One of the opportunities that the better online poker sites provide is the ability to play more than one table at a time. While this can be a great benefit for players for a number of reasons, it can also come with hidden dangers.

Online Poker Multi-Tabling Danger: Losing Track

If you’re playing four or more games at once, it’s easy to lose track of what game you’re playing. Going all in for $5,000 in a no-limit cash game when you think it’s a $20 sit-and-go could be a total disaster. Try to have a certain organization to your tables, lowest stakes to highest stakes, or cash games on top and poker tournaments on the bottom, or Omaha on one side and hold’em on the other. If this is too difficult, limit your multi-tabling to a single type, stakes, betting structure and game.

Online Poker Multi-Tabling Danger: Losing Focus

While multi-tabling can be a good way to prevent you from getting bored and playing too many hands, it can also divide your focus and make things tricky when you have to act on a few hands at once. Try to ease your way into multi-tabling by adding games slowly, getting used to playing two games at once, then three, then more if you so desire.

Naturally you won’t have the same focus on several tables as you would when playing on just one. Say that you play on six nine-handed tables simultaneously; you have 48 opponents to analyze and try to outplay. Not only is it hard to focus on many opponent just because of the numbers, but also because all tables may not be visual all the time depending on the size of your screen and how you set up the tables. There are mainly three ways to organize the tables when multi-tabling, tiled, cascaded and stacked, each with its own pros and cons

Tiled Tables

When you play at 6-9 tables or less, this might be the best structure. All tables are visible all the time on your screen (some poker sites allow you to resize the tables so all fit without overlap.) You can follow the action at all tables, but the downside is that you have to move the mouse around – not to mention your focus.

Cascaded Tables

When you cascade the tables are lined up on your screen and the table pops up when you have a decision to make. This way you can play on many tables simultaneously on a normal monitor and you don’t have to move your mouse around.

However, the downside is that a table is only visual when you have a decision to make, so often you will not see the results of the hands you play. Because of this, I think cascading is mostly suitable for straightforward games like fixed limit and sit and gos, and not where decisions are based on opponents playing styles.

Stacked tables

Stacked tables means that all tables sit on top of each other and the one with the most urgent decision is visual. The pros and cons are basically the same as when cascading. You will miss a lot of action on hidden tables but the mouse movement is minimal.

Online Poker Multi-Tabling Danger: Negative Win Rate

If you are a winning poker player, online poker multi-tabling is a great way to multiply your win rate, assuming the extra tables do not significantly reduce your skill. Of course, if you have a negative expectation, you will be multiplying your loss rate by multi-tabling, so make sure your bankroll can withstand heavier losses or work on improving your game before adding tables.