Quadman and Hevad Khan

What do these two have in common? Nothing, really, other than Quadman doing things like:

UTG raises, Quadman is UTG+1 with 77 and folds. Board develops KJ7-7-3.
The very next hand Quadman is UTG with QQ and raises. This time the board develops QT9-Q-J.

and then chatting with me about Hevad Khan (a 2007 WSOP Main Event Final Table finisher) and his legendary multi-tabling abilities:

Newspaper article about him

Specifically, when you play that many tables, surely you've got to have a premium hand most of the time, right? Well, me being the guy I am, decided to apply some math to the situation, trying to clarify "how premium" and "how often." I used 40 tables since that was the number quoted in the article above.

The stats on your best hand (of the 40 that you have) at any given time:

11% of the time, you will have an AA
30% of the time, you will have an AA, KK or QQ (abbreviated QQ+ ala PokerStove for all future lines)
50% of the time, you will have a hand in the range TT+,AKs
90% of the time, you will have a hand in the range 88+,ATs+,KTs+,QJs,AJo+

OK, so that's roughly what you'd expect - with 40 hands there is a lot of opportunity for decent hands. But what about hands at other tables? What are your chances of having another big hand at the same time? I'm glad you asked:

1.5% of the time, you will have AA on two tables at the same time
10% of the time, you will have QQ+ on two tables at the same time
50% of the time, you will have 99+,AQs+,AKo on two tables at the same time
90% of the time, you will have 88+,ATs+,KTs+,QTs+,AJo+,KQo on two tables at the same time

1.7% of time, you will have QQ+ on three tables at the same time
30% of time, you will have 99+,AJs+,KQs,AKo on three tables at the same time
50% of the time, you will have 88+,ATs+,KJs+,AQo+ on three tables at the same time
90% of the time, you will have 77+,A8s+,K9s+,QTs+,JTs,ATo+,KJo+ (top 13.1% of hands) on three tables at the same time

That is a lot of playable hands at a decent number of tables at the same time, especially when you consider probably 10 of the tables are very short handed or heads up at any given time, where your starting hands have to relax quite a bit.