Out of all the coaches I know, I seem to be one of the few who are hyper focused on exploiting the specific tendencies of my opponents that I observe at the table. Most others seem to stick to a solid game plan that they developed away from the table. I believe in-game adjustments are extremely important in soft small stakes tournaments where players make catastrophic mistakes and are slow to adapt. As I mentioned in last month’s article, one of the primary tools I use to gather this information in online tournaments is a Heads Up Display, or HUD, that records stats based on what a player has done so far. HUDs are great, but they can lead to issues if you misinterpret the data. Here are some tips that will help you avoid some of the pitfalls of inexperienced HUD users.
Focus on Number of Opportunities, Not Number of Hands
It’s pretty obvious that the efficacy of HUD data relies upon a decent sample size. After an opponent plays the first hand dealt to him, the HUD will show that he is playing 100% of hands. We know this is not the same as him playing 100% of all possible hands because it’s not unusual for him to be dealt a playable hand over a sample size of one. However, if it still shows he is playing 100% of hands after being dealt 20 hands, then that HUD stat becomes useful. After 200 hands, you can take that stat to the bank. However, this is not because 200 hands is an inherently good sample size. It’s because it’s a good sample size for that particular stat which makes another tally every time that player has an opportunity to play, which happens in every hand dealt. This is not true of other stats. The one that comes to mind is the C-bet stat.
A sample size of 200 hands may not inherently be a good sample size for the C-bet stat because the player does not have the opportunity to c-bet in all 200 hands dealt. C-betting requires raising preflop and getting called. If a player is passive, he does not raise preflop very often which means he should be getting called a lot less when he does. This leaves him fewer opportunities to c-bet than more aggressive players. Over 200 hands, he may have only had 10 c-betting opportunities, which is not a good sample size. If your HUD shows you that a player c-bets 100% of the time over a sample size of 200 hands, you have to focus on the number of opportunities to determine if this stat is actionable.
This opportunities issue comes with all postflop stats because players do not go postflop on every hand dealt. The problem becomes worse the deeper into postflop play you go. For example, river stats have notoriously low opportunity counts. The same goes for stats that require a particular action on a previous street. For example, the River C-bet stat has fewer opportunities than the River Bet stat because it requires the player to have bet the turn in order to have the opportunity for a continuation of his aggression from the previous street. The River Bet stat includes these hands as well as other hands where the player did not bet on the previous street.
Preflop Stats are the Most Reliable
Unlike postflop stats, preflop stats converge over a smaller sample size because there is an opportunity for preflop decisions in almost every hand. The stats I find the most useful are as follows.
VPIP |
Voluntarily Put In Pot |
How often the player plays unforced by the big blind. |
PFR |
Preflop Raise |
How often the player raises preflop. |
RFI |
Raise First In |
How often the player open raises folded to. |
3-bet |
3-bet |
How often the player 3-bets. |
Open Limp |
Open Limp |
How often the player open limps folded to. |
Postflop Ag% |
Aggression Frequency |
How often the player bets or raises postflop. |
VPIP, PFR, and 3-bet are universally recognized stats in online poker so I won’t go into too much detail as to why they are useful.
RFI is important because it tells us a bit more about how wide a player is opening than PFR does. For example, there are some players who only open a tight range of hands when folded to, but they do a good job of 3-betting lite against players who open too many hands. This raise registers as both a 3-bet and as a PFR, but not a RFI because they were not the first player in the pot. If you notice that this sort of player has a high PFR, you may think he is opening too many hands and 3-bet him lite when in reality, his opening range is very strong. This is a spot where the RFI stat could have saved you.
Open Limp is another stat that is extremely useful in soft small stakes games. Do not confuse this stat with the Total Limp stat which includes hands where the player over limped behind another limper. The former indicates much more weakness than the latter. RFI helps us understand the Open Limp stat better because it gives us a clue as to whether or not a limping range is protected. For example, a player who likes to open limp and has a low RFI is much more likely to have strong hands in his limping range than a player who likes to open limp but has a high RFI. More than likely, the second player type is raising with his strong hands and leaving his limping range vulnerable to attacks.
Postflop Ag% is the one postflop stat that converges over a small sample size like the preflop stats because it combines all postflop decisions into one and does not require any particular action from the previous street as long as the player gets postflop in some fashion. It takes the total number of postflop bets and raises and divides them by the number of opportunities a player had to make these plays. This gives us the frequency with which a player plays aggressively postflop and indicates how likely he is to c-bet, raise, check raise, or generally bet when given the opportunity.
Be Aware of Recent Table Dynamics
Given enough opportunities, these stats can usually give you a solid idea as to how a player plans to play going forward, but not always. You have to be aware of recent table dynamics because this is one thing that the HUD cannot tell you. For example, we’ve all seen a tight player who waited all day for Aces, got them cracked, and then lost his mind playing a much wider range than before out of tilt. If you missed the fact that he just got his Aces cracked because you were not paying attention to the showdowns, you may continue to rely on his low VPIP/PFR stats when in reality, this guy may be playing like a maniac now. This can result in you making some tough laydowns that you shouldn’t.
I personally take advantage of this lack of attention in my opponent’s games by switching up how I play throughout the tournament. I’m fairly tight in the beginning because I am focusing more on gathering reads than playing hands, especially when there are no antes in play. By the time the antes come in and I have all the information I need, I start to get more involved almost out of desperation because my stack is starting to approach the danger zone. I use the reads I’ve gathered to profitably get out of line against players who are too weak to stop me. The fact that my HUD stats make me look like a nit at that point helps me to sell the story.
If I get a double to a more comfortable big stack, I settle down right at the time when my most recent HUD stats make me look like a maniac, assuming that it took me a decent number of hands to get the double. Players who are new to the table and missed my early nit phase will have me pegged as a maniac and make calls they shouldn't against my now solid ranges. Admittedly, it’s hard to know when this is happening, but if you pay more attention to the most recent table dynamics than the HUD stats as a whole, you can often pick up on these changes.
The HUD is a very powerful tool that does the vast majority of the work needed to gather reads on your opponents for you. As long as you do not fall prey to these common mistakes, it will help improve your winrate. I hope this article has increased your awareness of how to use your HUD more effectively.
