Opponent Types: Knowing the Styles

Introduction

In this Article

• Characteristics of loose/tight players
  
• The aggression factor
• Difference between VPIP and PFR

Loose or tight

The pre-flop looseness is simply expressed by the VPIP value (voluntarily put money in the pot).

VPIP below 15 = Rock

VPIP 15-20 = optimal tight

VPIP 20-25 = slightly loose. Some strong players have a slightly loose style. They are very good readers and very tough post flop. It is acceptable for them to be in the hand more often. I don’t recommend a VPIP above 22, though.

VPIP above 25 = too loose. The looser your opponents, the higher your profit!

Players with a VPIP below 20 are not really fun to play, because you will usually not make big profits against them. Sitting next to them has only one advantage: You might steal their blinds more often and they won’t try to steal your blinds frequently (the steal rates are better to make use of these weaknesses).

Don’t do the mistake to assume that all loose pre-flop players are loose post-flop as well. A lot of players are very loose pre-flop, but play pretty tight post-flop. This is mainly because their hole cards are quite bad in the average and need to improve more than the hands of a player who is tight pre-flop. Give your opponents the chance to fold their hand on the flop or turn. I often meet people who cold-call 2 pre-flop bets and nevertheless fold the flop in position against a single bet. This is really expensive – for them.

Callingstations are the loveliest opponents. They play way too many hands and pay us off with rubbish hands post-flop.

Tight pre-flop does not automatically include tight post-flop (Cp. 5. WTS).

This is the characteristic of a TAG.

This is the characteristica of a rock.

Aggressive or passive

The frequency of a player’s bets and raises compared to his checks and calls gives us a notion of his aggression. Successful players are basically aggressive and like to take the initiative with bets and raises. Regular checking and calling is not really an effective strategy. The aggression factor you can find at PokerTracker derives from the following equation:

AF = (Bets + Raises) / Calls

The aggression factor should be the main indicator for your post-flop strategy (always mark PokerTracker > General Info > More Details > „without Preflop”). Pre-flop aggression is expressed by the PFR-rate, in steal situations by the steal rate. For the average of flop + turn + river, we can say:

Under 1 = passive
1 - 1.5 = „normal“
1.5 - 2 = moderately aggressive
2 - 3 = aggressive
above 3 = very aggressive

Basically, you should try to get an AF of 2 or higher. For a better classification of your opponents, you can consider every single street separately. For instance, there are players who are constantly aggressive while others become gentler on the turn and river, because the cost of a bet increases.

Naturally, you want to play against passive players – people who only know the check/call button. Limit poker has two rules of success in the first line: You try to extract an extra bet from your winning hands while you try to save money on your losing hands. Passive players help to achieve this goal. They don’t play their strong hands strong enough and will anyways pay you off in case you hold the winning hand.

As always: Don’t put all your trust into these stats. They should only be considered in a context together with the VPIP and the WTS (Went to Showdown) values. Let’s say 2 players have an AF of 1.5, one of them with a VPIP of 20% and the other one with a VPIP of 50%. In this case, the second player is way more aggressive because he plays a lot of trash hand aggressively. Next example: 2 players have the exact same VPIP and AF, but one of them has a WTS of 20% and the other one of 40%. The second player participates with twice as many hands in the showdown. This means he bets and raises twice as much. If he would call down these hands, while the other one usually folds his hands, his AF would be smaller. But the AF is the same, so the player with 40% WTS is way more aggressive compared to a player with 20% WTS.

PFR

Your average pre-flop raise rate (PFR) should be between 8 and 12. The exact rate depends on your style, but from my point of view, 10 is way more aggressive compared to 8.

A rate of below 8 is too passive. A call in a situation that should be raised has following consequences:

1. You don’t browbeat the blinds. If you miss the flop, there is a good chance that the blinds hold the best hand even though he was pre-flop underdog.
2. Drawing hands like 55 and QTs will be able to see the flop very cheaply.
3. You don’t force hands like AQ and AJs to fold.
4. You don’t get the initiative with a pre-flop raise. If you miss the flop and so do your opponents, you will usually win the pot with a flop bet if you have the initiative.

A PFR of 20% or higher is a sign of a loose-aggressive player. He has very low raising standards. If you hold strong hole cards, you might 3-bet against these kind of opponents. A player with a PFR of more than 25% can be classified as a maniac. In general, you can 3-bet with every hand that is better compared to his average hand. If you evaluate the advantage of sitting in position with 5%, you might also reraise hands, strength is slightly below the average maniac’s raising hand. Another 2 advantages are: 1. you will force blinds to fold in most likeliness; 2. you have the pre-flop initiative.

In order to find out about a player’s limping stats, you simply subtract the PFR from the VPIP. For instance, if a player has 25% VPIP and 15% PFR, his calling range is between 16% and 25% of the card hierarchy and his average calling hand would be 20%-21%.

Predictability

Players differ in their predictability. I will show two extremes:

These kinds of players bet their good, raise their strong, fold their weak, and call their medium hands and draws. They don’t bluff at all.
They are nice to play, because you are able to choose a perfect strategy against them. But their weakness is only valuable for attentive players.

These players tend to play their weak hands stronger and their strong hands weaker. They bluff quite often when a scare card comes on the turn or river. A tricky player takes all opportunities for a semi bluff. He loves to slowplay strong hands and makes use of check-raises.

Predictability can not be measured with PokerTracker. This can only be achieved with observation of your opponents. In what kind of situations an opponent check-raises and when does he slowplay? Does he raise made hands only, or draws as well? The following situation is typical for tricky players: A raise on the flop, but a fold to single bets on the turn. Their raise was just a bluff.

Strong players are unpredictable in a moderate way. Once in a while, they steal a pot with trash hands. But usually, they play their strong hands strong and vice versa. They leave their opponents in a guessing mode.

Aggressive players are automatically tough to read. They bet a lot of hands of different strength. If a passive player starts to bet, he reveals his strength.

Very weak players are unpredictable as well. They don’t see the dangers on the board, misinterpret the betting sequences, and overestimate their hand. Their actions are therefore tough to read which might catch you some bad beats.

Went to showdown

What’s a good rate for your WTS? If you fold too frequently, you become tight-weak. If you see the SD too often, you either bet or call too much. It is very important for a TAG to estimate when a bluff or semi-bluff would be practicable. Against calling stations, you don’t have to start bluffing.

If you use the VPIP for your post-flop analyses, you make a big mistake. A tight pre-flop player is not always easy to be bluffed out of the hand. On the one hand, a tight pre-flop player only plays premium hands, giving him good outs. On the other hand, many players play too loose after the flop. This has two major causes:

Impatience
Some players are very patient and can wait for a good hand. After minutes of waiting, some of these players simple can’t let go. If they catch a nice starting hand, they want to play and win it! Their patience ends post-flop.

Weakness
This is very common in low limit games. Some people are very tight pre-flop, because they stick to the starting hand chart or some variation of it. But they don’t have a post-flop chart (as there is none in such an easy way) and thus make lots of mistakes there.

The calling attitude of different groups of players can be described like this:
They call AK down to the river even if they should know that someone at least holds a pair. Or let’s say they hold 99, the flop being AQT. They will call down to the showdown, because of the hope that their opponent holds 88 or worse. A player like this is definitely weak. He doesn’t care about what opponents might hold.

The statistically optimal average WTS lies at 34.5%. Players with 40% and more call way too much and are probably callingstations. Anyone with a WTS of 30% and below is in most likeliness too tight and should be forced to fold with bets and raises.

Won at Showdown

A good winning player (see below, “BB/100”) has a WAS-rate in the upper fifties, i.e. 57%. The average winning player probably lies somewhere around 54%. If this rate is a lot smaller, this player is very aggressive. He wins a lot of hands on the flop and turn without seeing the showdown (uncontested). He will loose more hands on the showdown, if his semi-bluffs don’t improve.

Against those kinds of players, you might call some more raises and check/raises on the turn, because quite often they semi-bluff or raise for free showdown. This only counts for middle and high limits. Strength on the turn usually represents a strong hand at low limit games.

BB/100

Assumed that your data base is big enough, the BB/100 rate is a good indicator for your opponents’ strength. Everything above 1BB/100 is good, everything above 2BB/100 is very good (in relation to the limit and it’s players). Anyways, you should be able to achieve a higher winning rate on small limit tables.

Blind Defense

The average lies at 84%.

The average lies at 63%. This is resulting from a gaming style too tight for 3/6. A range of 45%-55% should be better.

As a stealer, you can be way more liberal with your stealing attempts if the blinds fold above average.

As a defender, you should keep in mind not to fold your blinds automatically if you did not hit the flop. A check/raise as a semi-bluff or pure bluff increases the winning rate against TAGs. Another advantage is that you become unpredictable if you don’t only bet and raise your strong hands. Moreover, it is quite frustrating for a stealer to encounter resistance. This will give you the opportunity to get free-plays thereafter. If you don’t feel up to play like this, a higher fold-rate maybe will be better.

Attempts to steal Blinds

The average rate is 27.4%. This is too passive as well. Players at high limits are a lot more aggressive. A rate of 30% - 35% sounds appropriate.

This rate becomes even more interesting in higher limits, because most players play a quite tight pre-flop game, while steal situations are more common. As a blind, you should be up to protect your dead money aggressively against players with a high stealing rate (as they tend to have weak cards to steal with).

Flexibility

If a game lasts for a while (live game or shorthanded), it is advantageous to change the style every once in a while not to become predictable. This requires a lot of experience. Firstly, the transformation is not so simple and secondly you have to zero in on the right moment of this transformation to take actions.

Flexibility does not refer to the time flow. Strong players have the ability to round up their strategy perfectly to the opponents’ skill. If a TAG calls down a maniac, it does not mean that he would do this against a rock or another TAG.

You should respect players who are able to adapt their strategy to different opponents.

Stability

The optimal tight-aggressive gaming style is very energetic and rational. It demands a lot of concentration and mental work. An absence of energy and concentration may lead to the problem that you let your emotions, wishes, fears, and comforts become a big influence factor. Such an unconscious change of style might be the effect of alcohol, tiredness, distraction, or frustration.

As a poker player, you have to develop an intuition of when an opponent’s style changes. This is very important if he has a streak of bad luck or is consequently losing money. If he is very aggressive, watch him closely. You might make even more money with him the next hand.

It might be possible that you have to reevaluate your opponent the next session. If you meet him as a maniac the first time, this does not mean that he always is or will be. This depends on his form of the day and his personal learning curve.

Strong or weak

Besides the earning rates, his style is probably the best indicator to analyze an opponent’s skill. Skilled players are tight-aggressive, while the weakest tend to be loose-passive. In low limit games, moderate strong players can be loose-aggressive or tight-passive as well. Classification of your opponents’ strengths and weaknesses is very important for an efficient table selection.

Databases

The number of hands relativizes the force of expression of these criteria. If a rock gets a run of very good cards, we see him in the hand (even betting and raising) quite often. He seems to be a loose aggressive player.

As a result, we should not overestimate short term samples. Anyways, the VPIP can already show a tendency after 20 hands. Steal-rates, on the other hand, will be precise (to some degree) after not less than 1-3k hands.

For your self-analyses, you should at least play 20k hands. After about 60k hands, you’ll probably get useful results.

Pokerace-Layout

What data material do I need to be projected onto the table? The most important rates are the following:

1. VPIP
2. PFR
3. AF
4. Amount of hands

Additional useful information:

5. WTS
6. ATS – especially in higher limits