Your preflop ranges

VPIP, PFR and the Gap: your three preflop stats

VPIP (Voluntarily Put In Pot) is the percentage of hands where you voluntarily put money in the pot before the flop, by call or by raise. It measures your volume: how many hands you play.

PFR (Preflop Raise) is the percentage of hands where you make a preflop raise. It measures your initiative: how often you take control rather than react.

The VPIP-PFR Gap is simply the difference between the two. It represents the hands you play without raising, i.e. the ones you just call. It's the stat that exposes your real passive tendency, the one that hides the least.

Why the Gap is the true tell of your game

Taken alone, VPIP and PFR are clues. Their gap is what talks. The same VPIP of 25% tells two opposite stories: one player raises almost everything they play, the other calls almost everything. The first dictates the hand, the second reacts to it, and over time, the aggressor wins.

The core rule is simple: your PFR must track your VPIP closely. In a solid player, most hands played are hands raised, so the Gap stays small. When the Gap swells, you call too much, and that's the most common leak in micros.

A telling reference point: the average pool at these stakes shows a Gap that often runs between 8 and 14. That's huge, and it's exactly the loose-passive profile who funds everyone else. Winning players run much lower. LeakLab's triple comparison instantly shows you which side of that line you're on, without needing a tracker like PT4 or HM3, just by importing your hands.

Good Gap, bad Gap: not all calls are equal

Important: the goal isn't a Gap of zero. Some calls are perfectly justified. When you defend your big blind facing an open, you close the action and already have a blind invested: calling is not only correct but necessary. That's the healthy source of your Gap.

The bad Gap comes from excess: calls out of position with hands that end up dominated, hands called out of habit, and above all limps, which are dead in micros. The whole skill is telling the good call from the bad. The idea isn't that calling is bad, it's that calling without a reason is.

What's in the full course

The excerpt above lays out the principles. The full course, free, goes much further:

• The exact target ranges of VPIP, PFR and Gap for a winning player, in 6-max and 5-max.
• Your opening ranges by position and your big-blind defense, with 13×13 grids ready to apply.
• The right opening size and how to raise over a limper (isolation).
• The typical profiles (nit, TAG, calling station, maniac) and how to read yours at a glance.
• How to adapt your ranges to the table instead of copying them blindly.
• How to turn these stats against your opponents to exploit them.
• A concrete action callout at the end of every chapter.