White Belt Poker

I’m not sure what made me do it. I hadn’t played at all for five days and my decision-making felt really sluggish, but I decided to try simultaneously playing two tables for the first time. I cose two of the lowest-limit tables at pokerroom.com ($0.25-$.50). I played for around an hour altogether and didn’t make any real mistakes. I’d wondered whether there was enough ‘dead’ time between hands on a particular table to allow you to really concentrate on playing well on two tables. Realistically, yes there is enough time. Very rarely was I making calculated decisions on both tables at the same time. The one occasion I can really remember was when I played AKo with a K on the board while I had two pair on the other table which became a full house on the turn. I won both hands. That really was an exciting couple of minutes having to bet or raise and keep each table compartmentalised.

That really is the key to multi-tabling – being able to separate your thought processes for each table. At a low limit you really don’t need to play the other players because they’re all pretty much similar. They’ll play dominated hands all the time – most flopped pairs, any old aces – and they come and go so often that it’s not necessary to memorise any tendencies.

The down side is that it was difficult (almost impossible in fact) to count the number of bets going into a pot. But it’s simple enough to divide the pot size by whatever the bet is and then just quickly add what’s in front of people still in the hand. I don’t tend to play a lot of straight draws anyway, so there’s less of a need to think about pot oddds.

Well, multi-tabling wasn’t something I’d really planned to do yet, but it worked out well. It was quite exhilirating and it certainly sharpened up my decision-making. I was concerned about whether I would be able to make decisions quickly enough because I’ve seen people playing multiple tables and really slowing a table down, but I got into a rhythm which usually involved folding one hand and then deciding which table I would have to make a decision on next.

The jury is still out on whther it will have a negative impact on some aspects of my game, but right now I need to build up my bankroll. For this one session of just over an hour I made 32 BBs. Even dividing that by two to account for the number of tables played, that’s a much, much higher return than I could’ve expected from playing one table at a higher limit. I certainly don’t think I’d be capable of making 2.5 – 3 BBs at a $3-$6 table at the moment. I’ll have to see if I can do this consistently. Even at 5-10 BBs, this is still the most profitable game for me at the moment. And the risk is practically non-existent. High reward, low risk – just what I need if I’m going to slowly grind my way up to the higher limits.