One of the key disciplines needed to become a profitable poker player is multi-gaming. This is an aspect unique to online play and is so significant that making good regular money without it maybe virtually impossible. It’s that important. By minimising screen sizes it is possible to play at least four games simultaneously on most monitors. This may sound very daunting to an inexperienced player but with gradual build-up from one game to two and so on, it is possible.
The financial benefits of being able to play several games at once to a similar standard are striking. Let’s say that somebody can make an average of $5/game at medium stakes. If this is typically an hour long game and you only play one game at a time then you make $5 in an hour. However, if you play four games at once to that same standard then a typical hour will reap $20. If we take things a step further, imagine a game format that normally lasts 45 minutes (instead of an hour) that you can still make an average of $5 from. This time-game ratio improvement might simply involve a shift from 10-seat games to 6-seaters. If this works then the profitability per hour improves in another way. Then if you can move up to higher stakes with similar success then the poker world will be your oyster.
So if it’s that simple then why don’t we all just hook up multi-monitor systems and play about 12 games at once? Well, first of all, some people do just that. I don’t really understand how anybody can play 12 simultaneous games to any sort of standard so I won’t try to explain how on that one. What I would say though is that people doing this must surely be cash-game players or out of their minds. The dynamic of tournaments means that you inevitably have to play more and more hands as opponents crash out. That individual game will therefore demand more and more of your time and attention as it progresses. Imagine trying to play heads-up poker in 12 games at once! For one thing it would be a miracle to get in that position and secondly it would result in chaotic farce. Contrastingly in cash games the structure stays largely the same, regardless of time and major incidents. If one player loses all his cash at the table then he is likely to reload or be replaced immediately. With that structure in place it is possible for a multi-gamer to function as a rock who is simply very selective about his start cards.
The issue of hand selection and playing tight is key to this whole concept, even for tournament players. When unfamiliar with multi-gaming it’s imperative to keep things simple. Trying to limp in all over the place with mid-suited connectors will really complicate things when you suddenly get dealt big hands in three other games at once. Time is of the essence and suited connectors will often put you in borderline predicaments that naturally need more consideration to be played properly. Compare that to small pocket pairs; after the flop they will typically be folded or raised strongly depending on the arrival of a set or not. It’s much more cut and dry.
It’s not hard for me to spot the other multi-gamers, who tend to be more serious players. For one thing, to state the obvious they appear in several of the games I’m playing at the same time. For another, they tend to play a small range of hands until the bubble phase of the game. Chat is a real giveaway though. Anybody who takes the time to critique everybody else’s performance with play-by-play analysis is not only a moron but most likely to be in a solitary game. It’s always these impatient people who start typing ‘zzzzz’ whenever an opponent fails to act in a split second. These childish antics always alert me to the presence of a player with a short attention span. This will almost always be reflected in their card play as well. Occasionally, you will see a player who has tightened up immeasurably following a previous wild session against you. This tends to suggest one of two things to me. Either two very different players both share the same username, or they have discovered the world of multi-gaming. Be warned though; for many losing players out there this is simply a way of losing money at a faster rate than before.
Being in your preferred number of games at once isn’t always as easy as you would think though. Sometimes your preferred tournament takes an absurd length of time just to complete registration. One thing you can actually do to help is – and yes this is patronising – actually sign up yourself! Who would have thought it? Remarkably, there are countless players out there who are reluctant to sign up until the registration is almost full. Of course when enough players think like that then nothing happens. But perhaps this reluctance stems from bitter past experience signing up to too many slow-starting games at once and then forgetting about them. When you see that one player list isn’t filling up you then register somewhere else as well. Suddenly there’s a surge of new interest across the board and before you know it you’re in six games. Worse still, you forget to unregister for a game that never starts during your session. Some time later when you are logged off and out in the real world, money is very slowly drifting out of your account – blind by blind.
Simon Ballou writes for Oddschecker Poker