Joined: May '08
Location: Lithuania
Age: 39 (M)
Posts: 10090
i also find that i am loosing vital information on players when i am not logging in with my super account i think one should play as many tables as he can manage comfortably- if you are elky, or boku then you probably go for 20+ tables, if you are overdosed pro- 99 tables is a must i just stick with 1-4 tables
Joined: May '08
Location: Netherlands
Age: 53 (M)
Posts: 6197
Not that grinding anymore as i used to do before, now mostly playing for fun. When i grinded i played on more networks at once, so 4 tables PKR and 6 Ongame for example. 10/12 tables is not that hard when you focus and play TAG.
Joined: Feb '11
Location: Canada
Age: 39 (M)
Posts: 1660
I'd say I'm in a similar boat to you Noon lion, I like to play 2-3 if I'm playing at higher stakes, or up to 4 or 5 if lower stakes or DoN's (they're pretty cut and dry strategy so they're a good way to practice multi tabling). The more practice you have the better you'll get. Like anything.
Joined: Mar '09
Location: Greece
Age: 47 (F)
Posts: 14136
Usually i play from two to four. Not a hard thing for everyone to play 4 tables at once. If you can play one table, then you can play four easily, having the right screen size of course. Time bank always helps in some situations
Joined: Jan '11
Location: United States
Age: 60 (M)
Posts: 3361
I'm actually with you on this! I rarely play 2 tables and at the most is 3 and one of them is generally a freeroll that I happened to signup for while playinmg SnG's or tournies. I like to focus on the players and do my best to retain hands played or cards. 've thought about using one of those poker gadgets to track with, but this takes away from buil;ding structure and developing technique which I need to do a lot of.
Joined: Jan '12
Location: Netherlands
Age: 47 (M)
Posts: 165
i play a max off 4 table's and thats because off my pc screen there's just enough space for 4 if i would play 5 they are jumping one to an other and i get crazy of it
Joined: May '09
Location: Spain
Age: 49 (M)
Posts: 1331
How many tables?
Easy, as much as you can manage without problem as sit outs or don´t have enough atention to the game. If you use soft as much as you can using it properly.
Joined: Mar '11
Location: United Kingdom
Age: 39 (M)
Posts: 1646
if im playing tournies i play 2. 1table sng's and cash games i can play 4 pretty comfortably. so i guess you just go what your comfortabe with. i play 6max cash so i imagine if i played fullring i could probs manage 6tables. but 6max is where its at for me.
Joined: Apr '09
Location: Portugal
Age: 44 (M)
Posts: 4827
When playing only games of the same type, i guess there’s nothing wrong in multitable. If I am going from cash game, I open four tables of the same type and amount and things run well. But If I mix that with some SnG, then strategy is not the same for every tables and one can lose because of lack of info, just like you said.
Joined: Feb '11
Location: Switzerland
Age: 31 (M)
Posts: 122
hello, I play always 4 tables, you can concentrate good on them but more than four tables are very difficult. There you have sometimes situations where you have to make desitions at more tables at the same time and this causes mistakes. less than four tables I play rarely. only than when I play with higher stacks than usual, I concentratr only on two tables, so there you get much more informations about your opponents
Joined: Jan '10
Location: Indonesia
Age: 60 (M)
Posts: 1875
The best is just play single table if want serious learn poker cos many thing have to learn or know when play, max 2 table. Just for fun is depend on capability each person. Sometimes just play single table is boring cos we lost focus and lazy to make reading table.
Joined: Apr '09
Location: Australia
Age: 40 (M)
Posts: 6483
I generally get pretty bored < 6 tables..
Saying that - ROI definitely drops when tables go over just two.
It's a matter of finding a balance: The thing you need to aim for is a good hourly - your sharkscope won't look as pretty, but this is the key. Hourly is literally the amount of $$ you make per hour.
Let's say you play $10 SNGs and your ROI for a single table is 20% and each SNG takes 1hour exactly to complete.
Let's also say if you play 2 your ROI drop to 16% 4 ROI drops to 12% 6 ROI drops to 9% 10 ROI drops to 2%
As you can see from this example - this particular person profits best from playing exactly 6 tables an hour; although, obviously the sweet spot may actually be 7 tables, or 8 or 9.. But you get the point.
Another really important consideration is rake-back / rewards
This person for example is far far far better off playing 10 tables for $2/hr than they are playing 1 table for $2/hr. Assuming rake is including in the buyin and the ROI% - the amount of rakeback earn't on 10 tables is obviously 10 times what is aern't on a single table. Not to mention - higher VIP level - so if your site has a VIP/Rewards program - you might also be getting points you can redeem as well.
This is why ROI is rather meaningless in the scheme of things- the amount of money you've earn't / continue to earn is really all that counts. If some idiot shows a profit of $60 over 6 months with an ROI of 80% and you show a profit of $6,000 over 6 months with an ROI of 3% - then you're the better player - simple as that - poker is about making money, that's the bottom line and that's all that matters.
So when deciding how many tables to play, consider all the factors: Bonuses, rakeback, VIP rewards, hourly, etc - forget your ROI. This is why the term "rake back grinders" exists - people that show a 0% RIO on sharkscope - maybe even a negative profit - but ultimately make a fortune by mass-tabling and making a killing on rakeback + rewards.
------------ Just to slightly extend on this:
It's really important to understand a few things:
* Edges in poker are generally tiny, being better than somebody might give you about 5% equity over the total stake, maybe a little more or a little less - but edges (skill differences) are no where near as big as a lot of people perceive them to be, especially post-boom - most people still playing online poker are playing a lot, learning and evolving. The game is tough and if you're beating it then you're not beating it by much - make no mistake.
* Rake is an incredible portion of your profit. 5% or 10% may not seem like much - but look at it this way - if you have an RIO of 12% and you play 10 $5 SNGs, then you've made a profit of (10 * 5 * .12) = $6 you've also paid $5 rake. So your total profit is actually only $1. This means the rake is eating up 86% of your profits - that is fucking huge.
* You'll never make much money unless you look at the bigger picture - you need to be making the most of reload bonuses, rakeback, VIP rewards and every other "edge" you can get.
It's not easy to win at online poker - and most people just give up and decide the game is rigged. If you wanna go beyond the spazzes, think about all this stuff.
I say all this, because if you're not playing at LEAST 4 tables, preferably more - your hourly will suffer, you'll make F-all rakeback and you will only be able to clear the tiniest of bonuses.
A large portion (often over 50%) of a lot of full times grinders profit comes from RB, VIP, ETC - not just winning pots.
Edited by jessthehuman (24 April 2012 @ 07:49 GMT)
Joined: May '09
Location: Spain
Age: 49 (M)
Posts: 1331
Posted by ruuuu: ive played 50 tabling on cake poker a wihle a go, but now im out of cash, anyone staking? i need stake, have graphs and hand history
Mmmm, 50 tables on cake. You must play all the games in cake at the same time (Cash, MTT, and the very few SnG in lobby). You must wait about 10-20 minutes to start a 2$ DoN, for example. And differents MTTs usually start every 20-30 minutes (less if you play satellites).
i think one should play as many tables as he can manage comfortably- if you are elky, or boku then you probably go for 20+ tables, if you are overdosed pro- 99 tables is a must 
