[Aaron W.]

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The point is that PFR is not a stat you should look at in isolation, but rather in conjunction with vpip. If I see a player with a good sample of hand that have a vpip of say 23, but a pf raise of 5 or lower i usually make a note of it. This is out of proportion. I interpreted Ed's advice to mean "keep the 18, raise up that 7." He said at least double digits, though I don't think 18/9 is horrible, though 18/11 is closer to ideal.

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This is spot on.

If you start off with the most ABC of all charts, you end up up with a tight passive 16/8 game. There's nothing wrong with that when you're getting started.

There used to be a fair number of posts asking how people can raise their PFRs above 8. I consistently gave the answer that they should look for raising situations more than raising hands. Raising to isolate loose limpers accounts for quite a bit of the extra PFRs. Pot building raises account for a smaller chunk.

If you're playing 16/8, you're already entering the pot with hands that get more than your fair share. This is the reason you've been winning, combined with the fact that you now don't suck postflop. Now if you want to move up, it's time to start making money with those hands preflop as well. If you never played an *EXTRA* hand, but just increased your PFRs (16/10), your BB/100 will improve.

What happens when you raise? You probably get 3-5 extra small bets into the pot. Assuming you're raising good hands, your share of this bonus is probably 1.5-2 SB. Subtracting off the 1 SB that you invested with your raise, you've gained .5-1 SB in that hand. You do this two extra times in 100 hands. You gain 1-2 SB = .5-1 BB. In other words, your BB/100 just went up by .5-1. Granted, this is oversimplified and probably a little exaggerated, but I think this makes the point.

So what hands are added going from 16 VPIP to 18 VPIP? Those extra hands are the MARGINAL hands that YOU should limp. What happens when you go from 18 VPIP to 20 VPIP? You've learned how to play those extra marginal hands and some of them became raising hands. Now that you're better, there are new marginal hands for you to play. This is why I like to give the 16/8 -> 18/10 -> 20/12 progression. It's a learning process.

I left full ring playing 20/12. When I get back after 5-max (where I'm playing 30/18), I'll probably play 24/16 for a while before toning it down a little bit and settling near 22/14. But I'll find out how that goes when I get there.