The title may be a bit misleading, because this post is aimed more at players who are not yet winning players and so I am NOT telling you to start playing more tables to make money.
I am going to try to explain how you can use the fact that other players are multi-tabling to make a profit.
A profitable player can expect to make about 1 to 3 times the big blind of the level that they play at per hour. So if you are playing $0.50 – $1.00 then you can reasonably expect to make about $2.00 per hour. Not so great, eh?
That would be a pretty low paid job.
Normally, when a player can regularly beat the stakes that they are playing at, they will move up a level in order to make more profit. Sometimes that will work out just fine, and the player can eventually reach a level that they are comfortable playing at and are profitable at.
Often times, that player will keep going up in stakes until they reach a level that they cannot beat, and will start to lose money here. The correct play of course is to drop back to a level that you can beat, or get better.
Rising too fast through the stakes can leave you horribly unprepared for what must eventually happen – the loss of your entire bankroll.
Anyway, back to the point. Not all profitable players continue to rise through the stake levels. Some go up too high and have the good sense to go back to where they were making money. Some are physically limited by a lack of players at the higher stakes. Most players, obviously, are at the lower stakes, and there is a kind of a pyramid structure at play here with few players at the top mega stakes.
So, a profitable player who can’t or won’t go any higher in stakes will start to play two or more tables at once – multi-tabling. More common in tournaments where players don’t want to spend a whole afternoon or evenings play on one tournament only to miss the money by a spot or two. So they will enter and play many tournaments at the same time to increase the chances of being in at the end.
Those players that play multiple tables of cash games are more likely profitable semi professional players. That is, players that can make a profit, expect to make a profit, and are probably doing this for at least part of their income.
The rule at play here is that when you are making a profit, you can expect ot make a smaller profit from each table when you start to multi table. But because you are playing more tables your overall profit increases, as does your hourly win rate, but you per table profit goes down somewhat.
This is because playing many tables at once does not allow you to spot bluffs that others who are concentrating solely on one table can easily spot.
The multi tabling player must make quick decisions, to avoid getting timed out on some other open table, and in general they will play the cards as dealt. So you can expect that their opening range may be a bit smaller than other players, and they are less likely to bluff, and also, crucially, they are less likely to defend their blinds against a strong push.
So what good is that to you? Simple, you can check what players at your table are playing more than one game by doing a search on that players name. The result should show all the tables that that player is sitting in at.
And that, my friend, is an edge. You can exploit the fact that you know they are or could be preoccupied elsewhere, that they have to stick within a more rigid playing style and can be pushed a bit more than other players. Obviously, they are still playing to make a profit, so you won’t push them off of pocket aces pre flop, but the marginal hands, the hands they checked when you think they should have bet, those hands can be yours with a little effort.
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in: multi tabling, pocket aces, profitable players, reading players
