When you first start using poker software you could find like many more have, that most of the data being presented for you can be a little overwhelming and entirely confusing. So it's best to approach it one indicator at a time. PFR, or preflop raising percentage is some of those indicators that is very significant because it can instantly show you how aggressive your online poker opponents are.

So pre flop raise is rather much straightforward, at least on the surface. This statistic is extremely representative of a player's overall aggressiveness, but it is not the complete story, so lets have a closer look. PFR percentage is just how many times a player raises prior to the flop, divided by exactly how many hands dealt to that player. The higher this number is the more unpredictable your opponent will be.

Now if we return to the Schoonmaker profile grid the VP$IP is represented on the tight and loose scale because it's easy to measure this statistic of how many hands a player plays. But when you're talking about raising — and in this case preflop raising, it effects the passive aggressive scale because this explains how the player entered the pot. For example, if he doesn't preflop raise a lot, he would become more on the passive side. If he preflop raises more than he'd be tending toward the aggressive side. Now if you combine those two scales, that will start to build an approximate profile gauge of your opponent.

Now this is not the entire story of how aggressive a player may be because preflop raising is just that — it's only action BEFORE the flop we're discussing here. How he gets into a hand, whether raising or calling goes directly to this poker computer software indicator.

What exactly does the stat represent anyway? Well a player with a PFR% of around 9% or 10% is probably rather tight-aggressive, even typical player. If you see an opponent with something like 16% or higher then that would be quite an aggressive character. Think about the hands you get dealt when looking at this number. Do you get sufficient cards to boost with 1 of 5 hands? Keep in mind that everything depends on the situation, so the more stats you have collected, the more representative the PFR will be, just like any other stats.

We now know two of the factors that regular cash game players will appear at immediately when deciding to play a hand or make a play against an opponent. Actually, you may frequently read in blog posts or in poker training videos that the opponent is for example 32 -19… At 32 -19 a player would be VPIPing 32 percent and pre-flop raising 19 percent of his hands. You might expect many hands using this player, many being moderate, even weak hole cards played aggressively. Conversely, a 12/6 player who only comes into the pot 12 percent of times, and only raises 6 percent could be very selective in their hands, and then likely ahead of the majority of your hole cards.

Imagine just for an instant, playing without this information. No history, no profile, no picture clues. Well how will you play your AJ against either one of these now? Not too clear regarding how to what strategy to use now could be it? That's why good players use poker software. A lot of skilled players will only look at those two factors in a preliminary sense, domino99 and then when the hand gets more involved will use their poker software to look deeper in to that player's entire profile.

If you just start with those two indicators, VP$IP and PFR% then you can add more as you complement. In fact those two are really all that's necessary at the table, when you get involved with a hand you can start more stats in your poker software to look a little deeper into the complete profile of the opponent.