Poker Tracker aggression question?

[josh3336]

I dont quite understand what exactly the aggression number correlates too. I mean i understand over 1.2 is considered aggressive but I don't understand what 1.2 actually means. Like I could see if it was some type of percentage but these numbers seem way to low to be that.

[OrianasDaad]

It's the number of times a player has bet or raised divided by the number of times they've called.

A player with an aggression factor of 5 has bet five times for every one time they've called (5/1). A player with an aggression factor of .4 has bet/raised four times for every 10 times they've called (4/10)

[josh3336]

so what would you consider a strong number?

[OrianasDaad]

It depends. I haven't been able to achieve really high aggression that I've seen in some of my online opponents. My overall aggression is usually between 2 and 2.5.

Anything less than one indicates a proclivity towards passivity, more than one indicates agressiveness.

More on PT stats, including aggression, in the microlimit FAQ.

[baronzeus]

Aggression is good but being overagbressive is probably -EV. I'd say anywhere in the range of 1.5-2.5 is good.

[theRealMacoy]

hey there josh,

as far as the defining the numbers for the total aggression it will depend on many things:

Are you including pre-flop numbers in ta (which seems to artificially elevate the overall number)?

what population of players are you talking about? Players at different betting limits and different types of games will have vastly different median scores (eg. 6max and full ring).

As far as micro limits go it seems that 1.5 is the generally accepted dividing line between aggressive and passive players (if you are choosing a single cutoff point

There is an excellent general analysis of the population characteristics of micro/small stakes players by Tiburion here (at BTP forums)
population characteristics analysis in order to create PT limit autorate rules

Even if you don't agree with his autorate rules the results of his analysis are illuminating.



Finally as you are new to the forum, many of the questions you probably have will be answered by refering to the FAQs contained in a sticky thread at the top of the beginner, internet gambling, the micro limit and the small stakes forums respectively. Be sure to give these a read through as you will find alot of excellent info. also poker tracker has it's own forum.

another essential practice is to use the search function before posting. many, if not all of the questions new forum users ask will have been discussed many many many times before.

to use the search in this case you could type:
+aggression +tracker -re:
into the search field (the + sign indicates to include these words and the - sign makes sure to filter posts with these words... in this case it will filter the replies and only show original posts).

if you do these things it will both help you find the information you seek and you will avoid getting flamed for not searching/asking an all too asked/answered question.

cheers and welcome to the forum,
the Real Macoy

[skaughty]

I just want to give kudos to theRealMacoy for giving an informative answer with links. Also he mentioned "read the FAQs" and gave an example of a search in a constructive way.

What a model citizen! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[K C]

Aggression in terms of the "standard" formula, post flop bets+raises/post flop calls, isn't really even worth referencing really.

If you're skeptical about this, and there's a lot of people who I expect will be, consider this. What we're really after here is to interpret the meaning of various moves by an opponent, and in this case a bet or raise. So you refer to the AF for this. Here's the problem though. This will be affected by how loose or tight the player is.

Let's take 2 players - 1 very tight but aggressive one, and one really loose one. The tight player only sees the flop when he's got a good hand, and only plays it post flop if it remains good. He rarely calls in fact. Player 2 likes action and will bet or raise a lot, but also doesn't like to fold so he's calling with a lot of hands too.

Player 1 will have a higher aggression, and Player 2 will have a lower aggression, even though a bet or raise from Player 1 is going to indicate strength and a bet or raise from Player 2 is going to indicate much less strength.

In a sense, Player 2 is less aggressive, even though he may bet and raise 3 times as often, but this is going to lead us far afield when it comes down to deciding what to do with players based upon using AF, which actually doesn't even tell us anything useful.

This is just one example but it shows you how unreliable AF can be when trying to put someone on a hand.

With my work with Poker Sherlock where we have a lot more stats to work with I've actually had to write some new formulas to correct this, taking out the bias of looseness and tightness and formulating aggression in terms of a more true indication of bet and raise frequency, so that we can now take these numbers and calculate the average strength of hand that's being played with a given action from a player.

KC

[jpumass11]

The following thread is long but useful for all your auto-rate needs:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...rt=20&vc=1