Common Mistakes Made When Interpreting Statistics from HUDs

By Tony Guerrera

In Killer Poker Online 2, John Vorhaus and I used the term “sniffer” to refer to player tracking software such as Poker Tracker. Sniffers keep databases of every hand you and your opponents have played and calculate detailed statistics that you can use to dissect the play of both you and your opponents. Related to sniffers are HUDs (head-up displays), which take the data from sniffers and overlay it on your online poker tables while you are playing. With HUDs, you can instantly that IBLUFFU sees 70% of flops and that XXXRAZORXXX raises 30% of pots preflop. HUDs can display lots of different statistics. Today, we’ll talk about the two most commonly used statistics from HUDs (VPIP and PFR) and how most online players misuse them.

How Players Misinterpret VPIP

VPIP (sometimes written as VP$IP) refers to the percentage of pots a player voluntarily puts money in the pot. If a player’s VPIP is 40%, that means that he puts money in preflop 40% of all hands he’s dealt. VPIP doesn’t tell you whether a player raises or calls (raises and calls are lumped together); VPIP simply tells you how often a player puts money in. A player with a high VPIP is loose, and a player with a low VPIP is tight.

One big mistakes made by players using HUDs is that they label their opponents as loose or tight using their VPIPs, and they then proceed to think that the loose players are bad and that the tight players are good. Players also make the mistake of extrapolating looseness and tightness across all betting rounds. For example, if a player’s VPIP is 60%, many people automatically assume that this player will be loose on all betting rounds. In other words, players often like to assume that a player with a 60% VPIP usually won’t have a good hand when he calls or bets postflop. Automatically thinking that a player with a high VPIP calls and bets with wide ranges of hands postflop is among the most costly mistakes made by players using HUDs.

Players can be loose preflop but tight postflop. Also, even if a player is very loose postflop, that player might be very passive. If a loose but very passive player begins showing aggression, you must credit him with having a very good hand.

Players often misinterpret VPIP in another way. It’s very important to note that the VPIP statistic listed by you HUD lumps play from all positions together. In reality, a player will have different VPIPs from different positions. Let’s look at my stats from 6-handed no-limit hold’em. My overall VPIP, the number that would display on an HUD, is 34.23. However, if you break down my VPIP by position, you’ll find that my VPIP when I’m UTG is 20.00, my VPIP when I’m UTG+1 is 17.63, my VPIP when I’m in the cutoff is 45.68, my VPIP when I’m the button is 47.16, my VPIP when I’m the small blind is 35.56, and my VPIP when I’m the big blind is 7.83.

By breaking down my VPIP according to position, we see that there’s a huge difference in that range of hands I play in early position versus late position. If you were to assume that my VPIP is a level 34.23, regardless of position, you’d be making a big mistake by including too many hands in my distribution when I’m in early position and too few hands in my distribution when I’m in late position.

The big lesson is that VPIP is a lumped statistic that only applies to preflop play. Players who are tight preflop tend to be tight postflop, and players who are loose preflop tend to be loose postflop. However, there’s a significant difference between “tends” and “is.” VPIP may serve as a rough guideline that you can use to initially dissect how your opponents play, but ultimately, you really need to pay attention and observe how your opponents play across all betting rounds in all positions.

How Players Misinterpret PFR

Having discussed VPIP in great detail, let’s now focus on PFR. PFR is a player’s preflop raising percentage. A player with a high PFR is more aggressive preflop than a player with a low PFR preflop. The PFR statistic is misused in very similar ways to how the VPIP statistic is misused.

First, PFR refers to preflop play only. Players who are aggressive preflop tend to be more aggressive postflop, and players who aren’t aggressive preflop tend not to be aggressive postflop; however, until you have evidence verifying that these trends hold for a specific opponent, using preflop statistics to extrapolate how someone will play postflop is a huge mistake. Hmmm…that sounds very similar to what I said when discussing VPIP, huh? It’s amazing how poker can be broken down into just a few core principles.

Second, PFR, as is reported by your HUD, is a lumped statistic. PFR, just like VPIP, is a function of position. Looking at my 6-handed statistics, my overall PFR is 15.91. However, if you look at my PFR broken down as a function of position, you’ll see that my PFR UTG is 10.36, my PFR UTG+1 is 10.07, my PFR in the cutoff is 33.81, my PFR on the button is 31.56, my PFR in the small blind is 5.99, and my PFR in the big blind is 3.91. These statistics indicate that I have very big hands when I raise out of the blinds. A player assuming that I’m a generally loose raiser will be making a big mistake by playing hands like AJ against me when I raise out of the blinds.

Third, PFR doesn’t differentiate between raising and reraising. In other words, a player with a high PFR might not necessarily reraise a lot. Unless you actually observe a player reraising a lot, assume a reraise means something like [AA,QQ], no matter how big a player’s PFR is. A decent chunk of my profits from playing shorthanded poker online come from people who make this deadly mistake.

The Big Idea

I’m not saying that the VPIP and PFR statistics are completely useless. In fact, when broken down by position, you can learn a lot about the hand distributions your opponents are playing with. However, even if you break these statistics down according to position, you still don’t have all the pieces to the puzzle. For example, VPIP and PFR, even when broken down by position, won’t give you information such as “this player raises every time he’s the button and no one has raised.”

Sniffers and HUDs are useful tools; however, the bottom line is that you really need to know what the numbers mean. Furthermore, even with the numbers, there are some betting patterns that you’ll only pick up if you carefully observe your opponents. When you’re playing online, turn off your phone and your instant messaging software, and focus on every piece of information available to you. Use your sniffers and HUDs when in doubt, but don’t substitute them for using your own powers of observation.

Tony Guerrera is the author of Killer Poker By The Numbers

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