10k posts: Aggression factor, VPIP and YOU! How to relate the 3

[mason55]

Seems like people are constantly misunderstanding aggression factor around here. Hopefully this can clear some stuff up.

What is AF

If you look at what aggression factor is in PokerTracker you'll see that it's:

(Raise % + Bet %)
----------------
(Call %)


It's the ratio of the amount of time that a player is aggressive vs the amount of time that he's passive. It's a pretty simple concept but it's easy to misunderstand and misapply.

How to use AF?

Aggression factor is a unit-less ratio. It's not that useful without some other information. Just like most other things in poker, it's almost always situation and player dependent, the only exception being a player with an AF of 0.

For example, if someone's aggression factor is 0 over 100 hands we can assume he's pretty passive. He's never bet or raised, only called and folded. If he WERE to suddenly raise us we'd be scared.

Now let's see how AF affects our everyday decisions.

Take 2 players. A 50VPIP and an 18VPIP. Think about the approximate handranges that they're seeing a flop with.

50VPIP (fish):
{22+,A2s+,K2s+,Q2s+,J4s+,T6s+,96s+,86s+,76s,65s,A2 o+,K5o+,Q7o+,J7o+,T8o+,98o}

18VPIP (TAG):
{22+,A5s+,K9s+,Q9s+,J9s+,ATo+,KJo+,QJo}

Now think for a second about how each of those hand ranges hits the flop. The TAG is going to be making a lot of top pair, good kicker hands, as well as sets and combo draws. The fish is going to be making a lot of top pair bad kicker and midpair type hands.

Say these players have a flop distribution (just guessing here)

Fish
----
10% top pair
10% middle pair
10% bottom pair
8% flush draw
1% set
1% combo draw
60% air

TAG
----
20% top pair
8% mid pair
2% bottom pair
8% flush draw
1% set
1% combo draw
60% air

Let's look at what happens when you bet into them

TAG
----
Raise: Combo draw (1%), set(1%), flush draw (8%), top pair (20%) = 30%
Call: Bottom pair (2%), mid pair (8%) = 10%
Fold: Air

Fish
----
Raise: Combo draw (1%), set(1%), flush draw (8%), top pair (10%), mid pair (10%) = 30%
Call: Bottom pair (10%) = 10%
Fold: Air


These 2 players have the exact same AF (3) but you can see that the fish is way more "aggressive." His range when he raises you on the flop is weaker than the TAGs because his starting hand range is weaker.


Limitations of AF

If you look at the AF forumla, you'll realize that it doesn't include fold %. This is a pretty big limitation of AF and one that people seem to forget about. Let's change the above example a little.

TAG
----
Raise: Combo draw (1%), set(1%), flush draw (8%), top pair (14%) = 24%
Call: Some mid pair (2%), some top pair (6%) = 8%
Fold: Bottom pair (2%), some mid pair (6%), Air (60%)

Fish
----
Raise: Combo draw (1%), set(1%), flush draw (8%), top pair (10%), mid pair (10%) = 30%
Call: Bottom pair (10%) = 10%
Fold: Air

The fish's actions haven't changed, but we've had the TAG fold some of his weaker made hands and slow down a little with his top pair hands. This is probably closer to a real distribution. Notice that AF is STILL 3! Even though we've strengthened his distribution for raising he still has the same aggression factor. This is where other stats on your HUD are going to be useful. Things like "Call continuation bet %" and "Fold to continuation bet %" will tell you whether a player with a high AF is playing raise/fold with his good hands or he's a player who bluffs with air a lot.

Summary

Don't look at a player with an AF of 0.8 and a VPIP of 80 and say "durrr better fold to his flop raise, this guy is passive!"

[cfb1739]

nice post

[prunch]

cleared up a lot of misconceptions, thank you!

[Unknown Soldier]

good post, alot of people don't realise this atnthe moment.

[FishSticks]

Hey nice post.

In your examples, though, you gave the 40 VPIP fish an AF of 3, not a low score of like 0.8 - to get his AF to under 1 we have to change his actions to raise with pretty much only TPTK+. So if a 40/5/0.8 raises you, we're assuming he has TPTK+ then, right?

More importantly, though, raising comprises only a small portion of anyone's total betting I think. Most of this fish's AF probably comes from times he just stabs at a pot, or he calls the flop then bets turn/river when checked to. He might never raise.

Like, a TAG that gets an AF of 3 is probably just getting that from cbetting a lot and folding to resistance. It's probably not from getting constantly donked into and raising a wide range.

[Bookworm]

[ QUOTE ]
nice post

[/ QUOTE ]

[PartysOver]

i think this would be better with a <1 AF example as fishsticks said..

and i was waiting for this to be "discovered" and posted and i didnt want it to be [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] i like reading threads where you're supposed to fold tptk because a 40/10/.8 raises you

[mason55]

[ QUOTE ]
Hey nice post.

In your examples, though, you gave the 40 VPIP fish an AF of 3, not a low score of like 0.8 - to get his AF to under 1 we have to change his actions to raise with pretty much only TPTK+. So if a 40/5/0.8 raises you, we're assuming he has TPTK+ then, right?

More importantly, though, raising comprises only a small portion of anyone's total betting I think. Most of this guy's AF probably comes from times he just stabs at a pot, or he calls the flop then bets turn/river when checked to. He might never raise.

Like, a TAG that gets an AF of 3 is probably just getting that from cbetting a lot and folding to resistance. It's probably not from getting constantly donked into and raising a wide range.

[/ QUOTE ]

You can play around with the numebers a little bit, but yeah, I didn't really touch into betting vs raising. As far as AF is concerned the two actions are the same.

I'm sure that everyone has played with a player who constantly minraises to test you. Other players get their AF from constantly stabbing when checked to. That's all why AF is only part of the equation for getting a HUD based read.

You're right that a 45 vpip 0.8 AF isn't crazy. But I also wouldn't be laying down TPTK to him unless he was like 95% fold to continuation bet. In fact, I probably should have stressed even more that AF is pretty useless unless you know how often he's folding as well.

[mason55]

You guys can come up with some example hand ranges and compare them in this thread if you want, but it's a real bitch to get everything to work out. I don't know what flop distributions look like either, and working how often you flop different types of hands based on your vpip and then setting AF's for all that is way beyond the scope of what I want to do right now. I only wrote this because I'm procrastinating studying for some job interviews [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

[mason55]

orange or aj or frank: put this in the sticky you bastards