How to utilize your poker database statistics: VPIP %

One of the most important statistics to consider in online poker is your opponent’s VPIP % (How often your opponent voluntarily puts money in the pot) which after a mere 50 hands will give you a very good idea on whether your opponent is loose or tight, and with a sizable database you will have a near-perfect read on your opponents’ hand ranges.

Some players definitely put way too much credence in their VPIP numbers, and use them to make almost every decision against an opponent. One trick I have learned when it comes to understanding your opponent’s VPIP statistic is to look at the overall average, and have a cursory glance at the extremes.

What I mean by this is that when you see a player with a 34% VPIP this is only half of the story, since some players are extremely tight up-front and looser in the steal positions, while other players have basically the same playlist from all positions_ Obviously these players cannot be played in a similar manner despite their identical VPIP percentage!

So, it’s important to look at a player’s extremes: For instance, if you come across a player with a 34% VPIP over 1,000 hands you can start to take a closer look at their numbers by position. Now I’m not advocating you track their VPIP% in each position, but what you can do is make a note that their overall VPIP is 34%, but from UTG and UTG+1 it’s only 20%, and approaches 50% in steal positions. Or simply put that they are tighter up-front and looser in steal positions. These types of notes are crucial to your success as an online poker player, and can make your decisions much easier -in this case it’s silly to 3-bet this player without a really strong hand when he enters the pot from early position, but you definitely want to 3-bet when they open from late position.

Now most players do not have this extreme of a range, and the lower their VPIP percentage the smaller the gap can be. For instance, if you are up against a player with an overall VPIP % of 20%, it’s highly unlikely that they are playing a 10% range UTG and 30% from late position -a more likely range would be 15-18% up front and no more than 25% from steal positions. In these cases where a player has a more traditional increase in their VPIP as their position improves you get away with just knowing their overall VPIP and dropping the lower end of their range when they are in early position, and adding a few hands to the bottom of their range from steal positions.