Poker stats offer guide to player types

By Mark Lasser

When I first started playing poker, we used to categorize players along two spectrums. The first was loose vs. tight. Loose players played lots of hands, saw lots of flops and chased flushes and straights when they weren’t getting the right odds. The extreme end of this spectrum was the “maniac.” Tight players had narrow ranges of starting hands and would often fold when they didn’t connect with a flop. The extreme end of this crowd was made up of the “rocks.”

The second spectrum of players was passive vs. aggressive. Passive players could be bluffed easily with any bet and preferred calling and checking to betting and raising. Aggressive players like to get and give action. In limit poker, the aggressive players loved to cap pots and nothing was more fun then relishing the adrenaline rush that accompanies the shove and announcement that they are all in.

If you’ve been watching the World Series of Poker on ESPN you may have noticed a few new stats that are being tracked that are a direct spin off of online play. These numbers are better, or at least, more precise measures of the attributes described above.

The first stat is VPIP or Voluntarily Put In Pot, which is a measure of the percentage of hands where a player puts money into a pot. High VPIP is loose and low VPIP is tight. It’s interesting to see players on ESPN that seem like they are playing every pot with VPIP numbers in the 20s, indicating there’s been a lot of editing.

My favorite tracked number is PFR or Pre Flop Raising. I love this stat online as I’m much more prone to call a player with a PFR in the 90s than a guy whose PFR is around 5 percent. I’ll even consider laying down Jacks or Tens to a guy whose PFR is single digits in the late stage of a tournament. This is also fun to see when they show it on ESPN. Another key tracking figure is aggression. The software players used to measure this has a fairly complicated equation, but it does give a sense of how passive or aggressive a player is in a hand, especially post flop.

The percentage that has helped my game most online — and I wish I could do more than have a feel for it in live games — is the continuation bet or “cbet” percentages and the fold to 3 bet percentages. Today’s young aggressive players almost always cbet and almost always call cbets. I’m not sure this makes sense as I believe it makes them extremely trappable if you can get the right flop and float them to the river. Some otherwise strong players get knocked out by putting their play into fourth gear and never letting up, while their opponent is holding a nut flush or a boat.

I managed a nice trap in my otherwise unsuccessful attempt at winning a satellite seat for the Heartland Poker Tour last month. I knew the player across from me loved to cbet. I had 66 and the flop came 667! I bet small and he raised. I called asking him what he had and he replied, “I have the hand that’s going to send you home.” At that point, I knew he’d keep pushing back and hoped he had 77. I checked the turn and he shoved. I had him covered and insta-called. When I turned over my quad sixes, he replied with some choice words before mucking his unseen cards and leaving the table is utter disgust. He might have preserved some chips had he been less agro, but he’s cbetting behavior gave me the info I needed to get him all in.

Mark B. Lasser is Denver writer and international poker player. He regularly plays in Colorado, Arizona, California, Missouri and Nevada. You can hear him talk about gambling and casinos every Friday at 5 PM on KEZW AM 1430. Readers can send questions and comments to him at ColoradoPokerMark@comcast.net.