Take a look at the following 3 players’ 6-max stats, whose stats would you think are a good indicator of a winning player?

 

a.    Player A has VPIP 50%, PFR 36% and 3-bets 14%.

b.    Player B has VPIP 21%, PFR 3% and 3-bets 1.9%.

c.    Player C has VPIP 28%, PFR 22% and 3-bets 7.5%.

 

Player A is what’s known as a poker maniac. He is playing far too many hands, these type of players can make the game exciting for everyone as there is plenty of action going on and at times their style of play can win them lots of money in any one session, but inevitability in the long run they will lose a lot of money as players can simply play their good hands against them knowing that the majority of the time this maniacs’ hands are going to be worse than theirs. 

 

Note that a very accomplished aggressive player who can read the table and game situation well can play a higher number of hands than the more regular TAG style but even so there is a limit to the amount of hands that can be considered playable. One such example I have in my database is a player with VPIP 35%, PFR 27.5% and 3-betting 8%. This player obviously is playing superb post-flop and tempting though this aggressive busy style of play might be to emulate, the vast majority of players will fail at this. In fact, I would say this guy is right at the limit in terms of high VPIP, PFR and 3-betting in 6-max for it to still be possible to be a winner. For the majority of players however, our more typical winning players stats are a safer, if less exhilarating style of play to emulate.

 

Player B has a normal looking VPIP, but his raising is positively cowardly. This sort of discrepancy in his stats is basically a giveaway of the type of hand he could have. If he raises, then it is virtually always with a top hand such as AA,KK,QQ,JJ,AK so his opponents know they can either safely fold all but the very best of hands or perhaps if the implied odds are right, play lower pairs ‘knowing’ that if they hit their set they have a good chance of being paid off. With this sort of weak-tight player chances are he can be pushed off hands quite easily post flop as well.

 

In regards to Player C, it’s worth restating that the stats don’t have to be exact replicas of our winning players, although he is playing more aggressively, maybe like our relatively very aggressive winning player, maybe this guy plays great postflop or perhaps his game conditions are a little different than our more typical winning players. What should be well noted is how balanced his stats are. The VPIP/PFR ratio looks good 22/28 = approx 78%. 3 betting is a little high but it ties in ok with his aggressive poker strategy.

 

So if you are looking to move on from single-tabling to multi-tabling, consider what the stats and not just your winnings are saying about your game. You don’t have to the exact same sort of stats as the typical winning players that I mentioned but it should not be a whole lot different either. If it is and you are showing a profit chances are that you’ve either had very poor opposition indeed or more likely that you have just been running good and you need to work on your game.

 

In Multi-Tabling Part 3 – final preparations we will take a look what additional factors and preparation you need to put in place in order to multi-table poker successfully.