For serious multi-tablers, it's not about hedging your bets - in other words, it's not about controlling your variance. It's about improving your hourly winrate. If I win 10 big blinds for every 100 hands I play, and can play 10 tables at the same time with that winrate, I'll win 100 big blinds ten times as fast as I would if I were playing a single table. Of course, since your decision making time is reduced the more tables you play, you can't expect to maintain the same winrate, so you have to find an optimal balance point.
Table selection is an under-rated skill in online poker. If you find that you're doing really well at one table and really poorly at the other, start looking at the table dynamics to see if you should leave the second table - for example, if the two guys on my right are tight and the two guys on my left are loose, I usually leave the table - that kind of table does not fit my playing style well.
Oh, I think I get it. For instance I keep buying in for 40c as I'm cash-poor and trying to do the 0-10k thing. Well FTP's doing that Take2 thing and when I finally got around to clicking the link to see what it was I was a couple days shy of playing for the full period. Nevertheless I'm still playing enough to get $25 added to my account...
Anyway, my attitude's been to keep my head above water no matter what and wind up ahead by about $10 from where I started no matter what.
I'm playing PLO h/l because it's great for points. Almost every pot's a family pot and they get pretty big whether I'm in them or not, so I collect my points rather quickly. The problem is I'll push that 40c up to over a dollar in short order at one table but at the second table I'm floundering. Still making profit overall, but it's not that optimal more than 2x my buy-in for even one table once the winnings and losses are averaged out.
So according to you I should just up and leave the second table that isn't panning out for whatever reasons. In PLO hi/lo it's generally not panning out because of chasers. I can't complain because those are the same chasers who can push 40c up past $1 even as high as $2-$3. But they're always a great asset or a great detriment, rarely do they seem to fall somewhere in the middle. Thanks, cuz this should really help during my little points gathering endeavor.
Now for something extra. Being in PLO hi/lo mode I completely forgot about NLHE on 2 or more tables at once. I remember from when I used to play at a site with heaps of
freerolls b4 they closed to US players, that I'd play in as many as 8 freerolls at a time and it did make a big difference.
The main difference I remember was patience. It's a lot easier to be patient and wait for better hands and situations with 8 tables open than just 1. Patience pays off quite well in this game.
I'm not talking about why serious multi-tablers multi-table, insomuch as I'm talking about how playing on multiple tables can improve your game overall.
It's harder to mult-table with omaha games and even harder with stud games. For me it's impossible to play 2 or more stud games simultaneously and play them well.
If your biggest short coming is losing money because you hate not being a part of the action, multi-tabling can really help with that.
I doubt I could handle upwards of 10 tables of NLHE though. Fixed limit sure, but not no limit. That's probably just me though.