VP$IP's and running

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I know you're implying that, given his other stats, his winrate can't be sustained, and so he needs to ignore his success and concentrate on other things. But that implication is far from being established or acknowledged fact, and I would encourage him not to change a thing (well, his pfr is pretty low, but whatever) and come back when he's got some more hands, so that we can have a discussion grounded more in mathematics than supposition and bias.

FWIW, I wish we could magically delete stat/winrate posts that have both winrate and hands < 50K. It gets a bit tiresome.

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The problem here is what I'm going to call the fundamental winrate attribution error. Two major errors come to mind with developing hypothesis along these lines.

The first is obvious. Its a clear error to assume that winrate over 20k hands is even a plausible estimate. If its not broken don't fix it does not apply. It might be broken, it might not, it simply cannot be determined.

The second is a little more insidious but seems just as problematic. A single statistic, or two, or five cannot by themselves explain winrate. There are multiple relationships that interact. You need to adjust your postflop play to accommodate your preflop play. Not only that, but often optimal play is situational. Table image and adaptation simply play a much larger role in shorthanded play. Therefore range may be just as significant as average or is at least crucial in understanding average.

I think the reason why the OP's success is being offhandedly dismissed by so many posters is that he seems clear that he lacks a grasp of all these dynamics.

The question of whether there is an optimal preflop strategy assumes an optimal postflop strategy and is probably not static. Even if you had say a dozen samples of over 500k hands to compare VPIP with, whatever number you derive is till going to be pretty worthless in a short term situational context.

Does that mean that stats are worthless? No, they provide utility by identifying extremes. We can say that 45% VPIP is definitely too loose, and 15% to tight. IMO we cannot employ this same solution for determining an optimum playing style.

[JohnnyHumongous]

29% VPIP is not very high at all for 6-max...