Understanding your statistics

Bloggers / Matthew Pitt / 29 July 2009 / Leave a Comment

You often hear player, myself included, banging on about their playing statistics obtained through tracking software such as Holdem Manager and Poker Tracker but what do they mean and what is optimal?

There are literally hundred of stats you can look at and use to hone your skills but if you are new to all this then there are some basic foundations you can start with.

When people post on forums they often describe players as a series of three numbers such as 15/10/2 but what does this mean? The figure refer to the player's style, in this case he has a VP$IP of 15%, a PFR of 10% and an aggression factor of 2. Keep reading to find out what all that means!

First up is VP$IP, which stands for Voluntarily Put Money Into Pot and shows exactly what is suggests. Every time you put money into the pot, not including posting the blinds, this number will rise and each time you fold preflop it will fold.

A recent study of 1,790 6-max NLHE players, each with at least 5,000 hands played, showed that the players with the highest median win-rate played between 18.3 and 20.2% of their hands where as players with a VP$IP of 25.3% or more were losing players.

PFR stands for Preflop Raise and indicates how often you are raising the action preflop. Aggression is key in short-handed games and this is proved by the results from the same study mentioned above where players raising 16.1-17.7% of their hands were the most profitable.

The Agg or aggression stat is an arbitrary number that represents the relevant frequency of which you are the aggressor on each street. The more you bet or raise, the higher the number and the more you call the lower the number. In the study, players with an aggression factor of less than 2.18 had a losing median winrate whilst players in the 3.22-3.84 were in the highest winning group.

How often you win when you see a flop is often displayed as WWSF and can be used, in conjunction with other stats, to show good, solid preflop and postflop play. If the number is too low you are likely to be playing too many hands preflop and too passively postflop. If you winning less than 38.7% of the hands you see a flop with then you will likely be a losing player where as the optimal range seems to be between 43.2 and 45.5%.

Another two statistics that go hand in hand are WTSD and W$SD which stand for Went To Showdown and Won Money at Showdown. They go hand in hand as they are usually directly affected by one another. If you are going to showdown too frequently you are less likely to be winning as much but if you are winning too many showdown hands, it is likely you are not going to showdown often enough and playing passively or folding too many hands on the turn or river. According the the study used for these figures, an ideal WTSD range is between 24.9-26.4% and a W$SD is 54.4% and above.

Hopefully this little article will shed some light on the statistics that people band out on forums and in conversations. The next time someone tells you they play a 18/16/3 style who goes to showdown 25% of the time and wins 55% of those, then take note as they are more often than not going to be a solid player indeed!