Making Money without Multi-Table

It occurs to me that many live players make a decent or great living. Obviously, if they're playing live they're not multi-tableling. So, it makes sense to me that even more onine players make a substantial income by playing only one or two tables at a time. Futhermore, playing fewer tables would surely tend to improve your performance a those 1 or 2 tables because you would be more aware of table dynamics etc... It seems obvious that anyone playing 6 or 12 tables at a time would have very little idea of table tendencies. Although, I suppose that poker tracking software does help this quite a bit.

What do you think about this? How many of you make a substantial income without playing an obscene amount of tables at once?

I win tournaments

I'm sure Durrrr would not agree with you. Personally I've never had more than 4 ring games open at once, but I have had 16 SNG's going at one point. Also I don't use any poker tracking software. I don't believe in it.

I think the big issue here is table reads. Online, your reads on your opponents are much less reliable. You only have betting patterns to go by, really, and they are easily faked. For this reason, I believe that a really good live player can achieve a much higher win rate on a single table than his online brethren.

Multi-tabling online helps compensate for that.

Yes your winrate in terms of BB/100 will definately not be as high playing 12 tables as it is playing 1 or 2, but since you are seeing so many more hands/hour your winrate in terms of BB/hour goes up. As long as you arent giving up a significant edge its profitable to play more.

Ex. You move from 1 table to 2 tables. As long as your winrate isnt decreased by 1/2 it is more profitable to play 2 tables. You move from 1 table to 12 tables. As long as your winrate isnt decreased by 11/12 then it is more profitable to play 12, etc. So even if your winrate in BB/100 drops slightly it would be stupid not to add more tables.

The thing is that live play is so much softer than online play. $1/$2 games are the lowest and typically filled with donks in casinos. Online, any casual $1/$2 live player would be eaten alive in a 200nl game. So while live players can profit at high-stakes games single-tabling, online players are at lower limits, and thus if they want to make the same (or more) they have to at least play a few more tables.

I wouldn't say I play an "obscene" amount of tables, but playing 6 tables at a time allows me to make roughly $18/hour playing NL25. Playing 1 table at a time, I'd have to probably play at least NL200 to achieve the same hourly win rate. The risk vs. reward of something like this doest make much sense really. I'd have to risk 8x as much to make the same $/hour

Good stuff guys.. Guess the same ideas apply to tournament players.

Something else to consider :

Playing multiple tables helps even out variance faster. If I were to play 1 table instead of 6, all of my downswings/break even stretches would last 6 times as long (in terms of hours/days/weeks, not hands obv). I honestly could not imagine going through a 20k hand break even stretch playing 80-100 hands per hour.

Well, you gotta have fun.

Cash games pay better than SNGs and MTTs.

I'd rather play poker and watch the game than click based on a poker calculater, with 16 games in front.

I like to take it, easy.

lol I don't know a single multi-tabling cash game player who clicks based on a poker calculator.

I have been playing on bodog pretty much full time for 18 months. Untill the last few months I have limited myself to 1 or 2 multi tourneys at a time. I am now expirimenting with 3 but I am making more mistakes more timeouts etc. I agree with you the fewer the better.

Well I played about 7 hours at casino rama today, I watched my stack stay steady at about the $200 mark, ended the day at $260 lol. Weeeee...

Best hand was JJ and a AQ that I had to fold but I wasnt getting cards so not much I could do, you cant make too many moves on Live donks.

Example hand, JJ in late pos, I bump it up to my standard $15 raise, surprising only 1 caller. Flop comes 10 7 4, guy checks, I bet $25, he calls. Turn is a 6, he checks again, I bet out $55, he calls. River is a K, he checks again and I check behind and he shows 88 and I scoop a fairly big pot. They are that bad, but you must have *something* usually to win.

I'd say my table during my stay today got about....16-18 people, from when I sat down to when I left.... only 3 of the orginal people that I sat down with remained. Of the 18 or so people I played with, only about 3-4 people scored huge, those few people racked up a full rack at LEAST so about $500-600 in total, starting with $100-$200 initially. Not bad for a days work.

I don't think lower stakes like 1/2 live poker is more profitable than 6-8 tabling 1/2 online though, even though Live poker is SOOO much more soft than online, its SLOOOOWWW. At higher stakes.... maybe 2/5 and higher live poker can be more profitable, but im just grasping at air I have never played that high so I dont know.

Right, my mistake, meant to say tracker (like PT3, PO, holdem manager). Nothing wrong with trackers.