HUD Stats and Player Types
Aside from the four default stats - VP$IP, PFR, AF and total hands - I like to keep the ATS, FFB and the FTS stats on my hud, and of course a couple dozen stats in the popup. Stat explanations and formulas can be found
here on the pokertracker documentation page.
Yet again I'm generalizing here, but there are essentially four player types I run into regularly, and of course there are infinite variations and 'in-between' player styles, but I think these should give you a nice guide of what to expect and how to adjust. The numbers I'm referring to are VPIP/PFR, and of course are very general. I'm also going to include some general situations relating to each player style that I think I run into the most frequently.
Type one is the maniac (~40/30 or higher). These players are either shoving their whole stack in preflop with marginal AJ-type hands, or they're trying to run bluffs every hand. The fairly straight-forward approach to them is to wait for a hand and trap them. Limp utg with AA, check your set and let him bet pot or more with nothing on the flop, lead-push with monster draws, etc etc etc. Don't get caught up with bluffing or outplaying them - these guys hate to have their egos bruised and simply will rebluff you. These guys usually don't last long, so just wait for a hand and pray it holds up.
Villain (60/40, 100bb) shoves utg
Folds to Hero
Hero in the SB calls with
K♣K♥
Easy capeezy
Type two is the LAG (~20/15 to 30/20). Now we're getting into the territory where our opponent might have half a brain. They're no longer shoving their whole stack around, but are seemingly betting and attacking every pot they're in. Yet again, wait for a hand and get your money in.
The difference with this group is that they won't necessarily stack top pair with a weak kicker, or TT all in preflop. Just because they open, say %25 of their range preflop doesn't mean their 3-betting or 4-betting range is proportionally as big. They might give in easily to 3-bets, or they might only stack preflop with AA. It's a little difficult to get reads on these guys in that respect without a stat-tracking program that lets you see exactly what ranges they're doing what with. In general of course it's fine to get your money in a little lighter against these guys since on average they'll usually have a wider range, but don't take it too far.
LAG (28/19/5, 100bbs) limps utg+1
He's been floating you and attacking any sign of weakness with big 'scary' bets the whole session
MP2 limps
Hero raises with
A♣A♥ in SB to 6.5bbs
BB folds
LAG calls
MP2 folds
Flop comes
10♥2♣2♠ (pot: 15bb)
Hero bets 11bb
LAG calls
Turn
Q♦ (pot: 37bb)
Hero checks
The LAG will most probably bet here, so we're checking as a trap and hoping either that he'll pay us off with a ten, queen, or a draw when we check-raise. Occasionally we'll even get looked up with 99 and similar hands.
The loose-passive or tight-passive fish (40/3/0.5 or 18/5/1) is a fairly common player type. You should be able to make hefty profits against them by either bullying them or by value betting them with your marginal hands. Make sure you're not bluffing the calling stations. WTSD, fold to flop or turn stats and his general play will tip you off to how far he goes with his hands and you can adjust accordingly.
Folds to fish
Fish (30/3/0.5, FFB %75, 100bbs) open limps HJ
Folds to Hero
Hero Raises 9♠7♠
The fish's high fold to flop bet % gives us reason to raise nearly our entire range and if we get called, bet just about any flop. Occasionally we'll take it down pf, and a good chunk of the time we'll take it down postflop. When we get called on the flop, occasionally we'll improve to the better hand, or occasionally we can double barrel him off of a weak second pair or other hand.
Another key factor in this hand is that villain has a full stack. If we're up against someone with 20bbs we should be folding this a much higher percent of the time. Villain will commit his stack with a wider range of hands (draws, weak pairs, etc) and our play becomes much less profitable.
Then we have the aggressive regular (~17/13). These are by far the toughest to play in my book, and they're usually the biggest winners over the long-haul. They resteal your button raises, float your c-bets, and are generally just a pain in the butt to play against. These are the types you will run into more and more as you move up in stakes, and putting it simply, there's no use tangling with them unless you truly feel you can outplay them. I generally try to keep away from them without a big hand or a solid, high percentage opportunity to play back at them. There's absolutely nothing wrong with avoiding these players entirely - in fact, table selection should ensure you don't run into them very often at all at 50nl and below.
Folds to TAG
TAG (15/12/3, ATS of %30, 100bbs) opens CO for 4bbs
Folds to Hero
Hero 3-bets
9♣10♣ to 13bbs
The TAG's high attempt to steal means he's opening a very wide range on the button, and considering we have position, we can really take advantage of this spot by attacking his steal. We can also float here and make a move postflop.
TAG (15/11/4, ATS of %40, 100bbs) opens utg for 4bbs
Folds to Hero
Hero folds A♠Q♠ in the BB
It might seem strange noting his attempt to steal stat here, but it has an indirect and crucial affect on his range. ATS is effectively a preflop raise percentage for the last three positions (CO, BTN and SB). If the stat is relatively high (read: %40), then that means that his early position raising ranges must be inversely proportional, ie very tight, in order to average out to the PFR% we see. I'll omit the maths behind it for the sake of simplicity, but in general if a player's ATS is much higher than his PFR, then not only will his late position range be wide, but his early position range should be proportionally smaller.
So in our example hand, considering the fact that his range is much tighter than the perceived %11, and that we'll be out of position against a very aggressive player for the rest of the hand, our A♠Q♠ isn't looking so hot anymore, and we pitch it.
The next player type is the tight, nitty regular (~10/7 or tighter). Now we're approaching our bread-and-butter, believe it or not. There's plenty of money to be made playing lags and maniacs, but huge chunks of your profit should spawn from playing your small 'potential' hands. These are the types that can't let go of overpairs or TPTK hands, and stacking them when your pair of deuces hits a set is like taking candy from a baby. Hell, occasionally you'll get them to stack AK on raggy flops like 257 just because they hate getting pushed off of the hands they only get once every 200 hands.
Nit (8/3/7, 100bbs) raises utg to 6bb
Folds to Hero
Hero calls with
2♣2♥
"6bb raise! Shabby-looking baby pair! Fold!" Wrong. These are the bread and butter spots I touched on. A nit has raised to a huge amount utg. He's in effect telling the whole table that he has a big pair, and we want in there with any pair purely for the implied odds. Our
2♣2♥ is obviously crushed by his range, but he's rarely getting away from his big pair postflop, and we can make tons by calling in spots like this and
set-mining.
Nit (8/3/7, 100bbs) raises utg to 4bb
Folds to Hero
Hero mucks
A♦Q♣
Something to be careful of is getting involved with marginal hands like AQo here. A simple way to analyze the situation is to use the aforementioned pokerstove and actually plug his %3 preflop raising range and our AQo into the program, and see what our equity looks like:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0:
34.548% 34.08% 00.46% 19258847 262672.50 { AdQh }
Hand 1:
65.452% 64.99% 00.46% 36721840 262672.50 { 99+, AKs }
As you can see we're about a 2:1 underdog against his range. Also remember if his range opens in late position (ie his ATS is higher than his PFR), then his range is even tighter from early position, and we're even more of an dog. Run with your tail between your legs.
