Back To Poker School — The 411 On Multitabling MTTs

Back To Poker School attempts to find out the answers to questions many players have in the journey towards improving their game and becoming more profitable. This segment sees various poker pros and instructors troubleshoot specific problems in both the online and live poker realms. This issue is specifically geared towards online tournament players and those, perhaps, needing advice on multitabling online.

Irish player and coach Dara O’Kearney is known in Euro poker circles for his dedication to both the online and live felt, but it is clear the pro has a fantastic approach to regularly grinding out numerous online multitable tournaments (MTTs) and has produced consistant results. This feature focuses on how to build up the amount of online tournaments one can play at one time, how to know when the time is right to add more tables, or, indeed, take some away, and how to stay focused on where you are in each tournament.

There is the concern that multitabling can make it harder to read opponents and stay informed as you are often watching less hands which you’re not involved in. O’Kearney also addresses this issue, giving key advice for players hoping to improve their online tournament play overall. Welcome to Dara O’Kearney’s masterclass in successfully multitabling MTTs.

Dara O’Kearney: I played chess a long time before I played poker. Chess isn’t a great spectator sport, but one of the things they do to try to make it more interesting to amateurs are simultaneous displays, where a grandmaster takes on 20, 30 or 40 amateurs simultaneously. Walking from board to board, he has to make practically instant decisions, but such is his skill edge over his amateur opponents that even with this disadvantage, he can still win or at least draw most of the games. That’s kinda what online poker is now: to make it a profitable profession, the online MTT player has to be able to play many tables simultaneously, and maintain a sufficient edge on each table to beat the games.

Perspective And Expectation

Amateur players tend to look at online tournaments as a chance to get a big score. Pros have a different viewpoint: they think in terms of expectation and hourly rates. An amateur will look at the Sunday Million and think “This is a chance to win a few hundred grand”. The pro thinks “This tournament has a $215 buy-in, I think my edge equates to a long term return on investment of, say, 20 percent, so every time I play it I will make an average of 43 bucks”. This is why you generally don’t see pros in freerolls: even though you “can’t lose” in a freeroll, a pro can, in terms of hourly expectation. If a pro makes on average $40 a tournament, then each tournament occupies space on his screen and in his brain. Unless his expectation from the freeroll is to make 40 bucks a pop, it’s simply not worth the time and effort.

When you think in these terms, the reason multitabling is so important is that if you can only play one tournament that makes you 43 bucks and last, say, five hours on average, then your long term hourly rate will be a measly $8.60. But if you can play 10 tables simultaneously, your hourly now rises to $86.

Practice Makes Perfect

Some players, particularly young ones weaned on video games from an early age, take to multitabling very easily. For the rest of us, it comes with time and practise. I remember when I started marvelling at my friend Rob’s ability to play four tables. I struggled to get past two but eventually got up to playing 16. It’s largely a matter of practising until you become very comfortable playing your current number, then adding one, sticking there ‘til that becomes comfortable, and so on. If you move up too fast, you’ll start timing out, misclicking, and making bad rushed decisions.

Like the chess grandmaster who can’t play 40 games as skilfully as he would just one, there’s a tradeoff as you add more and more tables. Beyond a certain point, your skill edge on each table will start to diminish. You don’t have to limit yourself to this number of tables: just keep an eye on the bottom line. If you can 10 table with an ROI of 20 percent, and 20 table with an ROI of 15 percent, you’re better off 20-tabling. You make more overall (per hour) but less per table. I went up to 16 tables, but these days I prefer to stick to 8 or 10 tops as experience suggests this is the best number for me to play for maximum profit.

TAG Versus LAG

There are a number of factors that will determine the optimal number of tables you can play for profit apart from your own ability to make very quick decisions. Your playing style is important: tight aggressive (TAG) players will find it easier to play more tables than loose aggressives (LAG) for the simple reason that they will play less hands per table. A tight aggressive who plays only 10 percent of hands who is 40-tabling will on average be involved in only four hands at a time (the other 36 tables just requiring the “Fold” button to be clicked): the same number as a loose aggressive playing 40 percent of hands on 10 tables. This is why most mass multitablers are tight aggressives.

That’s not to say tight is always right or at least most profitable in this context. The best tight aggressives in the world tend to have a long term ROI of 20 percent, meaning if they 40 table, they make eight buy-ins per session on average. Loose aggressives can exploit the fact that they can pay more attention to individual tables and players when playing less tables to make more per table. My long term ROI on PokerStars over a decent sample size (over 3,000 tournaments) is just over 100 percent, which means when I eight table (my preferred number these days), I make as much as the 40 tabling tight aggressive with a long term ROI of 20 percent.

Thinking On Your Feet

Other factors which influence how many tables you can play optimally or close to optimally are table size (shorthanded tables require more decisions than full ring), structure (turbos with their faster structure require you to play more hands and make more decisions), as well as software and player speed (some sites are slower than others with less hands per hour). Software tools which help organise tables (like Table Ninja) or present you with vital information (such as HUDs [Heads-Up Displays]) also increase the number of tables you can play. Your level of poker expertise is also a factor: beginners have to dwell on most decisions, whereas the expert player doesn’t even have to think about them. A beginner thinks “I have A-J, am I supposed to raise this?” An intermediate level player thinks “I have A-J. Am I supposed to raise this given my position and the tendencies of my opponents and my stack size?”. An expert thinks “A-J, 14 bbs, shove from anywhere” or “A-J, UTG [under the gun], 60 bbs, fold”.

Say Hello To My Little Friend

As you add tables, it becomes impossible to pay close attention to everything the other players are doing. This is why heads up displays (HUDs) are so important to most multitablers. Faced with a marginal hand like A-Q and a raise from early position, a multitabler without a HUD is essentially in a dark tunnel as to whether his hand is good enough to play because he has no idea how loose the raiser is (so most will take the prudent course and just fold, allowing them to be exploited to some degree by loose opponents willing to raise a lot of worse hands in earlier position). Having a HUD is like having a friend behind you at the table taking notes on all your opponents so that when you look down at A-Q, you can look up at your friend to tell you “That guy raises 60 percent of the time from that position so A-Q is way ahead of his range” or “That’s the first hand that guy has raised from there: bin the A-Q”. So to increase your long term profitability, it’s vital that you learn to use HUDs at an early stage in your development as an online player. ♠