I took this quote from an article about HEM stats and I was wondering if someone could further clarify what the person meant since i was slightly confused. Thanks

"That said, and just like VPIP & PFR we can’t take AF at face value. AF is affected by VPIP and PFR, so a tight rock with a VPIP of 12% usually only gets into pots with good hands and folds the flop half the time. They may produce an AF of 4.0 by merely betting legitimate hands and never bluffing. However, someone with a 75% VPIP and an AF of 1.5 is extremely aggressive and tells you they are probably bluffing too often."

My main question is highlighted in bold. How can this be? Why would an AF of 1.5 show that villain is very aggressive? Likewise how can a 12% nit have an AF of 4? I am sure it is just some basic understanding of the stat that I am not getting but I was hoping someone could help me clarify this. Thanks

Aggression factor uses the formula "(bets + raises) / calls"

A player who has a very wide preflop range has more weak hands postflop than someone with a very tight preflop range, and so should be betting and raising less often than the nitty guy.

It's also worth noting that AF doesn't include checking or folding, and so someone who only setmines and folds when he misses but raises when he hits will have a very high AF but has literally nothing but monsters in his raising range.

AF is pretty useless imo, Afq is a little better as is W$WSF.. all of which are more or less conveying the same information.

So AF is a preflop stat? I know they have AF for each street but the stat given in the default HUD is only pre? Or is it all streets combined?

Pretty sure the generic AF stat is just postflop, hence the quote in your op about cross-referencing AF with VPIP and PFR

On my hud I have it set up to be the total for all streets. My main use for this stat is that I'm really trying to see if they're really passive. < 1.5 or real aggresive > 5.

If someone is passive, I will respect there bets. If someone is aggressive I will widen my calling range a bit or be more app to use a check raise.

Also 1.5 for someone with a high VPIP is not aggressive. If you have four pots and cbet two of them. Check fold one and check call the other. Your AF would be 2. So that doesn't seem to be two aggressive to me. (someone tell me if I have the math correct on that)

I think high af gives you a better indiciation of the types of hands villains will call with as you can know that their calling range in general is going to be much more narrow.

High AFQ can give you a good indication of whether or not someone is bluffing too frequently. You can start to look for ways to start exploiting this player best once you have some info about their tendencies when checking and calling. If they aren't folding a ton when you bet after they check ( which you would expect if they are balanced ) then you're gonna have to go deeper to exploit them... not very deep, but it's something ya'll can think about. Oh, and you should demolish a player like this if you know what's up.

look at it this way.

Player A (75 VPIP) 1.5agg - so he is playing 3/4 of hands dealt, 1.5 aggression is very aggro because he cant really have a hand that often if he is playing 75% of hands.


PLayer B p(12 VPIP) - 1.5agg - he is way more passive then player A because although the have the same agg factor he is in way less pots.

its the correlation between aggression and frequency that that they are in the pot.

better example.

PLayer A - 2% VPIP 2% PFR - cbet flop 100%, this would seem pretty normal because his pre flop stats indicate he is only play AA/KK/QQ/AK

PLayer B - 20% VPIP 15% PFR - Cbet flop 100% - now this stat is way too high given the amount of pots the player is opening.

Same stat, same value. you need to using it (like alot of stats) in conjunction with other stats to determine their true meaning.