Multi-accounting is Cheating - Plain and Simple

It seems every time I browse to a poker forum I see another post about some big name player who has been caught multi-accounting. Just to be clear, multi-accounting is when a single player plays more than one account in the same tournament. One thing I've noticed however is that there is a huge lack of information in these threads as to why this is cheating. I see a lot of posts stating that it really doesn't matter because the person is paying multiple entry fees and it's really no different than two or more players of equal skill entering the tournament. Well, that may be true but it's not that simple. The top online tournament players are successful not because they consistently cash more times than the rest of us, but because they cash deeper than the rest of us at a higher frequency. That may sound like the same thing, but for one subtle difference. The only way to make any money in a tournament is to make the final table and the only way to make a lot of money is to finish in the top 3. Anything less and you only make a few buyins. Variance in MTTs is very high. If you only play to cash, you'll be a losing player because you can't sneak into the money enough times to make up for all the times you bust without making a dime. The goal of successful tournament players is not to stay alive until they make the money but to amass enough chips to be able to make a deep run. This is why you see them bust out so early a lot of times. Volume is the key to their success. If they enter a tournament and bust out in the first few levels, they just fire up another tournament. Their skill isn't their ability to make it into the money but their ability to accumulate chips and manage those chips. Give these guys a big stack and they will take it far past the first few payout levels. So, back to the multi-accounting. Entering a tournament more than once allows a player to increase their volume without having to find more tournaments to enter. If there are 100 tournaments available in a single week across all sites and a player enters each of them 5 times then that is the same as playing 500 tournaments in that single week. This will increase the number of deep runs, which in turn increases the amount of profit they make. In other words, it allows them to do in a week what would normally take them a month. What doesn't change very much is the total money available in those 100 tournaments. So, if they are getting more of that money due to their increased volume, it means everyone else as a whole is getting less. They are, in effect, stealing from the tournament-playing community. This is why multi-accounting is cheating and is also why you should care.

Another thing that should be of concern to everyone is that it is possible that they could run two or more of their accounts to the last few tables. This is where they would gain an even greater advantage than simply their increased equity in the tournament. At this point, it is likely that they will have more than one account at the same table. Here they could greatly affect the play at those tables. For instance, they could raise with any two cards from early position and re-reraise from middle position. This would force the players in late position to actually have a hand. They could make other plays as well, but the bottom line is that their accounts would pick up more blinds and steal more raises than they normally would get and be doing it at a time when the chips are much more important. Their chances of running their accounts all the way to the top would greatly increase, leaving even less money for everyone else.

Why Would Anyone Buy Play Chips?

Just saw a post on PocketFives asking this question and it brought back a few good memories. When I first started playing online poker, it was because a friend of mine introduced me to it. I signed up on UltimateBet and, of course, began playing with free chips. I didn't consider myself anywhere near good enough to play for real money and, to be honest, was a little frightened of playing a game against people I couldn't see. The fear soon went away and was replaced by frustration. I wasn't frustrated because I couldn't play the game; I was frustrated because I couldn't find a table where anyone was serious. As I'm sure you're well aware, you only start with 1000 chips and you have to work your way up. The only tables you can buy-in with 1000 chips are pushfests. You just go allin and see who wins. No matter how good you may be at the game, it takes a fair amount of luck to build any sizable bankroll. Well, one night I finally managed to do it. I got on a table and won a few rounds of bingo. Next thing I know, I have about 20k in chips. So, I leave the table and buy into the highest level I can. Over the course of the next couple of hours I managed to turn that 20k into about a half million chips. From then on, I was set. I could play the highest buyin tables and get something that at least resembled a serious game. I got to know the regulars at these tables. We had fun sitting at the same tables, playing a little poker, and chatting. I actually looked forward to it.

So, why would anybody actually pay real money for free chips? I think it's pretty simple. There are a large number of people who like to play poker who simply don't want to gamble (or risk real money if you don't like that term). These people make friends at the tables they play on and see poker as nothing more than entertainment. Of course, most of these players aren't very good. It's hard for them to build up enough chips to play at the tables where the buyin is high enough to keep out most of the riff raff. Once they do build up enough, it's hard to maintain. They go broke quite often. Being a decent player myself, I never went broke once I made it all the way up to the top. I have no idea how many actual chips I won over the course of my free chip career, but it was a lot. At one time I had over 15 million, but I was also constantly tranferring chips to my online friends. Back then, UB would allow you to transfer more than they do now. I don't know if there was a limit, but I would transfer a million at a time to several people a week. I would imagine most of the free chip players don't have a friend who's able to support the bankrolls of their entire little circle. So, instead of constantly trying to make it through the mine field time and time again, why not just buy a million or two for a few bucks? It's just the cost of entertainment. At least, that's why I think people do it. Either that or they're just nuts.

Bankroll Management

Well I decided I might give this blog thing another shot so I deleted all of the previous posts and am starting over. Previously I had started to make entries detailing a little experiment I had going where I deposited a few hundred bucks to play the micro stakes and see if I could work my way up the ladder building my bankroll as I go. I did very well for a while, but then I went back to my old ways of playing 1/2 NL and 2/4 NL. As you might have guessed I went broke because I only had a few buyins in my account. So this time around I'm not going to keep a session by session log, but just write about topics that have my interest at the moment.

I thought bankroll management might be a good topic for my first post since I've gone broke several times online. If you don't know what bankroll management is then let me refer you to Fox's article posted on PocketFives. I'm not going into any of the details as you can read it yourself, but basically it's considered the final word on how to not go broke (assuming you're a poker player and not a donk).

As with many things, I think this is something that a lot of people spout off about without any real thought about what Fox is saying in his article. You see posts on poker forums all the time where someone asks for advice and mentions how much is in their account and what stakes they are playing. It never fails that every other person responding to the post says to stay within your bankroll. Like that's the be all, end all of what the OP needs to do in order to improve his game. Fox is clearly stating what he believes to be proper bankroll requirements for someone who fully intends to never go broke. It's an insurance policy for those who simply can't afford to lose their playing stakes. It really doesn't apply to many of us because we're just casual players. If I deposit and win, I take it out and use it for something. If I lose, I just deposit again next time I want to play. That's just how I do things. I'm not looking to build up enough to play 50/100 NL.

So the point I want to make is that managing a bankroll properly isn't for everyone. If you're serious about online poker, then yes, please follow Fox's advice. I agree with him almost 100%. But if you're like me and just like to play every now and then, don't worry about it. If you've got an extra $50 you want to throw on your favorite site, don't think you have to play the penny blind tables. Buy in once at 50max and have some fun!