Explanation of the New Poker
Tracker No Limit Full Ring Autorates
New Autorate Rules can be downloaded here (you should save them as a text file to import)
The existing
system
My former system
of autorates (described in the Bet the Pot
PT Guide series 2a) split the players into general categories based on:
Pre-Flop
Tightness (Tight (Vp$iP <25%, Slightly Loose 25%-40%) or Loose 40%+);
Pre-Flop
Aggression (Passive or Aggressive)(i.e. propensity to raise with 7% PFR or more
being aggressive); and
Post Flop
Aggression (again Passive or Aggressive, with a Total Post-Flop Aggression
(PFA) of more than 1.2 being aggressive).
That was 12
categories. We have a maximum of 14 available and so there were also 2 priority
categories used.
One to define
Calling Stations (Loose or Slightly Loose Post-Flop Passives with a Went to
Showdown when Saw Flop% of more than 35%); and
The last to flag
up ABC or ‘Vanilla’ players (Vp$iP 25-35%, PFR 4-9 PFA 1-2).
These were
developed for my own use at about the same time as GT+ came out.
GT+ enables the
overlaying of real time statistical information on opponents at your table (see
screengrab below).
After using it
(and the similar program PlayerView which has now gone commercial and costs
$50)) for a while I had assumed that there wasn’t much need to revisit
autorates as the information given by them as to Vp$iP,PFR,PFA and WtSD was in
front of you anyway. Sure it might save a little time when multi-tabling but
there were more important areas of PT that my guide series hasn’t visited at
all… for reference this is an older screengrab and the stats I now have up on screen are
Vp$iP, PFR, PFA, WtSD%, W$SD%, and hands played. I also have the table average
Vp$iP and PFR yp.
Another Look
Two matters in
the same week persuaded me that it was well worth having another look at
autorates.
First a poster on
BTP (whilst claiming wrongly I think that Tight Tight Passive was a good
strategy) pointed out that Post Flop Aggression isn’t a great indicator of fish
etc. as the PT Aggression numbers entirely ignore folding or checking. They are
just Bets+Raises/Calls.
Exploring the Post Flop Aggression stats in more details I was disturbed to notice a problem with the way in which these work out. This screengrab demonstrates the issue:
This guy has seen 139 flops. He has
check/folded 105 times. He has bet 24 times and raised 9 times. But he has only
called once. He check/folds on the turn and river 83% and 87% of the time
respectively. That is very passive in my book. And yet he is coming out with a
PFA of 8 – not just post-flop aggressive but absolutely hyper-aggressive
(anything over 1.2 was aggressive in the old system). But if you saw his PFA on
screen and checked to induce a bluff or bet from him, you would most likely be
disappointed.
The significant stat that shows his
passivity is WtSD% when saw flop - this is 7.9% (11 times out of 139 flops).
The other crucial stat that defines his player-type is the W$SD% (8 times out
of 11).This is a guy who doesn’t like going to showdown at all but when he does
he has the goods. He is weak-tight not hyper-aggressive.
Generally running bluffs against a
hyper-aggressive player is not a good thing to do. But running them against
weak-tight players is exactly the right move – you want to bet into them as
they will make laydowns.
Now it’s true that, on average, those
rated passive post-flop are probably more likely to check/fold than those rated
aggressive, but it’s crucial that you understand that there is not necessarily
a direct correlation and that you should pay more attention to WtSD% before
deciding whether to check, bluff or how much to bet for value.
Similarly if you hit a flop and want a
player to bet into you it helps if that player is shown as aggressive but a
high aggression rating can’t be regarded as a guarantee that he will do this.
You would need to pull up his actual stats to see how often he bets compared to
checks to get a better read. Don’t forget that you can do this in about 10
seconds in the main PT DB if you really need to (or you could configure PV to
show this info I think – although PV costs $50 and seems to lack the show
autorate icons function so I’m assuming that you are using GT+ for the purposes
of this article).
Oh and on the topic of useful stats you can’t see on GT+
that you might need to use PV or PT itself to check, you can spot slowplayers
by noticing a high W$SD and low folded on river% combined with low aggression.
The 'chasers' (that love to call down when on draws) will tend to be loose or
slightly loose and have a high folded on river% (although to some extent you
may be able to see this from GT+ if a player has a high Vp$iP, low aggression
and a low WtSD%.)
The other issues that I had with the old
rating system was that there wasn’t enough room for classifying players as
anything other than passive or aggressive post-flop (and the boundary-line is
therefore a bit arbitrary) and that there was room for only 2 extra priority
categories – and I had ideas for several more – in particular I had noticed
that players with very high Vp$iP were huge losers and wantedto identify them
quickly for table selection purposes.
In essence I felt that the existing ratings has attacked the problem from a theoretical angle but that we could use priority categories to make them much more useful in practice..
The New System
So have bitten the bullet and decided to drop pre-flop
raise% as an indicator.
This is because
a) it doesn’t tell us much about an opponent's likely win/loss rate
b) if you need to try to figure out likely holdings for a pre-flop raiser
or limper you will look at the actual PFR% - remembering which icon means above
or below 7% doesn't do a lot of good - you still need to glance at the stats to
see if it's 0% or 6 (or 7% or 25%)
c) it frees up more icons - allowing me to split post-flop aggression into
passive/neutral and aggressive and still reducing the overall number - making
those left simpler to remember (while still being good guides to expected
win/loss rates) and lets me add some really useful priority categories.
If you want to know how often you should be raising
per-flop by the way see this link to Aperfect10’s polynomial graphs
for TA’s and sLA’s. The ideal figure seems to be around ¼ of the hands you
play. Personally I will tend to use my opponents PFR’s to put them on likely
starting hands (i.e. if their PFR% is 9% and they limp then they probably don’t
have a great hand and if I have position on them and no tighter players have
limped in I may well raise even with marginal holdings from LP).
Basic Categories
So the basic categories are now decided by looking at the
two statistics Vp$iP and Flop
Aggression (FA).
The 9 basic categories are now as follows:
Loose Passive (fish). Icon Fish.
Slightly Loose Passive (mini-fish). Icon Mouse
Tight Passive (Rock). Icon Rock
Loose Neutral/Unknown. Icon Elephant
Slightly Loose Neutral/Unknown (Vanilla). Icon – Question Mark - ?
Tight Neutral/Unknown. Icon Green Frown.
Loose Aggressive. Icon Taz
Slightly Loose Aggressive. Icon Dice.
Tight Aggressive. Icon Eagle
I have balanced the categories from the data in APerfect10’s huge $50 NL
DB (120,000 hands). As he plays 8-tables for 60 hours/week these are pretty up
to date and what is more he has given invaluable guidance in what is likely to
prove useful in practice.
This means that there are roughly equal nos. of players categorised as
Tight, Slightly Loose and Loose and again a more or less equal balance between
Passive/Neutral/Aggressive. It also mean that no one category represents more
than 15% or less than 5% of all rated players)
As my old categories were based on $25 NL you would expect me to have to
tighten the ratings up a bit for the higher level and I have. They are for
fullish Ring tables (7-10 players) - I don't rate hands with less than 7
players dealt in.
The new guidelines are:
Tight <22% Vp$iP
Slightly Loose 22-35
Loose >35%
For Passive/Aggressive/Neutral
Passive <1.3 FA
Neutral/Unknown 1.2-1.8 (Or FA=0)
Aggressive >1.8
As FA can take some time to settle down,
until we get some sort of aggression rating the player is classed as
‘neutral/unknown’ by default. We also check turn and river and if the rating is
0 the player is also placed into the unknown category. This also means that
there are more neutral player rated at 20 hands than the other categories, but
I don’t see this as an issue (other than to note that the true ‘fall-off’ rate
of neutrals from min. 20 to min. 100 hands rated will be better than it looks
in the tables). Overall post-flop aggression (PFA) is heavily dependent on flop
play. I did originally try testing the aggression on each street but for a lot of players there wasn’t
enough of a sample size to give reliable numbers. There is no particular reason
that overall PFA couldn’t have been used instead – it’s just that I balanced
the play on the basis of flop play alone. I thought that data on the later
streets would be too unreliable in the absence of a huge number of hands logged
and that overall post-flop aggression will be visible for all players on screen
anyway.
Priority Categories
Now for the priority categories so-called as PT checks its database first
for these in the order set out below).
1. Xtra-loose (XL) - 55% Vp$iP or more (these are just cash machines
irrespective of style). Icon is a $ cash bag.
2. Calling Station (CS). The old favorite and still as useful as ever.
Non-Tight, Passive and with a WtSD% when saw flop of > 34% . Icon is a
telephone.
3. Showdown Muppet (wins less than one in
three showdowns - has to win one before rated to avoid 0/1 and 0/2 etc). You
can check the actual numbers using mouse hover over the player – if it’s 1/4
you might choose to ignore it, but if its 2/10 it’s starting to really tell you
something – and that something is ‘don’t worry about going to showdown with
this player’! I was initially worried that by using W$SD we were just catching
players who had been historically unlucky (Main New Autorate
Thread) but my mind has been put at rest due to personal experience (and
many anecdotal reports( of the usefulness of the category. The vast majority of
the time it really does pick out players that get their money in with the worst
of it. Icon is a Yellow Smiley
4. The 4th priority category is a warning signal rather than a fish
finder. It's the Ultra-Aggressive. These guys fire on every street. They
have aggression 2.75+ on flop, 1.7+ on turn and 1.7+ on river.
Many good players are UA’s – see this BTP aggression thread
where the regulars post their PFA stats by street. When I first set the figures
I set them higher, but had to adjust them to get enough players into this
category.
You could check their WtSD$% to see how likely they are to lay down to a
re-raise or if bet at. You might also check there W$SD to see if they are
verging on showdown muppethood, but if the rest of their stats look decent, it
best just to stay from these players without a monster hand. There are easier
targets… Icon is a bomb
5. Weak-Tight. Weak tight is basically a
category of people who don’t like to see the flop all the way down to showdown.
Basically they fold a lot. They see less than 13% of flops through to showdown.
Overall it is a marginally losing category but it does contain players who are
very canny and know when they have the best of it. Some of these players are
the biggest winners in the game. Icon is a Yellow Exclamation Mark
One issue with WT is that it is one category trying to
indicate 2 things
1st someone who is liable to fold if bet at on flop
2nd someone who is likely to have the goods if it gets to showdown
You can see why low WtSD% is indicative of both to some extent. We would
like to split this category into 'good WT players' and 'bad./weak ones' but we
don't have an extra category free.. 
For the moment what I am doing is having W$SD as one of the stats
permanently on display and being sure to check it when I see the WT icon. Then
I know what type of WT player we are playing with.
If you want to make the icon indicative of just the winning WT Players you
can use the following rule instead (which was AP10's original suggestion)::
Went To Showdown % is less than or equal to 18.00
Won $ At Showdown % is between 65.00 and 99.00
Personally think there is a strong case for pushing the W$SD figure up to
67% here so you don't get a lot of 2/3 players rated in here.
Here is the category analysis table for these autorates based on AP10’s big DB.
AP10’s own stats have been ignored but of course he is a winning player
(+6.2PTBB/100) so he will be taking some extra money off the players listed in
his DB (they are played hands rather than datamined).
They are rated for minimum 20, 100 and 300 hands played:
|
Category |
XL |
CS |
SM |
UA |
WT |
TA |
sLA |
LA |
TP |
sLP |
LP |
TN |
sLN |
LN |
Tot. |
20 - PTBB/100
|
-29.4 |
-16.6 |
-45.3 |
+6 |
-2.2 |
+4.3 |
+6.2 |
+3.4 |
-1.5 |
-1.6 |
-9.2 |
+4.5 |
+4.1 |
+1 |
-3.25 |
|
20 – No. & % players |
1818 |
923 |
1042 |
569 |
1401 |
391 |
679 (4.5%) |
603 |
720 |
800 (5.3%) |
876 |
1860 |
1909 |
1490 (9.9%) |
15,083 (100%) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
100.PTBB/100 |
-17.4 |
-9.5 |
-33.5 |
+6.2 |
-2.2 |
+4.4 |
+6.2 |
+1.2 |
-0.1 |
+0.7 |
-7.4 |
+5.1 |
+4.5 |
+0.7 |
+0.6 |
|
100 - No. & % players |
249 |
129 |
246 |
365 |
268 |
305 (7.4) |
427 (10.4) |
241 (5.8%) |
206 (5%) |
259 (6.3%) |
242 (5.9%) |
454 (11%) |
444 (11%) |
275 6.7%) |
4110 |
|
Drop off % |
86.5% |
86% |
74.5% |
36% |
81% |
22% |
37% |
60% |
71% |
68% |
73% |
76% |
77% |
82% |
73% |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
300.PTBB/100 |
-15 |
-6.6 |
-18 |
+6.3 |
+2.9 |
+3.6 |
+5.1 |
+2.9 |
+0.2 |
-3 |
-9.1 |
+4.5 |
+2.2 |
-1.3 |
+2.2 |
|
300 - No. & % players |
10 1.4% |
8 |
6 0.9% |
108 |
18 |
113 16.2% |
89 12.8% |
26 3.7% |
51 7.3% |
48 6.9% |
34 4.9% |
79 11.3% |
78 11% |
30 4.3%
|
698 |
|
Drop off % |
99.4% |
99.1% |
99.4% |
81% |
98.7% |
71% |
87% |
96% |
93% |
94% |
96% |
96% |
96% |
98% |
95.5% |
You will note that 'fish' (i.e. Loose Passives) aren't
the worst losers anymore (as many of the worst LP losers were Xtra-loose (55%+
Vp$iP), Calling Stations or Showdown Muppets). Also those LP’s that tended to
fold far too easily have ended up as the losing half of the Weak-Tight
players). The ones that are left are still quite heavy losers overall but a
table with just a fish or two wouldn't be enough to make me sit down. Similarly
the LA’s left are small winners – but we have already taken the very loose and
those that lose the most often at showdown away.
What you really want to see are the big 3 losers - XL/CS and SM's as
listed above. Just one of them at the table usually covers the rake for
everyone else there. I look to see an aggregate 1.5 buy-ins worth of stacks
under one or more of those icons before I sit down (e.g. one CS with $150+ on a
$100 table or an XL, and 2 SM’s each with $50 stacks would be fine.). Fish do
lose a fair bit of cash and so I would count their stacks towards the ‘donator’
total but only at 50% of their actual stack amount.
Also more than a total of three players rated UA, TA and/or
sLA would make a table less attractive to me.
Other small points to note are that sLA’s make slightly
more per table than TA’s (which makes sense as they play more +EV hands at this
level). However they do have a slightly higher drop out rate (perhaps more
variance or more tiring style to play) and obviously aren’t able to play as
many tables at once.
Drop off rate shows the likliehood that a player rated at 20 hands will make it to 100 and 300 hands respectively..
So of all players rated (15,000 or so), 391 were Tight Agressives and 1818 were Xtra-Loose (Vp$iP 55%+).
But by filtering to show those with at least 100 hands rated we can see that 86.5% of the XL players don't make it to 100+ hands rated, but 78% of TA's do make it.
By 300 hands only 1 player in 200 XL's is left, but 30% of the TA's are still hanging around.
Whilst some players will drop out because their session ends for other reasons (or because the player logging their hands ended his session) this wouldn't affect the relative drop off rate across player categories.
Folks who are losing money or bust out are more likely to drop out and that is most of the difference (there may be a small additonal factor in that tight players are just more patient as so stick around for longer, but you will notice that UA's and sLA's also show a low drop off rate)
So a low drop off rate indicates a sustainable (and most often winning) low variance strategy - and shows TA's, UA's and sLA's as the best choices.
It also indicates just how quickly the 'donator' types bust out and leave..
Higher than average drop out rates are indicated in red,
lower than average ones in green.
The reason for the relatively low drop out rates of SM from
minimum 20 to 100 hands is because the earliest you can be rated an SM is when
you reach 1 in 4 won showdowns –so a lot of SM don’t reveal themselves until
their hands logged climb up - although their bust out rate is very high (not
surprising given the amounts they lose) this only shows in the 100-300 hands
drop out rate.
Similarly as many players will be rated neutral/unknown
initially, the drop off rates are effectively exaggerated for those 3 player
types. A truer picture of the sustainability of their strategies emerges by
looking at the relative drop off between minimum 100 and 300 hands.
Also note how tenacious the UA’s and TA’s are – their very
low drop off rates indicate how strong styles these are over the long haul..
Incidentally of the 365 UA’s with a minimum of 100 hands
played, 155 (43%) would otherwise have been TA’s, 143 (39%) sLA’s and 87 (24%)
LA’s.
New Autorate Rules can be downloaded here (you
should save them as a text file to import)
Tim Rodgers has just spent a lot of time balancing these for
6-max
Six max
rules are here:
BTP thread
on the 6 max rules is 6 max thread
Autorate Rules Begin
Aggression:N
ARI_3 1 X-Loose (Vp$iP 55%+)
1 5 55.00 99.00 Vol. Put Money In Pot % is between 55.00 and 99.00
ARI_12 2 Calling Station
15 5 0.01 1.00 Aggression Factor - Total is between 0.01 and 1.00
3 5 30.00 99.00 Went To Showdown % is between 30.00 and 99.00
1 1 22.00 Vol. Put Money In Pot % is greater than 22.00
ARI_4 3 Showdown Muppet
4 5 1.00 29.00 Won $ At Showdown % is between 1.00 and 29.00
3 1 15.00 Went To Showdown % is greater than 15.00
ARI_7 4 Ultra-Aggressor
16 2 2.75 Aggression Factor - Flop is greater than or equal to 2.75
17 2 1.70 Aggression Factor - Turn is greater than or equal to 1.70
18 2 1.70 Aggression Factor - River is greater than or equal to 1.70
ARI_6 5 WT (Weak Tight)
3 5 1.00 13.00 Went To Showdown % is between 1.00 and 13.00
ARI_8 6 sLA
1 5 22.00 35.00 Vol. Put Money In Pot % is between 22.00 and 35.00
16 2 1.80 Aggression Factor - Flop is greater than or equal to 1.80
18 1 0.10 Aggression Factor - River is greater than 0.10
17 1 0.10 Aggression Factor - Turn is greater than 0.10
ARI_10 7 LA
1 5 35.00 99.00 Vol. Put Money In Pot % is between 35.00 and 99.00
16 2 1.80 Aggression Factor - Flop is greater than or equal to 1.80
18 1 0.10 Aggression Factor - River is greater than 0.10
17 1 0.10 Aggression Factor - Turn is greater than 0.10
ARI_15 8 TA
1 3 22.00 Vol. Put Money In Pot % is less than 22.00
16 2 1.80 Aggression Factor - Flop is greater than or equal to 1.80
18 1 0.10 Aggression Factor - River is greater than 0.10
17 1 0.10 Aggression Factor - Turn is greater than 0.10
ARI_2 9 Fishy (LP)
1 5 35.00 99.00 Vol. Put Money In Pot % is between 35.00 and 99.00
15 5 0.01 1.30 Aggression Factor - Total is between 0.01 and 1.30
ARI_9 10 TP (Rock)
1 3 22.00 Vol. Put Money In Pot % is less than 22.00
15 5 0.01 1.30 Aggression Factor - Total is between 0.01 and 1.30
ARI_13 11 sLP
15 5 0.01 1.30 Aggression Factor - Total is between 0.01 and 1.30
1 5 22.00 35.00 Vol. Put Money In Pot % is between 22.00 and 35.00
ARI_5 0 T N/unknown
1 3 22.00 Vol. Put Money In Pot % is less than 22.00
ARI_11 0 sL N/unknown
1 5 22.00 35.00 Vol. Put Money In Pot % is between 22.00 and 35.00
ARI_14 0 L N/unknown
1 5 35.00 99.00 Vol. Put Money In Pot % is between 35.00 and 99.00
Autorate Rules End
This article and new autorate
rules copyright Andy McNish 2005
The author asserts his moral
rights including the right to be identified as the author of these works.
Permission
granted for non-commercial use of rules worldwide.
Permission granted for publication of this article and rules on bet-the-pot website.