Which poker stats are most important?

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Online Poker Sites: Deeper Reviews on Where to Play Poker. You’ve just seen our online poker rankings for the above sites. Let’s now dig deeper into our top four and what makes them really stand out. GGPoker is one of the new poker sites to hit the scene, having been established in 2017. Welcome to Prominence Poker, a game that pits players from around the world against each other-and devious AI-to build the rep, prestige, and bankroll needed to be, and beat, the best of the best. ABOUT CARDPLAYER, THE POKER AUTHORITY CardPlayer.com is the world's oldest and most well respected poker magazine and online poker guide.Since 1988, CardPlayer has provided poker players with.

Our poker HUD software offers a large amount of statistics. Knowing which ones are relevant and important can be overwhelming. If you are new to poker software you can initially ignore all statistics except the essential three poker statistics. Once you have understood how to use the basic statistics, you can add more depending on your style of play, and your chosen table size.

The big three poker statistics (and one bonus stat):

• Voluntarily Put $ in Pot (VPIP)
• Preflop Raise (PFR)
• Postflop Aggression Frequency (Agg)
• A bonus stat: Big blinds won/100 hands.

These three statistics are a great starting point to get an idea of a person’s playing style. They only require 25 hands or so to reliably give a good idea of a player's tendencies.

Voluntarily Put $ in Pot (VPIP)

VPIP in poker measures how often you voluntarily pay money into a hand before seeing the flop. Paying the big blind, the small blind, or the ante is not considered voluntary. Therefore this percentage indicates how often you called, bet, or raised. The lower this value, the tighter your hand selection is. The higher, the looser. Only preflop betting is taken into account.

Good players know to only invest money in the pot when they have decent starting hands. A simple way to measure whether you are doing this is to keep your VPIP at a sensible value.

What is a good number for VPIP?

Simple answer: between 15% and 20%. This assumes you want to play tightly, you are playing micro-stakes, and you are playing on full ring cash tables.

Now the more complicated answer: it depends a lot. If you are still learning to play good poker, then you should be very selective in which hands you play, so your VPIP might acceptably be a tad lower than 15%. The less people on the table, the more hands you can play. If you are on a table full of ultralight players, you can also loosen up. An experienced player who understands the subtleties of the game can get away with a VPIP between 20% and 27%. In 6-max or heads-up, most players have a much higher VPIP. In Pot Limit Omaha, VPIP values will be even higher.

Preflop Raise (PFR)

The PFR statistic indicates how often you have raised before the flop is seen. A high value is an indicator of an aggressive player. A low value indicates a passive player. Good players are aggressive players.

Your PFR has a possible range between a minumum of 0% and a maximum equal to the value of your VPIP. That is, if your VPIP is 20%, then your PFR can’t be higher than 20%. Ideally it should be a little lower than your VPIP, but not much lower.

Poor players and beginners play timidly. They call too often preflop. Good players frequently fold or raise preflop, especially if no other players have yet raised. If you are not prepared to raise, then you should consider folding. Calling preflop just in case the flop is good for you is not a winning poker strategy.

What is a good PFR range?

Between 2% and 3% lower than VPIP. If your VPIP is 15%, PFR should be about 12%. These two numbers in combination indicate that you are only playing quality hole cards, and you are predominantly raising with them pre-flop. In other words, you are playing how most poker books and poker forums say you should play.

Postflop Aggression Frequency (Agg)

Agg indicates how aggressively you play postflop. The higher this number, the more aggressively you are playing. This must be interpreted in combination with VPIP. Players who see very few flops will naturally tend to have a higher aggression percentage because they are only playing top-quality hole cards.

Poor players play passively postflop. They’ll check or call too often. Good players know to play good hands aggressively postflop:

• because players with speculative hands are forced to fold before they get free cards
• because if they hit the flop or have a dominating hand, a bet or raise will increase their return

What is a good Agg range?

50% to 60% is ideal, assuming that you have a VPIP of 15% to 20%. Much higher, and you are probably overplaying speculative hands and bad hands, and bluffing too much. Much lower and you are not playing your good hands strongly postflop.

Leave the bluffing for the movies and for live play. At low stakes online play, bluffing is much less important than a good understanding of the probabilities of winning hands.

Big blinds won/100 hands

The three stats I've presented so far mean nothing if you can't keep your win rate positive. A nice way to 'normalize' your win rate across different stake levels, table sizes, and opponents is to measure how much you won in terms of the big blind. If you are playing at a table where the big blind is $0.50, and you won $20, then think of this as winning 40 big blinds.

If this number is not positive, then you are losing money. The best remedy is to drop to a lower stake level, where the opponents are weaker. If, according to this stat, you consistently win over time, then you should consider going up to a higher stake level.

Adjusting your play based on the villain's poker stats

This is where our poker HUD software gets really useful: analyzing and exploiting opponent weaknesses. Let's consider some hypothetical players:

Tight Tim has VPIP of 5%, PFR of 5%, and Agg of 100%

With such a low VPIP, we can guess that this player folds anything except the very best hands. And with a PFR equal to VPIP, when he gets premium hands, he raises. So if this player raises, and you are next to act, you know that you should fold every hand except the best few hands, such as AA, KK, QQ. You can be almost certain that if you go to the flop, he'll raise postflop. So play tighter than usual with this player. But when you do get a premium hand, and he comes along, you can be sure that player B will put plenty of chips into the pot. Your pot, hopefully.

Passive Pete has VPIP of 20%, PFR of 16%, and Agg of 10%.

This player seems take have a good handle on preflop play. But when he gets to the flop, he gets timid. He is probably going to give you a chance postflop to see the turn and river for free. If you go to the flop with him and raise, there is a good chance he'll fold. So you can play a bit more aggressively both preflop and postflop.

Eddie the Eagle has VPIP of 22%, PFR of 19%, and Agg of 55%.

Eddie has a good all-round balance between preflop and postflop play. Preflop, he plays tight and aggressively. Postflop, he balances between pushing hard with his good hands, and being willing to fold or check with his weaker hands. Eddie would be well-served to move on to understanding more advanced poker statistics.

Tracking your poker stats

Poker players use poker software like Poker Copilot to automatically record their hands. Each hand is broken down into many statistics, which are then aggregated into simple percentages.

Poker Statistics Guide

What’s next after you’ve understood the basic poker stats? Read our Poker Statistics Guide for a comprehensive explanation of understanding and using all the main poker statistics.

Table Of Contents

Be honest, how many of you reading this article have wanted to be an online poker pro at some point since discovering such a thing was possible?

I know I have — and on more than one occasion.

Being able to play poker for a living seems like the perfect job — for someone who loves poker at least. But it's harder than you would like to believe.

How to be an online poker pro? We have a few quick poker tips for you to set you on your way to your dream job.

How to become a professional online poker player in one easy step would be to quit your job and use poker as your sole source of income.

While this instantly makes you a poker pro, it is not advised, not even a tiny amount, for reasons that we'll cover shortly.

Join GGPoker's leaderboard to win a contract as a professional poker player and make your dream come true!

1. Study all aspects of the game

Studying the game of poker is crucial if you want to learn how to succeed as a professional online poker player.

When you think you have learned all there is to learn about poker, you need to study and research even more.

In fact, you should never stop learning because standing still in this game means you're going to be left behind.

Read articles on PokerNews, check out the 10 most important poker strategy books ever written, join a poker training site, or hire a coach. Any edge you can create for yourself will eventually lead to profits.

You can also practice Texas holdem and pot limit Omaha cash games and tournaments for free on the WSOP Poker app.

The games are completely free to play, meaning you can play poker for fun, try new things, play online poker with friends and never risk any of your bankroll.

2. Prove you're a winning player

Remember how we said that handing in your notice and jumping straight into being a professional poker player isn't a good idea?

This is one of the main reasons why: you need to prove to yourself you know how to be a profitable online poker player first.

Many people bag a big score in a poker tournament, or win the equivalent of two months' wages at the cash tables and start thinking that this game is an easy way to make a living.

Wrong!

You need tens of thousands of cash game hands and tournaments (if not hundreds of thousands) to prove you're a winning player.

If you're not a winning poker player over the long term, you'll soon be heading back to your old boss cap-in-hand hoping to be reemployed.

3. Be realistic

Once you've ascertained that you're a winning poker player, it's time to begin trying to figure out how many poker hands or tournaments you'll need to play in order at least to match your previous salary.

Here's where many people fail.

When you have a salaried job, you are usually paid on the same date every month regardless of how productive your week or month is (within reason). You're almost certainly paid while on vacation, or if you're sick.

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Are you really going to sit grinding for 60 hours every week?

The fact you have to go to work five days per week is probably enough to make you get out of bed and go to your job. But what if none of that was true?

You may have aspirations of making $150,000 a year, and that may be possible. But make sure you factor in at least three full weeks 'holiday.'

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You should also plan for being sick and unable to play for a couple of weeks per year. Also, ask yourself — are you really going to sit grinding for 60 hours every week?

Do you think you can make enough money at $0.25/$0.50 to warrant giving up your job?

Do you know how many online poker pros are there who wake up at 12:00 p.m., play online poker for two hours, and then swan off enjoying life to the max?

The answer is not many. And those who do generally don't succeed as professional online poker players for any meaningful length of time.

4. Give playing poker professionally a trial run

Even if you have done all of the above, you should at least give playing for a living a trial run, so you have experience of how to play online poker professionally.

Take a week's holiday from your job and spend the next five working days doing nothing but playing poker (at least you'll be getting paid even if you have a bad week!).

You may surprise yourself at how difficult it is to motivate yourself to play poker non-stop for a week.

Or how after four hours grinding you suddenly lose all concentration.

Or how after losing 15 buy-ins during the first three days you no longer want to get out of bed at 7:00 a.m.

It's best to find out you're not cut out for the life of a poker pro before you take the plunge into playing for a living.

5. Build a big bankroll and liferoll

You have gone through all the previous steps but still think you know how to be an online poker pro. That's fine, but do you have a bankroll and your other finances in order?

Most poker pros like to have at least six months' worth of life expenses tucked away in a separate bank account in case things go pear-shaped.

Dipping into your poker bankroll to cover your bills is a big no-no.

Your bankroll should be larger than a recreational player would have because you never want to drop down in stakes.

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Doing so, dropping down that is, makes it harder to reach your monetary goals — much harder. It's better to be a bankroll nit than it is going broke.

6. Act professionally

Professional poker players often cite the freedom it gives them for playing for a living, but that's not to say you shouldn't have a professional attitude towards the job.

Some of the best poker players in the world are extremely disciplined and in their approach every single day.

You wouldn't rock up to work and put your feet on the desk or lounge around on the sofa with your laptop, so don't do it as a poker pro. How to become a professional poker player?

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Starting acting like one, a professional that is.

Additional Readings

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_{This article was originally published on Jul. 5, 2017. Last update: May 7, 2020.}

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