Poker Calculator Special Report: Understanding VPIP

The VPIP measurement is a commonly used indicator in all poker calculators. The reason for its inherent importance in online calculating tools is that it clearly shows one of the main attributes of a poker player - and that is his willingness to get involved in pots.

Your opponent's willingness to get involved in the play is translated as "Voluntarily Putting money In to the Pot" or VPIP as most online player's know it. VPIP is an extension of the classical profiling scale of poker player's identities where passive aggressiveness and the tight loose scale interact to label your opponent. It's the quickest way to determine your opponent's style of play and when combined with other indicators the VPIP will generally be an accurate guideline for game planning against a particular opponent.

Whenever a player goes into a pot either by calling or raising that adds to his VPIP and is expressed as a percentage of the total hands he has seen. So let's say that after the 20th hand you have raised once, called a raise twice and filled the small blind once. That means you have voluntarily entered the pot by taking chips from your stack and putting them into the pot four times. That means you have a VPIP percentage of (4/20) 20%. That amount is well within a normal playing range of straight up poker, but really 20 hands is a short range to measure.

A poker calculator like Tournament Indicator will keep tabs on yours and your opponent's collective statistics for up to two years covering thousands and thousands of hands. Once you have some data on your opponent though, you will need to know what the VPIP percentage actually indicates as to the player's strategy.

A VPIP percentage between 24% and 30% is generally thought to be straight up, position and hand card strength. You can normally expect a competitor in this range to be either be playing hole cards with inherent strength, position blind steals and position potential hands like connectors.

If your opponent has a VPIP higher than 30% you can assume all the hands above but added to that are connectors, suited cards, any ace, any two big cards and any pair from any position. If you see someone playing even more like 40% VPIP, well it's hard to classify junk but that's what they may be holding.

A VPIP percentage lower than 24% is usually on the tighter side of things and will not be raising to steal blinds, will not be calling with connectors that have good odds to do so, and will only be in a pot ahead of you if he has raised.

For practice, next time watch around your table and measure the VPIP of all players, including yourself. There is really no right or wrong percentage as game conditions may demand a certain strategy, however it's hard to win long term with a high VPIP.

Are Your Tournament Indicator Statistics too Tight?

Question from the forum:

My current history stats from Tournament Indicator are (about 75 tournaments including STTs):

VPIP 16
PFR% 12
AF 2.6
WSD% 6
WSDW% 54

Thanks for any help/comments

Response by Johnny Tropic aka JPContender:

I think you are too tight by a smidgeon. My opinion is that, as you pointed out, you are playing the MTT like the STT. In the STT you have more like 3 stages of gear shifting, in the MTT there may be as many as 10-12 if you go all the way to the final table.

My thinking is that you are too aggressive. For your VPIP and PFR to be so close it tells me you are raising every hand you go in with. The difference is in the sb you might fill or limp late with a marginal for the pot odds of multiple weak limps ahead. Seeing a cheap flop with 44 and 6 to one odds or better as an example. As the blinds climb you may bet out 500 chips preflop on a 100 or 150 bb hand, then have to surrender post flop. Each time you do that you drop a round or two off your M, if you cBet strong there goes a few more rounds. As you get later, you are now short from these aggressive moves earlier.

I would look more for a 15-17 vp and pfr 10-12 then for your early stage, later open up more and pressure or steal when you can from position with a draw hand. For example, raise on button with that K9s or Axs rather than limp or fold it, if on the button or in the blinds, reraise an aggressive stealer and see if you can resteal.

Some people like to see a lot of cheap flops early and set/flush/str8 mine dump anything not hit 4 to it in the flop and double or triple up if they hit it. For TAG I think it's more tight than that tho and look for premium hands early to double up looking only at a marginal cheap if pot odds are given to do so and in CO-BB. Then you go into accumulation mode buying or stealing when you can against the weak.

If you've moved to the top half and above of the field AND half the start field is gone, switch again back to tight. Here you are looking to stack small opponents and weaken stronger ones while avoiding an all out confrontation with bigger stacks unless you have the nuts. Less bluffs and steals, more "sure thing" solid plays and hands only.

This brings you to NTM at which point you again switch gears, if you have a sizeable stack you use it and bully opponents attacking the middle stacks, avoiding the short staks and big stacks without a top hand. The big stacks can hurt you and afford the risk, the small stacks can whittle you down with their desperation shoves and get lucky, the middle stacks are trying to protect and make the money. You can steal from them but not the others.

Now it's bubble play, again a switch, only need a couple people to go, you have a good stack, it should be over in the next couple hands, just protect what you have avoiding pushing all in even with AA at this point. Play it but don't risk it all if you don't have to.

Bubble bursts, it's switch gears again except now a lot of people get loose and stupid, they made the money just shove and be done with it, while others are looking to build to make the final table. If you already have a stack, you should be at your start tight mode if middle and building you should be in the attack/accumulate mode.

This gear changing again goes on as you near the final table just as NTM, bubble play for the final table and it again starts over at the final table.

That is the theory anyway, 4-6 gears and switching between them based on your situation at the time.

I don't know, I go out in the top 3rd the past few MTT's just short the money or way short. Last one didn't even get half way, dang lucky snot with JJ took me out with my QQ in my aggressive accumulation stage, turn a J.