Internet poker - Should you play one table or two?

[Mike Haven]

let's say to win $1000 gross on a $20-$40 table you have to win ten pots

so you pay $30 in rake

proportionally, to win $500 on a $10-$20 table you have to win ten pots

but you still pay $30 in rake

therefore to win $1000 on two $10-$20 tables you have to win twenty pots

and pay $60 in rake

your winnings are the same but your business expenses are twice as much

am i right in thinking it is better to double your stakes than play two tabls?

[diosdepoker]

I would think its safe to say that playing two tables break
the boredom,it would be smarter to double the stake play at the higher limit,pay one rake.choice is up to the player on <font color="brown"> </font color> limits of course!

[nef]

yes but mike one $20/$40 table has about 40% higher variance than two $10/$20 tables, so this may not be practical.

[mdlm]

Mike,

You are focusing on rake which is only one aspect of EV. 20/40 should be much harder than 10/20 so your profits won't be 2x.

And, probably even more important, you get a massive variance reduction by playing two 10/20 tables. This means that you can play two 10/20 tables with a smaller bankroll than you can play one 20/40 table.

[Mike Haven]

i accept the difficulty and variance comments - thank you

but in fact i was only using the 10-20 and 20-40 tables for ease of calculation

the same principle would apply at any levels - if it costs you twice as much to win the same amount it is not an "ev+ play" unless it takes you 60 pots to win the subject amount at the higher level as against 30 pots at the lower level

the "boredom" comment may be true - it is an internet phenomenon that people become more bored at a faster game than they do at a live slow game - i guess it is because you can't interest yourself in watching people's facial tics during the hands when you're not involved - perhaps one way round this is to constantly ask for hand histories and read them during the game - the folded showdown hands that you only see via a hand history can reveal a lot about the present makeup of a table, rather than waiting until tomorrow to find out that "pokermeister" was an idiot who called with any two