My Heads-Up Display Part 1: Preflop Statistics

By Tony Guerrera

Heads-up displays (HUDs) had their beginnings in military aircraft. The idea: to present essential data to pilots in a way that didn’t require them to look down at an instrument panel. Today, HUDs are found in settings far removed from the world of military aircraft-including online poker tables. That is, if you have the proper software.

Some debate exists regarding the ethical nature of player tracking software, but there’s no denying that player tracking is essential for those wanting to play profitable online poker-especially megatablers. Player tracking software provides substantial information relating to players’ tendencies-percentages relating to everything from flops seen to floating the turn (floating the turn is betting in position on the turn after calling in position on the flop and then getting checked to on the turn). Player tracking software packages tend to come with default HUD settings, but you’ll get the most from your HUD if you configure it to give you the most insightful statistics.

I currently use Poker Tracker V3, but I recommend both Poker Tracker V3 and Hold’em Manager to the players I coach. My HUD consists of four lines:

Line 1 = Passive Preflop Play
Line 2 = Aggressive Preflop Play
Line 3 = Flop Play
Line 4 = Turn Play

This article outlines lines 1 and 2 of my HUD. Lines 3 and 4 are outlined in My Heads-Up Display Part 2: Postflop Statistics.

(If you use software other than Poker Tracker 3, you should verify that similarly named statistics are calculated the way I describe them below-don’t just make blind assumptions)

Line 1: Passive Preflop Play

Voluntarily Puts Money In Pot (VP$IP or VPIP): This is the percentage of hands with which a player voluntarily puts money in the pot. Players with high VPIPs generally enter pots with wider hand distributions than players with low VPIPs. Though many HUD-users like to extrapolate VPIP to postflop betting rounds (assuming, in particular, that players with high VPIPs are big fish that will stack off with any two cards), applying VPIP to postflop betting is one of the biggest hallmarks of a TAGfish (a player who thinks tight-aggressive play alone, without any critical thinking, is enough to ensure winning poker). VPIP should just be used to get an idea of an opponent’s initial playing distribution.

As a rough idea of how to interpret VPIP, and some of the other preflop statistics, recognize that paired hole cards have 6 combinations each, unpaired hole cards have 16 combinations each, and there are 1,326 total possible combinations of hole cards. For example, as a first approximation, a player with a 10% VPIP is playing 132.6 combinations. [AA-22, AK-AJ] comprises 126 combinations, meaning that this is a close approximation to this player’s general hand distribution.

To have a more complete picture of this person’s preflop playing distribution, account for the following:

Wiggle room to account for a possible distribution more along the lines of [AA-44, AK-AT] or [AA-66, AK-AT, KQ].
Positional play: players tend to be tighter in earlier position and looser in later position, meaning that you should make appropriate adjustments to the “mean” distribution.
Action that’s already happened: players will enter pots with differing distributions depending on whether the pot has been raised, limped, or unopened.

Call Pre Flop Raise(CPR): This is the percentage of hands with which your opponent will be willing to call a preflop raise. Combine this number with the percentage of times a player 3-bets preflop, and you’ll have a good idea of what percentage of the time a player will give resistance when you raise. Some factors to account for when making a decision based on CPR are:

Absolute position of the preflop raiser: players tend to have less respect for preflop raises that come from players in later position
Position relative to the preflop raiser: good players are more content to call raises with hands like KT when they’ll have position postflop

Folds to 3-Bet Preflop(F3BP): This is the percentage of hands with which your opponent will fold to a 3-bet preflop, regardless of his prior action. Despite this, F3BP is still useful when determining how apt you should be to turn hands like suited connectors, small pocket pairs, and Ax into bluffs by 3-bet restealing against habitual blind stealers. Take the complement of F3BP, add to a player’s preflop 4-betting statistic (covered later), and given an adequate sample size of hands, you’ll also have an idea of how much trouble you’re possibly in when you get resistance after 3-betting hands like QQ, JJ, or AK.

Folds to 4-Bet Preflop(F4BP): This is the percentage of the time a player folds to a preflop 4-bet, regardless of prior action. In lower stakes games, you often don’t get enough situations to make this statistic especially useful. But in games involving light 3-betting, this statistic is helpful when figuring out whether you should consider light 4-betting a particular foe.

Hands Seen: This number serves two purposes. First, since stats don’t mean much without a proper sample size, this number ensures that you’re basing conclusions off a proper sample size. For VPIP and preflop raising percentage (covered later), I tend to require about 20 hands minimum to identify players who are extremely loose or tight, though I’ll begin to make adjustments after only about 10 hands if a player has a VPIP close to 100%. For the other stats, I tend to require at least 50 hands. And though it may seem that you won’t get that many hands on an individual player often, you’ll be surprised-especially if you multitable-which leads to the second reason I refer to the hands seen number: identifying the megatablers as fast as possible. Since the serious multitablers all tend to play somewhat similarly, I know pretty much immediately how to play against them. (note that the number of hands seen doesn’t have anything to do with preflop play in particular, but I need somewhere to put it).

Line 2: Aggressive Preflop Play

Preflop Raise (PFR): This is the percentage of times a player raises preflop. When using PFR to pin an opponent to a distribution, realize that players’ raising distributions are a function of many variables, including absolute position, position relative to certain players, and action that’s happened. Also realize that players with high PFR numbers might not necessarily be blind, ruthless bullies postflop. Just like with the other preflop variables, use PFR simply as a means to gauge the initial hand hand distributions to put your opponents on.

PFR is also useful because, when subtracted from VPIP, you get the percentage of times a player enters a pot passively preflop. Though it’s not entirely accurate to assume that players play the bottom X% of their distributions passively, PFR at least gives you a starting point from which you can deduce the kind of distribution you’re facing when a player limps.

Attempt to Steal Blinds (ASB): This is the percentage of times a player raises when folded to in the cutoff, button, or small blind. This statistic lets you know who the crooks are. Also, by comparing this number to a player’s PFR, you can get an idea of how positional a player is. Take two players with a VPIP of 25 and a PFR of 18 (one of the common VPIP/PFR pairings you’ll see from regular 6-max NLHE players). Player 1 has an ASB of 22. Player 2 has an ASB of 45. If player 1 raises from UTG at a 6-handed table, he’s on a fairly wide range because he’s playing pretty much the same hands regardless of position. Meanwhile, if player 2 raises from UTG at a 6-handed table, he has an extremely good hand, because the only way that his PFR can be 18 with an ASB of 45 is if he’s extremely tight in earlier positions.

3-Bet Pre Flop (3BP): This is the percentage of times a player 3-bets preflop, regardless of his previous action. Since most players rarely limp reraise, 3BP is usually a good indicator of how a player will defend against raises. In particular, the sum of CPR and 3BP is the percentage of times a player will enter a pot after someone has raised (meaning that the complement is the number of times you can successfully steal). When players have 3BPs in the low single digits, you need to seriously consider dumping hands like JJ, QQ, and AK when facing a preflop 3-bet. Meanwhile, against players with 3BPs in the low teens, you should be happy going to war with such hands, along with hands like TT and AQ.

4-Bet Pre Flop (4BP): This is the percentage of times a player 4-bets preflop, regardless of his previous action. In lower stakes games, players pretty much just 4-bet with AA and KK, so this number isn’t of too much use. In higher stakes games, this statistic is more useful because of the increased aggression.

Lines 1 and 2 are vital parts of my heads-up display, but they don’t tell the complete story. To see the information I use to navigate through postflop play, check out My Heads-Up Display Part 2: Postflop Statistics.

Tony Guerrera is the author of Killer Poker by the Numbers, Killer Poker Shorthanded (with John Vorhaus), and Tournament Killer Poker by the Numbers.

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