by Aisthesis » Sun Dec 23, 2007 2:54 am
Yeah, I actually backed down to 1 this evening (was tired anyway) and noticed that I felt MUCH more on top of various players' styles--basically having identified the LAGs before the blind even got to me rather than not paying attention to what was going on at the table because I'm looking for good tables to join their waiting lists (a lot of it actually isn't dealing with the tables that are there, but getting decent games set up or finding a new table when one breaks).
But even assuming that you only get slightly weaker playing 3 or even 4, I think the question remains of whether your optimal win-rate in dollars is going to be playing 1 or 2 at higher stakes or playing 3 or 4 at lower stakes--no doubt dependent on one's personal ability to play well and stay focussed (and creative) with more going on and more players on whom to get reads.
I do think variance is going to be lower with more tables simply because you're getting more hands. Hence, BR requirements for playing 4 tables of .50/1 are lower than for playing 1 table of 2/4--assuming that you're winning at a decent rate normally in both games.
In BB/hr., the real question, though, taking those two extremes, is whether the strength you lose due to 4-tabling is more or less than the difference in strength of the average field in those games. Just as note: If you're winning, say, 8 ptbb/100 at the 2/4 playing 1 table, then you need to win 8 ptbb/100 four-tabling at the .50/1 to be making the same hourly wage...
I think I may try 1-tabling a bit more tomorrow just to get my game back the way it should be (not on this kind of generic auto-pilot), then concentrate on 2-tabling after Xmas--and being much more serious about staying on top of reads for all the players at both tables. I think part of the problem, too, was that I wanted to quickly crank out as many hands as possible to evaluate the all-in strategy I was talking about a couple of months ago (then I took a poker break from early November until last week). So, I just played everything else much too mechanically with no real reads on anyone--possibly still a strategy that could at least win at the lower levels but not so much fun and certainly not a way to get particularly good win-rates.