Pro Poker Players

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  • Nov 08, 2020 Professional poker player Daniel Negreanu says: “A combination of work away from the table, study, and practice is just as important as actually playing poker and getting the experience that you do at the felt.” Read on for Daniel’s top tips for becoming a successful professional poker player.
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Which poker stats are most important?

Our poker HUD software offers a large amount of statistics. Knowing which ones are relevant and important can be overwhelming. If you are new to poker software you can initially ignore all statistics except the essential three poker statistics. Once you have understood how to use the basic statistics, you can add more depending on your style of play, and your chosen table size.

This has led to professional poker players being compared to drug dealers, because sometimes your best source of income is the degenerate gambler who's so addicted to poker that he's willing to risk his entire life savings. As a poker pro, though, your job isn't to be the addict's conscience and cut him off.

The big three poker statistics (and one bonus stat):

  • Voluntarily Put $ in Pot (VPIP)
  • Preflop Raise (PFR)
  • Postflop Aggression Frequency (Agg)
  • A bonus stat: Big blinds won/100 hands.

These three statistics are a great starting point to get an idea of a person’s playing style. They only require 25 hands or so to reliably give a good idea of a player's tendencies.

Voluntarily Put $ in Pot (VPIP)

VPIP in poker measures how often you voluntarily pay money into a hand before seeing the flop. Paying the big blind, the small blind, or the ante is not considered voluntary. Therefore this percentage indicates how often you called, bet, or raised. The lower this value, the tighter your hand selection is. The higher, the looser. Only preflop betting is taken into account.

Good players know to only invest money in the pot when they have decent starting hands. A simple way to measure whether you are doing this is to keep your VPIP at a sensible value.

What is a good number for VPIP?

Simple answer: between 15% and 20%. This assumes you want to play tightly, you are playing micro-stakes, and you are playing on full ring cash tables.

Now the more complicated answer: it depends a lot. If you are still learning to play good poker, then you should be very selective in which hands you play, so your VPIP might acceptably be a tad lower than 15%. The less people on the table, the more hands you can play. If you are on a table full of ultralight players, you can also loosen up. An experienced player who understands the subtleties of the game can get away with a VPIP between 20% and 27%. In 6-max or heads-up, most players have a much higher VPIP. In Pot Limit Omaha, VPIP values will be even higher.

Preflop Raise (PFR)

The PFR statistic indicates how often you have raised before the flop is seen. A high value is an indicator of an aggressive player. A low value indicates a passive player. Good players are aggressive players.

Your PFR has a possible range between a minumum of 0% and a maximum equal to the value of your VPIP. That is, if your VPIP is 20%, then your PFR can’t be higher than 20%. Ideally it should be a little lower than your VPIP, but not much lower.

Poor players and beginners play timidly. They call too often preflop. Good players frequently fold or raise preflop, especially if no other players have yet raised. If you are not prepared to raise, then you should consider folding. Calling preflop just in case the flop is good for you is not a winning poker strategy.

What is a good PFR range?

Between 2% and 3% lower than VPIP. If your VPIP is 15%, PFR should be about 12%. These two numbers in combination indicate that you are only playing quality hole cards, and you are predominantly raising with them pre-flop. In other words, you are playing how most poker books and poker forums say you should play.

Postflop Aggression Frequency (Agg)

Agg indicates how aggressively you play postflop. The higher this number, the more aggressively you are playing. This must be interpreted in combination with VPIP. Players who see very few flops will naturally tend to have a higher aggression percentage because they are only playing top-quality hole cards.

Poor players play passively postflop. They’ll check or call too often. Good players know to play good hands aggressively postflop:

  • because players with speculative hands are forced to fold before they get free cards
  • because if they hit the flop or have a dominating hand, a bet or raise will increase their return

What is a good Agg range?

50% to 60% is ideal, assuming that you have a VPIP of 15% to 20%. Much higher, and you are probably overplaying speculative hands and bad hands, and bluffing too much. Much lower and you are not playing your good hands strongly postflop.

Leave the bluffing for the movies and for live play. At low stakes online play, bluffing is much less important than a good understanding of the probabilities of winning hands.

Pro Poker Players

Big blinds won/100 hands

The three stats I've presented so far mean nothing if you can't keep your win rate positive. A nice way to 'normalize' your win rate across different stake levels, table sizes, and opponents is to measure how much you won in terms of the big blind. If you are playing at a table where the big blind is $0.50, and you won $20, then think of this as winning 40 big blinds.

If this number is not positive, then you are losing money. The best remedy is to drop to a lower stake level, where the opponents are weaker. If, according to this stat, you consistently win over time, then you should consider going up to a higher stake level.

Adjusting your play based on the villain's poker stats

This is where our poker HUD software gets really useful: analyzing and exploiting opponent weaknesses. Let's consider some hypothetical players:

Tight Tim has VPIP of 5%, PFR of 5%, and Agg of 100%

With such a low VPIP, we can guess that this player folds anything except the very best hands. And with a PFR equal to VPIP, when he gets premium hands, he raises. So if this player raises, and you are next to act, you know that you should fold every hand except the best few hands, such as AA, KK, QQ. You can be almost certain that if you go to the flop, he'll raise postflop. So play tighter than usual with this player. But when you do get a premium hand, and he comes along, you can be sure that player B will put plenty of chips into the pot. Your pot, hopefully.

Passive Pete has VPIP of 20%, PFR of 16%, and Agg of 10%.

This player seems take have a good handle on preflop play. But when he gets to the flop, he gets timid. He is probably going to give you a chance postflop to see the turn and river for free. If you go to the flop with him and raise, there is a good chance he'll fold. So you can play a bit more aggressively both preflop and postflop.

Eddie the Eagle has VPIP of 22%, PFR of 19%, and Agg of 55%.

Eddie has a good all-round balance between preflop and postflop play. Preflop, he plays tight and aggressively. Postflop, he balances between pushing hard with his good hands, and being willing to fold or check with his weaker hands. Eddie would be well-served to move on to understanding more advanced poker statistics.

Tracking your poker stats

Poker players use poker software like Poker Copilot to automatically record their hands. Each hand is broken down into many statistics, which are then aggregated into simple percentages.

Poker Statistics Guide

What’s next after you’ve understood the basic poker stats? Read our Poker Statistics Guide for a comprehensive explanation of understanding and using all the main poker statistics.

November 14, 2019 By Sourav

Poker is a member of the card game family, which involves serious betting, and is widely played in clubs and casinos. The origin of poker is a top of many a debate as English actor Joseph Cowell stated in his memoirs that the game was first played with a deck of 20 cards in Louisiana in 1829, whereas, R. F. Foster is his 1937 edition of Foster's Complete recorded that, “the game of poker, as first played in the United States, five cards to each player from a twenty-card pack, is undoubtedly the Persian game of As Nas.' Later, many game historians like David Parlett challenged the origination of poker in America as they proved its similarity with a French game called Poque. And now, check out the Top 10 Greatest Poker Players Of All Time.

Top 10 Greatest Poker Players Of All Time

The first top-tier international tournament World Series of Poker began in 1970 and later followed by the World Poker Tour and European Poker Tour. The first poker strategy book named Super/System was published by Doyle Brunson. There are different varieties of poker that are popular in the global market these days, which include games like Straight poker and Stud poker. International poker stars earn huge amounts of cash from tournaments as well as enjoy the celebrity status like any other outdoor games, so here is the list of top 10 best poker players of all time.

10. Barry Greenstein

[caption align='alignnone' width='600'] Barry Greenstein[/caption]

American professional poker player Barry Greenstein was nicknamed 'the Robin Hood of poker' for donating his profit from tournament winnings to several charities and mainly donated $440,000 to the Children Incorporated. He achieved the bracelet of World Series of Poker three times and made it to the final table seventeen times. Barry also made it to the final table of World Poker Tour five times and won the championship twice. Besides live tournaments, he also plays online under the alias name 'barryg1' at PokerStars.

His total live tournament earnings exceeded $7,500,000 as of 2014 out of which he made $2,676,821 from World Series of Poker. Besides his amazing career as an international poker superstar, he earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in computer science and pursued post-graduation studies for a Ph.D. in mathematics. he now holds the tenth place in our list of the greatest poker players of all time.

9. Johnny Chan

[caption align='alignnone' width='600'] Johnny Chan[/caption]

Chinese-born American poker player Johnny Chan dropped out of the University of Houston and moved to Las Vegas to become a professional gambler at the age of just 21. He is famous for keeping a 'lucky orange” on the table in front of him. Chan won the World Series of Poker championship twice consecutively in 1987 and 1988 and also made to the final table twenty-seven times. He became the first player in 2005 to win ten World Series of Poker bracelets. He was nicknamed 'The Orient Express' and was inducted in the Poker Hall of Fame in 2002.

Besides his international poker career, he appeared in a cameo role playing against Matt Damon in the 1998 film Rounders. Chan also appeared as himself in the 2009 Hong Kong movie Poker King. He launched an online poker club called ChanPokerOnline.com in 2007. Chan definitely deserves his mention among the top 10 greatest poker players of all time.

8. Daniel Negreanu

[caption align='alignnone' width='600'] Daniel Negreanu[/caption]

Canadian poker player Daniel Negreanu is the biggest live tournament poker winner of all time with his total prize money worth of $29,750,000 as of 2014. He has already achieved six bracelets of World Series of Poker and made it to the final table thirty-one times. Negreanu is the first player in poker history to be named the WSOP Player of the Year more than once with his award in 2004 and again in 2013. He has won the World Poker Tour twice till now and made it to the final table seven times and besides that, he also made it to the final table of the European Poker Tour five times.

He was named World Poker Tour Player of the Year for the 2004-05 season. Daniel is the first player in history to appear in all three World Series of Poker bracelet-awarding locations in Las Vegas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. Besides his active poker career, he appeared playing against the Gambit as a poker player in the film X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Daniel now holds the eighth place in the list of top 10 greatest poker players of all time.

7. Erik Seidel

[caption align='alignnone' width='600'] Erik Seidel[/caption]

American poker player Erik Seidel was originally the participant of backgammon tournaments for eight years and eventually started playing the stock market and then moved on to the world of poker. He was also one of the group members of Mayfair Club in New York City, which includes many famous poker players like Stu Ungar, Dan Harrington, Paul Magriel, Jay Heimowitz Howard Lederer and Mickey Appleman.

He has achieved eight bracelets of World Series of Poker and made it to the final table thirty-five times. Erik also reached the final table of World Poker Tour five times and won the championship once. His total live tournament earnings exceed $20,800,000 as of 2014 out of which he made $4,973,063 from World Series of Poker which placed him in the second position of all-time list. He now holds his place among the top 10 greatest poker players.

6. Johnny Moss

[caption align='alignnone' width='600'] Johnny Moss[/caption]

Former American gambler and professional poker player Johnny Moss is regarded by many as the finest players of the 1970s. He started to gamble as a young boy and eventually won the World Series of Poker main events three times. That includes consecutive wins in 1970 and 1971. Johnny was the inaugural winner of the World Series of Poker Main Event by the vote of his peers in 1970. He also achieved World Series of Poker bracelets nine times during his career. That placed him fourth overall in the all-time table after Phil Hellmuth, Johnny Chan, and Doyle Brunson.

His 1949 poker game against five-month-long 'heads up' Nick the Greek was the foundation for Al Alvarez's best-selling book named The Biggest Game in Town. That game also often cited as the inspiration behind the World Series of Poker. He was nicknamed “The Grand Old Man of Poker”. Besides, he was inducted in the Poker Hall of Fame as the inaugural member in 1979. He also holds his place among the greatest poker players of all time.

5. Phil Ivey

Pro Poker Players [caption align='alignnone' width='600'] Phil Ivey[/caption]

American professional poker player Phil Ivey is widely considered as the best all-round poker player of modern times in the world. He is often regarded as 'the Tiger Woods of Poker'. He was nicknamed 'The Phenom' after winning three bracelets in 2002 at World Series of Poker. Phil won ten World Series of Poker bracelets and one World Poker Tour title till now in his career. He also made it to the World Poker Tour final tables nine times. He appeared in World Series of Poker's final table a record thirty-one times till now, just at the age of 42.

Besides his career as an active poker player in international championships, Phil also established two companies, Ivey Poker and Ivey League. Ivey Poker is a 'play for free' poker App to compete against Ivey himself and several other pro players. And, the Ivey League is a poker training site. Ivey holds the fifth place in our list of top 10 greatest poker players of all time.

4. Antonio Esfandiari

[caption align='alignnone' width='600'] Antonio Esfandiari[/caption]

Professional poker player and former professional magician from Iran, Antonio Esfandiari, is the face of the United States' first legal online poker site the Ultimate Poker. He achieved three World Series of Poker bracelets and also won the World Poker Tour championships twice till now. Esfandiari held the largest cash prize in the history of poker at $18,346,673. He also won nearly $1.4 million in his first World Poker Tour title at the L.A. Poker Classic in 2004. He now also holds his place among the greatest poker players of all time.

He designed a poker strategy game available for iOS named The Magician's Secrets for Winning Tournaments on Insta Poker in 2012. With his total live tournament winnings worth $26,250,000, he was ranked as world number 14 on the Global Poker Index. Besides his active poker career, he also appeared in several Tv series. And, that includes the 2014 Discovery Channel documentary called All In All Night based on Underground Poker.

3. Stu Ungar

[caption align='alignnone' width='600'] Stu Ungar[/caption]

Former American poker player and gambler Stuart “Stu” Ungar played poker, blackjack and gin rummy throughout his life. He is widely considered as the best Texas hold 'em poker and gin rummy player of all time. He is the only person to win Amarillo Slim's Super Bowl of Poker three times. Ungar is the only player beside Johnny Moss to win the World Series of Poker Main Event three times. He is one of the only three players to win the World Series of Poker Main Event twice consecutively, in 1980 and 1981.

See Full List On En.wikipedia.org

Stu defeated Doyle Brunson in the 1980 World Series of Poker Main Event. And with that, he became the youngest player to achieve that title. Besides, he also achieved the nickname 'The Kid' for that. A 2003 film named High Roller: The Stu Ungar Story was based upon the life story of Stu. Besides, the 2006 ESPN documentary 'One of a Kind: The Rise and Fall of Stu Ungar' won the Emmy Award. He was inducted in the Poker Hall of Fame in 2001. Stu now also holds the third place in our list of top 10 greatest poker players of all time.

2. Doyle Brunson

[caption align='alignnone' width='600'] Doyle Brunson[/caption]

Former American poker player Doyle Brunson was nicknamed Texas Dolly. He spent 50 years of his life playing poker. And during that time, he became the first player to earn $1 million in poker tournaments. He won ten World Series of Poker bracelets. Doyle also twice became the main event champion with Highest ITM Main Event finish. He is one of the only three players to win the World Series of Poker Main Event twice consecutively. Besides, he also became one of the only four players to win the World Series of Poker more than once.

Brunson is also the first of only five players till now to win both the World Poker Tour and WSOP Main Event. His total live tournament earnings exceed $6,100,000 as of 2014. He was voted as the most influential force in the world of poker by Bluff Magazine in January 2006. Brunson was inducted in the Poker Hall of Fame in 1988. Brunson now holds the second place in our list of top 10 greatest poker players of all time.

1. Chip Reese

[caption align='alignnone' width='600'] Chip Reese[/caption]

American poker player and gambler David Edward Reese, famously known as Chip Reese, is widely regarded as the greatest cash game poker player in history. He achieved three Poker bracelets of World Series. Reese achieved the 1978 Seven-Card Stud Split with prize money worth $19,200. He then achieved 1982 Limit 7 Card Stud with prize money worth $92,500. Then, he also achieved the 2006 H.O.R.S.E. World Championship with prize money worth $1,784,640. Reese also made it to the final table of World Poker Tour once, and his total tournament earnings exceed $3,500,000.

Top 10 Richest Poker Players In The World 2020 With Net Worth ...

He was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame in 1991. He became the youngest living player to achieve that honor. To honor his contribution to the game, in 2008 David Chip Reese Memorial Trophy was inaugurated as an additional prize for the winner of the H.O.R.S.E. World Championship after his death in 2007. He definitely deserves the top place among the top 10 greatest poker players of all time.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology students first formed a group to play Blackjack by using card counting techniques and more sophisticated strategies to beat casinos, which they successfully did worldwide from 1979 till the starting of the 21st century. There are many other stars like Phil Ivey, who are charged for using illegal methods like card counting and edge marking. There are more chances of the hall of fame in poker in the coming days as the market of international poker is already going through a huge boom while also adding the online casinos with them. And, we hope you liked our list of the top 10 greatest poker players of all time.

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