I’ve never really been a grinder, one of those online poker players who plays 10+ tables at once, cursor and attention whizzing from monitor to monitor so quickly that they have only seconds to think about they want to play any given hand. For me, 4 tables is common, and 10 is generally an upper limit. When I get that high, a few of them tend to be tournaments or full ring games where less attention is required. In short, I am not Nanonoko.
It is, however, a skill I’d like to have. I generally tell my students that you need to know their goals in poker before you can decide their playing style. If you are planning on being in the game for a long time to come, then you should focus on getting better rather than maximizing your current hourly rate. That generally means playing fewer tables and thinking through each hand that you play very thoroughly. When you are trying to maximize your short-term income, then it makes sense to focus on playing as many tables as possible, even if you are playing slightly less well and not actively improving.
I’m not in the short-term camp myself, but at the same time I need to pick up the pace at which I’m earning VPP’s if I’m going to take full advantage of my PokerStars Team Online deal. I’ve also decided that, since most my individual coaching students play 100NL or 200NL, it wouldn’t hurt me to get some more experience in those games. So, last night, I sat down at 13 6-handed tables of 1/2 NLHE, and played for 3 hours with no breaks. I know some people play considerably more than, but for me that’s a lot.
Couple observations from that first experience:
1. It takes practice and some warming-up. This is part of why I was reluctant to take breaks. For the first half hour so I was just frantic, barely thinking about what I was doing, timing out, etc. By the time I hit the two-hour mark, I felt like I had it under control, though I wasn’t eager to add more tables, either. I can see myself getting better over time, though.
2. It’s tiring. I was really exhausted at the end of the session, much more so than I usually am after playing for three hours.
3. It feels like work. I go back and forth in terms of how much poker feels like working vs. playing a game, but this felt almost entirely like work. I was checking the clock every 2-3 minutes as I neared the 3-hour mark.
4. You feel every table. When a game broke and I was temporarily playing just 12 tables, there was a noticeable difference in how harried I felt and how much time I could allot to each table.
5. Screen size matters. I’m probably a fish for tiling my tables instead of cascading, but I definitely lost some time squinting at small tables to make out stack or bet sizes. I’ll have to try cascading.
6. Table Ninja is huge. I couldn’t have done this without my hotkeys.
7. My play suffers noticeably. I’m definitely not ready to try this at 2/4. In particular, I was relying overly much on the bet sizes I have programmed into my Table Ninja rather than sizing them situationally.
8. There’s a strong incentive to play TAG, though not necessarily ABC. I found myself folding a lot of hands that would have been marginal opens just because I was too busy on other tables and didn’t want to deal with them. I was also far more likely to 3-bet/fold vs. a raise than flat call, since I wasn’t confident that I’d have the attention to invest in playing post-flop without the initiative. I still made moves, but they were more often bluff-raising and barreling rather than floating or checking to represent something tricky.
My goal, which I may or may not follow through on depending on how much I improve in future sessions, is to play 50K hands of 1/2 NLHE 6-max this month. That’s a lot for me, especially since it’s not the only thing I intend to play, but it’s very feasible. And besides, it’s about time I got my grind on.
At the end of the day, a good rakeback deal is worth a lot less than an improved winrate.
I think a ton of players sacrifice WAY too much in terms of winrate in exchange for VPPs/rakeback.
There are a few players out there like Nanonoko who manage to mass multi-table AND maintain a respectable winrate, but I think a majority of players playing 1/2 and higher are hurting their games a lot more than helping by playing more tables than they can reasonably handle.
I agree it comes down to personal goals / preferences – and what you’re looking to get out of poker, but you’re going to win a lot more with a 1ptbb winrate higher at 2/4 than you are mindlessly grinding 1/2 + earning rakeback.
I agree that there are certainly players (e.g. moi) who do much better playing a fewer number of higher-stakes tables than a larger number of lower-stakes ones. However, most of the points-grinders I know are about as good as they’re ever going to get. I say this because I never see them get any better.
I play mostly PLO8 and NLO8 online, and these games have a lot of multitabling regulars, some of whom I’ve been playing against for years, so I know them quite well. The old timers play as poorly as they did when I first encountered them. And I don’t think playing fewer tables will help them much because there are fundamental problems with their game that have absolutely nothing to do with how many tables they’re playing.
I think there are a lot of marginal winners/break-even players like these for whom VPPs and rakeback deals are a significant portion of their earn, and always will be. They have settled into a weak-tight, nut-peddling, often hit-and-run, fairly “rote” system that allows them to make 1 or 2BB/100h and collect their 7500 VPPs a month without bankroll-busting semivariance. I’m not convinced that they could do any better doing anything else.
Could some of them improve their ear rate significantly if they made an effort to? Probably. But either they won’t make the effort or they’ve tried and failed. It doesn’t really matter which – they’re just not going to get any better.
I rarely play more than 2 tables unless it’s the last couple days of the month and I can make a push to get the next higher star. That’s the only time I worry about points. Like Chris, I’d rather have the money. I do better playing 2 higher-stakes tables than 4 lower ones.
When I do play >2 tables, I cascade them and turn on the pop-to-front option. I find this much less tiring than spreading tables all over my two-monitor desktop. This also leaves room for the IHH and replayer windows, which you really should have open when you’re cascading. Set the dropdown list in the IHH window to show all tables, and then when you want to see how a hand turned out, you can click on it to bring up its hand history then click Visualize to load it in the replayer. I find this much less annoying than trying to go back to the original table to find out what happened when you have table windows popping up in front of the one you want to look at.
Just watched the video. Looks like N. doesn’t use a HUD.
Always do what you enjoy the most. Some people enjoy playing 20 tables. Others enjoy sitting at a casino mingling at a tournament. You have to love what you do. Your rakeback deal should not be your main motivation. I’ve succeeded at most things in my life [50 years] and none of them have anything to do with money. Do what brings you the most enjoyment.
Now if I could only figure out this poker obsession I have. LOL.
Good luck to you.
Try stacking your tables, I find this even better than cascading. My attention span is only 45-60 minutes so I find 3 hours a nice accomplishment.