Have u tried playing 1 table?

[pottie]

Realise what real player reads are... Playing 1 table and watching all players intensively is is the best way to improve your poker IMO

[Niwa]

yes and its boring.

I play for $$$.

[sammy_g]

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yes and its boring.

I play for $$$.

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And the road to $$$ is to get better and move up limits. And you get better by playing fewer tables sometimes...

[Niwa]

Well said but I need a bigger bankroll to move up in stakes so its a little bit of both.

I'm really surprised by the responses. As you add tables, your efficiency at playing WILL go down. However, your monetary gain will usually go up, until you reach a certain breakpoint where more tables start making you play worse since you don't have time to think about your decisions thoroughly, etc. While making money is good, you should really step down to 1 or 2 tables and really try to improve your game WITHOUT relying on PT for reads, since PT doesn't tell you that "he always bets when checked to" or other useful information. Being able to combine your own reads about players on 4 tables(or however many tables you play) is necessary to maximize your winnings.

[btetreau]

yup, you're right, playing one table and learning individual tendencies is a solid way to play, and will give you greatest +EV if you are good.

however, playing a large number of hands and gaining the experience from watching flops, seeing how often AA gets cracked, making plays on the river, quickly counting outs and calculating pot odds, and just gaining more experience of the whole game is valuable also. for me personally, i get very bored at 1-table at the stakes i play, and i'd rather gain experience via hands rather than studying the fools that i play against. at the higher limits, i'm sure it is best to drop down to 1-table. at NL25, though, i think that for an already-good player it is more about quantity than quality.

[vulturesrow]

To piggyback on what you said, to me SSNL is all about setting the foundation. We talk a lot about ABC poker in this forum. The best way to learn ABC poker is play lots of hands, post on hands that you were confused on, and try to incorporate it into later similar situations. Rinse, repeat. You gain more in both experience and monetary return by multitabling at low limits.

[sammy_g]

I really think you learn more by playing one table and thinking through each decision instead of playing four, even if you're only playing 1/4 of the hands. Playing on autopilot stunts your poker growth.

When I played chess, my coach told me to play games at slower time controls instead of a lot of blitz games. I started improving much faster. Poker is like this, too.

[vulturesrow]

I was a chess player too, so I understand that analogy you are trying to make. But I dont think it applies. First off, in chess, there are usually a lot more things to work through in any given move. Secondly, what aspects of your game is blitz good for? One answer is quicker recognition of tactical combinations. This is basically what I am arguing in favor of by seeing lots of hands.

That said, from time to time playing one table is probably a good thing. But in general, at low stakes, I think you gaina lot more from learning to play more tables.

[sammy_g]

I agree and disagree.

Back to chess for a moment. I'm not sure blitz is really the fastest way to develop tactical vision. Doing chess puzzles away from the board is best for that. Similarly, examing the EV of different moves in poker away from the table might be best for developing an intuition for poker tactics. But maybe I am getting off topic.

I do agree it helps hand reading if you play lots of hands, look at lots of flops of different textures, and get to lots of showdowns. More tables helps you do this faster. You can get years of B&M experience in months online. Of course if you go overboard, you will be playing too many tables to truly process what you are seeing.

Another thing that might actually help many NL players is playing a lot of shorthanded LIMIT holdem (my main game). Since you get to showdown so often, you get a feel for how often certain hands are best quickly.

But sometimes you need to take your foot off the gas and just sit at one table and think about every decision. What does he have? What does he think I have? What does he think I think he has? NLHE features so much subtlety and nuance. How do you see it all when playing six tables and going 100 MPH?

You don't need to think this deeply to beat the small stakes Party games, but as you move up each rung, your opponents become more sophisticated. You need to think at higher levels to beat them.

Sometimes play just one table and focus. Don't play for the $$$, but play to improve. Get better. Move up.

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That said, from time to time playing one table is probably a good thing.

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So maybe we agree.

I'm probably just bitter because multitabling TAGs using PT and HUDs to profile opponents does not seem like what poker should be.