that I have let creep into my multi-tabling game in the past.

Edit: Also, if you've been playing 25nl and below for more than eight or nine months, you seriously need to stop fucking multi-tabling. Here's my logic: if you've been playing 25nl and below for that long, then you suck (no offense intended). Part of the reason you probably suck is that you're too busy trying to put in a shitload of hands instead of spending that time working on your game. I hardly see anyone in the chat room, I hardly see anyone [new] in Ventrilo, and I hardly ever see anyone contacting me or any of the other regulars on AIM or whatever (although a few have in the past couple of months). If you can't play 4 tables of 25nl FR for a good profit, then what the fuck makes you think you can play 12?

Originally Posted by spoonitnow

Also, if you've been playing 25nl and below for more than eight or nine months, you seriously need to stop fucking multi-tabling. Here's my logic: if you've been playing 25nl and below for that long, then you suck (no offense intended).

That's more a function of hands played than time. I simply can't play poker more than 4 - 5 hours per week most weeks. Often less. Even multitabling, I'm still a bit below 1k hands / hr.

I think one of my early problems was worrying about how long I spent at any one level. Posts like yours and TJ's left me feeling like I was learning too little and too slowly, and that I was a moron for not being able to pwn NL5o after a couple of months. Time isn't an issue. Total hands is the issue. I'll be happy if I'm still at NL25 (or below) in 9 months, as long as I'm still winning and learning at the level(s) I'm playing.

Originally Posted by spoonitnow

Part of the reason you probably suck is that you're too busy trying to put in a shitload of hands instead of spending that time working on your game.

Very true. But if a person has 5 hours a week, how many of them should be spent on logging hands? If I spent "enough" hours working on my game, I'd never play it. I multitable to make the most of the few precious playing hours I have. I can work on my game at other times, like analyzing PT when the kids are napping or posting/reading/learning on FTR during breaks at work. When I get a free hour, I'm playing poker, as many tables at once as I can.

But still, I think you have a point. I haven't worked on my game enough lately, and I need to do it more. But I haven't played all that much either.
It's just a balance thing. And I'll admit that I find it hard when, the one night in the last 4 that I've had a chance to play poker to spend it analyzing HH's.