Multitabling?

At all the online poker rooms your're allowed to play at more than one table at a time. Some poker rooms have an upper limit to the number of tables, but in general you can basically play at as many tables as you can fit onto your monitor.

Playing at multiple tables has some obvious advantages and some equally obvious disadvantages. Often you'll hear of hardcore online professionals playing 10, 20 or even more tables at the same time, but just as often online pros will tell you, that they prefer just one or two tables running simultaneously.
There's no right way or wrong way to go here. It all depends on your personality, experience and style.

The obvious advantages of multitabling are:
You are dealt more hands, you see more action, and you are constantly "on".
This prevents you getting bored looking at your screen while playing poker, and boredom is by far the most common cause of poor play and bad decisions at the tables.
When you get bored you automatically start playing poor hands, just to get some action going, and you'll quickly find yourself involved in pots with crappy starting hands, you really should have folded a long time ago. This is not only a bad idea. It's expensive.

The disadvantage of multitabling is on the other hand, that you'll get less focused on the action at each of the tables you play.
When flipping back and forth between maybe three, four or more tables, you simple miss a lot of the information about your opponents, you would otherwise pick up. Information you'll wish you'd picked up when a juicy pot is suddenly developing.
If you haven't been paying attention to the action at the table – especially in the hands where you are not yourself active – you have no idea how good or bad, aggressive or passive your opponent in the hand is.
You have no way of knowing whether the player, who just made a huge raise, is a natural born bluffer or the tightest guy in the universe only playing the absolute nuts. And not knowing this will cost you money.

One or more tables at a time therefore is a matter of pros and cons, and you need to find out for yourself, how many tables you are most comfortable with. There's no clear-cut answer and only trying out different scenarios will teach you.

If you are a restless kind of player with a tendency to get bored – constantly craving the adrenalin rush of action – you should experiment wit some multitabling. It will to a certain extent prevent you from playing garbage hands out of sheer boredom.

If on the other hand you are disciplined and patient in your approach to poker, you can benefit greatly from taking the time to closely observe your opponents at one single table – ready to pounce on them, when they make mistakes.

So try it out, but be aware of the pitfalls. If you find yourself playing junk hands, try adding an extra table to your game, and if you suddenly discover, that you have no clue whatsoever if the guy, who just reraised you all-in, is a total maniac or the real deal, cut down on the number of tables.

Beginners should refrain from multitabling – at least until they are more comfortable with the game. The pace of play in online poker makes it hard to fully focus on many tables at once, and even though it's tempting to increase the action by opening multiple tables, it's also quite stressful for the inexperienced player.
When you get more hands under your belt, you can run amok with a screen full of hands, but until then focus on just one table.


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