statistics
VPIP, PFR
and the rest.
Six numbers describe most of how somebody plays, and every tracker shows them. What almost nothing shows is the number that decides whether they mean anything: how many hands are underneath. This page has both, and the second one is the reason the first one is useful.
what each one measures
VPIP
Voluntarily put money in pot
How often do you choose to play a hand at all?
The share of hands you put money in with by choice. Posting a blind does not count, because nobody chose that. It is the single number that says most about a player, and the first one anybody looks at.
out of: Every hand you were dealt
six handed 22 full ring 16 heads up 75
PFR
Preflop raise
How often do you raise before the flop?
The share of hands you raised with before any community card. It is always lower than VPIP, and the gap between the two is the real signal: a large gap means a lot of calling, and calling is how you enter a pot without ever being able to win it immediately.
out of: Every hand you were dealt
six handed 16.5 full ring 11.5 heads up 63.8
3-bet
Three bet percentage
How often do you re raise someone else opening?
A 3-bet is the second raise in a betting round: someone opens, you raise them. Low 3-bet numbers are the most common leak among players who otherwise play well, because calling feels safer than re raising and it is not.
out of: Every hand you were dealt
six handed 8 full ring 6 heads up 14
C-bet
Continuation bet, flop
How often do you keep betting on the flop after raising before it?
You raised, everyone else called, the flop came. This is how often you bet again. The denominator matters: it is not all flops, only the ones where you arrived holding the initiative you paid for.
out of: Flops you saw as the preflop raiser
six handed 65 full ring 66 heads up 62
WTSD
Went to showdown
How often does a hand you saw a flop with end in cards on the table?
The share of flops that end with you paying to see the cards. High is the expensive direction: it usually means calling down with hands that were beaten on the turn and stayed beaten.
out of: Flops you saw
six handed 28 full ring 26 heads up 32
W$SD
Won money at showdown
When it does get to a showdown, how often do you win it?
Around half, and that is not a coincidence: it does not depend on the number of seats, only on the quality of the hands you take there. Below that mark you are paying the last bet too often with the second best hand.
out of: Showdowns you reached
six handed 50 full ring 50 heads up 50
Those norms are not folklore, they move with the number of seats. At a nine handed table there are three more players left to act behind you on every decision, so the same hand is worth less and the healthy VPIP drops from 22 to 16. Heads up there is nobody behind you at all and folding costs you a blind every second hand, which is why 75 is normal there and would be reckless anywhere else. The heads up page explains why that game asks for a different player entirely.
One number you will meet everywhere is missing above, on purpose: the aggression factor, bets plus raises divided by calls. It is a real convention, but it has no fixed denominator per hand, so it swings hard at low volume and two players with the same AF can have played nothing alike. We measure how often you bet or raise at least once on the flops you saw instead, and treat anything below 45 percent as passive. The flop lesson covers what taking the initiative actually looks like.
the part nobody prints
A percentage without a sample size is a rumour.
A VPIP of 31 reads exactly as confidently over 200 hands as over 20,000. It should not. Over 200 hands the 95 percent interval around it runs from 24.6 to 37.4, which includes values nobody would call a leak. Over 20,000 hands the same 31 is a fact about how you play.
The arithmetic is the standard one for a proportion. For a share p measured over n cases, the half width of the 95 percent interval, in percentage points, is 1.96 times the square root of p times one minus p, divided by n. Below thirty cases we show no margin at all, because plus or minus twenty points is not information. Turn that formula around and it tells you the only thing you really wanted to know: how many hands until this number is worth acting on.
how many hands, per statistic
| Statistic | Around | Within 3 points | Within 2 points | Within 1 point | Counted over |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VPIP | 22 | 733 | 1,649 | 6,593 | hands |
| PFR | 16.5 | 589 | 1,324 | 5,293 | hands |
| 3-bet | 8 | 315 | 707 | 2,828 | hands |
| C-bet flop | 65 | 972 | 2,185 | 8,740 | flops with the initiative |
| WTSD | 28 | 861 | 1,937 | 7,745 | flops seen |
| W$SD | 50 | 1,068 | 2,401 | 9,604 | showdowns |
Read the last column carefully. C-bet is counted over flops where you were the preflop raiser, not over hands, and W$SD over showdowns. A player with 5,000 hands may still have only a few hundred of those, which is why a healthy looking c-bet number can be almost meaningless while the VPIP next to it is solid.
where we draw the line
These are the actual thresholds in our leak detection, at a six handed table. Two things are worth noticing. The boundaries are derived from the norm rather than typed in, so they move with your table size. And every one of them has a minimum sample attached: below it, nothing is reported at all, however far from the norm the number looks.
| Reported as | Fires at | Severity | Not before |
|---|---|---|---|
| VPIP too loose | above 26 at six handed, which is the norm plus four | medium above 30, high above 35 | 200 hands |
| 3-bet too low | below 4 at six handed, which is half the norm | medium below 3, high below 2 | 400 hands |
| C-bet too low | below 45 | medium below 38, high below 30 | 50 flops with the initiative |
| Fold to 3-bet too high | above 65 | medium above 72, high above 78 | 20 times facing one |
| Passive after the flop | below 45 percent of flops with a bet or raise of your own | medium below 38, high below 30 | 80 flops seen |
| WTSD too high | above 38 | medium above 45, high above 55 | 100 flops seen |
| W$SD too low | below 46 | medium below 43, high below 40 | 40 showdowns |
The strictest rule of all is the one for results rather than frequencies. A losing position only counts as a leak when the whole interval around it sits below the norm, not just the measurement. That rule was written after a player was shown a serious leak on the button worth real money per hundred hands, on a sample where the interval ran from heavily losing to comfortably winning. It was not a leak. It was noise with a price tag on it, and it was steering his practice plan. How the leak detection works on your own hands goes through that in full.
and the whole picture
A rating built from all of these needs more volume than any single one of them, so it carries its own label rather than pretending to be finished. Cash and tournament hands are held apart, because a tournament hand is played at a stack depth a cash hand never sees.
| Label | Cash hands | Tournament hands |
|---|---|---|
| Rough read | under 500 | under 1,000 |
| Coming into focus | 500 | 1,000 |
| Locked in | 2,000 | 5,000 |
| Settled | 10,000 | 20,000 |
Winrate is worse than any of these, not better. Because it is an average rather than a proportion, its margin depends on how wildly your results swing, and in a cash game that swing is enormous: over a thousand hands the interval around a winrate is usually wider than any winrate a human being has ever sustained. The glossary has a page for every term on this one, and the example report shows all of these numbers on a real set of hands with the margins attached. If you want to see where the numbers themselves come from, the import page explains what a hand history contains and the hand history viewer reads a single one back in plain language.
next step
These thresholds, on your own hands.
The same boundaries and the same minimum samples, applied to your history instead of to a table. Including the part most tools skip: saying nothing when there is not enough underneath to say anything.
questions
What are VPIP and PFR in poker?
VPIP is the share of hands you voluntarily put money into, and PFR is the share you raised with before the flop. Both are counted over every hand you were dealt, so they are directly comparable. At a six handed table around 22 and 16.5 are healthy; at a full nine handed table around 16 and 11.5.
What is a good VPIP and PFR ratio?
PFR divided by VPIP is around three quarters for a solid six handed player, and closer to 85 percent heads up. Well below half means you are calling far more than you are raising, which is the shape of a player who enters pots without initiative and has to hit the board to win.
How many hands do you need before VPIP means anything?
More than most players think, and it depends on how precise you want to be. To pin a VPIP of about 22 down to within two percentage points takes roughly 1,649 hands. Our own leak detector will not even look at VPIP under 200 hands, and will not look at 3-bet under 400.
Why does a percentage need a margin of error?
Because a bare number reads the same at any volume. A VPIP of 31 over 200 hands has a 95 percent interval of 24.6 to 37.4, so it is not distinguishable from a perfectly normal 26. The same 31 over 20,000 hands is a fact about your game. The formula is 1.96 times the square root of p times one minus p over n.
What is the aggression factor, and why is it not on our list?
Aggression factor is bets plus raises divided by calls, usually counted after the flop. It is a real convention and you will see it in every tracker, but it has no fixed denominator per hand, which makes it swing wildly at low volume and hard to compare between players. We measure how often you bet or raise at least once on the flops you saw instead, and treat below 45 percent as passive.
Which statistic should I fix first?
The one with the widest gap to its norm that also has enough hands behind it to be real. That ordering is the whole point of the thresholds on this page: a large gap on a small sample is usually variance wearing a costume, and chasing it costs you more than the leak would have.
further in the app
In Pokiq these thresholds run on your own hands, and the screen says so when your sample is still too small to mean anything. Your first import and your most expensive leak are free, with no payment details.
Open in Pokiq →