Mobile multi-tabling is an exciting new way to play more than one table at a time from your smartphone or tablet: Play up to four poker games at a time. Multi-tabling is an area of the game that's only applicable to online poker players. While some tournament series will allow for players to be sitting at multiple tables at once, there are hardly a lot of situations in live poker where multi-tabling would either make sense or even be allowed. Poker Tracking Software. HUDs and other poker tracking software are an absolute must for multi-tabling, serious micro stakes players. A HUD (heads up display) will be a tremendous benefit when you are trying to concentrate on a number of different decisions at once.
If it's one-on-one action you're after, then Heads-Up Poker Tournaments are the perfect solution. They're a special type of tournament made up only two players per table. Everyone plays until one player has all the chips in play at their own table. They will then be matched against another table’s winner to play more rounds of the tournament until only one ultimate champion is left standing.
Heads-Up Sit & Go’s (SNGs) kick off when a set number of players have registered (i.e. 2, 4, 8, etc.). Head’s Up Multi-Table Tournaments (MTTs) have no late registration and will start – depending on the poker website / venue – with either an even number of players (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc.) or an odd number of players, giving some players a first-round “bye.”
And, no unfortunately you don't get to roll over your chips from the previous rounds. After each round, your chipstack is reset back to the original amount.
Why Play Heads-Up Tournaments at 888poker?
PROS:
- In Heads-Up MTTs, you might get a nice long break in between the various rounds, if you win quickly at your table and have to wait for play at other tables to finish.
- These tournaments are great for sharpening your heads-up skills for regular MTTs and SNGs. And, that's where the big money is in those events.
- You almost have to play every hand, heads-up, so you get to learn how to deal with different starting hands.
CONS:
- Waiting for each Heads-Up Multi-Table Tournaments to finish can be a pain. But you can always jump into a cash game while you're waiting.
- Forget “multi-tabling” other tournaments. Heads-up MTTs will take up all of your focus, time and skill.
Is this Tournament Type for You?
Poker Multi Tabling Heads Update
Heads-Up tournaments are great for players who like to play “loose” with a wide range of starting hands. Because there’s just one other player at each table, your chances of winning any given hand goes way up.
If your desire is to get into your opponents' minds and figure out the “hows” and “whys” of their play, then this is the perfect tournament format for you. You'll be able to make more creative plays and use information on opponents to out think them – and ultimately outplay them.
Heads-Up Tournament Strategy Tips:
- Pay Attention to the Blinds: Adjust your playing style, (i.e. aggressiveness, bet sizing, playing flips), based on how fast the blind levels increase.
- Take it Easy: Sometimes, players won’t even cash until Round 4 (or later!) of a Heads-Up MTT. Just play your normal game and focus on winning each current round.
- Vary Your Open-Raises: As the blinds increase, reduce the amount of your open-raises to keep your stack healthy and intact.
- Try to Get into Your Opponent’s Mind: Heads-Up games are “poker-science” on steroids! You only have one opponent, so focus, figure out why they’re doing what they’re doing, and then take advantage of their mistakes.
- Play Much Looser: Heads-Up games are much less about your actual starting hand. Play looser and bluff at any and every opportunity.
Many online poker players are playing 6, 10 or even more tables at the same time. This means they are playing more hands each hour, and can make a lot of money by winning just a few dollars each hour over many games. The problem with multi-tabling is that it splits your attention, meaning you’ll often miss profitable opportunities against individual players. This article shows you how to build up the number of games you are comfortable playing – and what the major options are for your screen layout.
First up you should have a think about your motivations for multi-tabling. While this is a great way of increasing your profits, it is difficult to learn the game while keeping an eye on so many games. You’ll need to schedule learning time away from the games, or just accept that poker is a cash-machine and stop moving up the levels for a while!
You should also be aware that your site needs to have a good volume of games running and smooth-running software. Without these your multi-tabling will be severely constrained.
The guide below starts with a look at how increasing the number of tables decreases your profit from each game while still improving your hourly rate. Next the main display options of tiled or cascaded are looked at. After this advice on adding tables in manageable steps and information on some poker tools which are designed to help you multi-table.
How Adding More Games Affects Your Profit
I will use a simplified example to show how adding tables affects your overall returns. The starting point is 2 tables, which – on average – make you $5 each per hour for a total hourly rate of $10.
You decide to add 2 more and find your attention split enough that you miss the odd profitable semi-bluffing spot and miss a bet size tell or two from your opponents. No big deal, you still manage $4 per table for a total of $16 per hour.
All goes well and you decide to go for 8 games, learning to cope with the massive amount of information by folding a few of your more speculative starting hands and folding early in unclear spots which would require detailed reads. Your per-table rate is now almost halved to $2.75c per table per hour. The extra games keep your hourly rate going up to $22 per hour.
4 more tables get added, and you lose some more opportunities to make moves or act on player specific information. Now you fold all but the strongest starting hands from the first few positions and play cautiously after the flop. Your rate per game goes down to $2, but the 12 games give you an hourly rate of $24.
You can add on a lot more bonus money to these hourly rates, which can make a significant impact on your returns at the end of each month. The key point here is that returns are diminishing as you add more games – but your hourly rate goes up.
Learning To Play Multiple Tables – Tiled Or Cascaded Games
There are two main schools of thought when it comes to multi-tabling. One group like to see as many of the games at once as possible, and achieve this by minimizing the games and having them all visible in a matrix setup on the screen. The other school feels that this is too much information at once and prefer to lay the tables on top of each other. They pop-up when it is your turn to act and if anything interesting happens they can be pulled from the stack so you can watch them.
Which you choose depends completely on your personal preference. I recommend you try both for a while and see which suits you best. My preference is for tiled – I find you can spot betting size tells easier this way.
Get Comfortable Before You Move Up
Before you heroically attempt 12 games, stop and consider how dangerous missing information or tilting can be when you are overwhelmed. I strongly advise you to build up slowly, adding just one table at a time and then making sure that you are comfortable before adding another one. This may seem like a slow process, but it could save the very poker bankroll you are trying to grow.
Poker Multi Tabling Heads Up Game
There are tools which help with multi-tabling by collecting statistics on your opponent’s play and displaying them next to each player’s avatar. These numbers can effectively replace your own observations and are great for spotting players at the extremes of loose, tight, aggressive and passive. Popular versions of this ‘Heads-up-Display’ software include Poker Tracker and Holdem Manager.