Winrate climbs the WWVP ladder, step by step

Median EV loss, bb/100 post-rake, by Won-When-VPIP bracket · four rooms combined

0%5%10%15%20%25%30%WWVP < 48WWVP < 48 · 28.9% bb/100 lost28.9%48–5148–51 · 21.5% bb/100 lost21.5%51–5451–54 · 16.9% bb/100 lost16.9%54–5754–57 · 10.8% bb/100 lost10.8%57–6057–60 · 4.5% bb/100 lost4.5%60–6360–63 · 2.1% bb/100 lost2.1%WWVP ≥ 63WWVP ≥ 63 · 1.3% bb/100 lost1.3%
A perfect staircase — no bracket breaks the order. Below 48, players lose 29 bb/100 and only 2% of them beat the game. Above 63, the median player loses just the rake, and 45% are outright winners. No other single number we measured sorts the entire population this cleanly.
In one minute
  • Won-When-VPIP = pots won ÷ pots voluntarily played, preflop steals included. The pool answers 58 out of 100 — and half of those are won before the flop.
  • Winrate follows it bracket by bracket. From −29 bb/100 below 48 to −1.3 above 63, with the share of winning players climbing 2% → 45%.
  • The best regs own all three versions of it. The top 10% of regs beat the rest on WWVP, on preflop pots won, and on WWSF — and at that level, two points of WWVP separate +11 from −24.
  • It is a skill meter, not a type. It blends stealing, discipline and postflop fighting into one figure — perfect for reading a player at a glance, too blended to define types with.

One bet, one number

Every time you voluntarily put chips in preflop, you have opened a claim on the pot. Won-When-VPIP asks the simplest possible question about your poker: how often do you cash that claim?

It splits cleanly in two. Some pots you win before the flop — everyone folds to your raise, your 3-bet takes it down. We call that half WPWV, won-preflop-when-VPIP. The rest you win after seeing a flop, which is a stat you may already know: WWSF. Won-When-VPIP is simply both halves added up, out of every pot you chose to play. The pool’s answer: 57.7 out of 100 — of which 28.8, half of everything it wins, are won before a single card hits the felt.

The best regs own this number

Sort the regs by how much they win, and Won-When-VPIP sorts itself.

The winning regs are the ones who take the pots

Regs by winrate tier · mean WWVP, preflop half (WPWV) and postflop half (WWSF) · four rooms combined

Regs, by resultsbb/100WWVPwon preflopWWSF
Top 10% of regs+10.960.631.548.5
Winning regs (35% of regs)+4.060.131.747.7
Losing regs−7.058.931.145.9
Bottom 10% of regs−23.858.229.845.3
The top 10% of regs — a genuine +10.9 bb/100 after rake — beat the bottom 10% on every version of the number: more pots overall, more stolen preflop, more won after the flop. And look how tight the margins are: 2.4 points of WWVP span the entire distance from +11 to −24. At equal looseness (both play ~24-25 VPIP), the whole difference between a crusher and a losing reg is a handful of pots per hundred that one of them takes and the other lets go.

The same gradient runs through the whole reg population, not just its edges: split the regs into WWVP quintiles and the share of winning players climbs from 21% in the bottom fifth to 46% in the top fifth — winrate more than doubling across a stat that moves nine points end to end.

Half the winning happens before the flop

Where does the number come from? Mostly from pots nobody contests.

Pots won preflop, out of every 100 played

The preflop half of Won-When-VPIP (WPWV), by player type · four rooms combined

0%5%10%15%20%25%30%35%Reg · AggroReg · Aggro · 31.8% won preflop31.8%Reg · NitReg · Nit · 31.7% won preflop31.7%Reg · PassiveReg · Passive · 30.6% won preflop30.6%Fish · NitFish · Nit · 19.4% won preflop19.4%Fish · PassiveFish · Passive · 17.6% won preflop17.6%Fish · AggroFish · Aggro · 16.9% won preflop16.9%
Every reg type steals 30–32 of its hundred pots before the flop; every fish type manages 17–19 — while the postflop half (WWSF) sits at 43–49 for everyone. Regs enter pots by raising, and a third of the time that is already the end of the story; a limped or called pot can only ever be won the hard way. The stat makes the same point at the top of the game: even among regs, the winners’ edge shows up in both halves, preflop first.

A skill meter, not a type

Of every stat we measured in our player-type study, Won-When-VPIP tracks a player’s actual winrate the closest (r = 0.45 — three times the signal of WWSF alone) while still describing something a player does rather than something he wins. That strength is also its limit: it blends discipline, stealing and postflop fighting into one figure, so it makes a poor boundary for defining types — the type map uses its components instead. But as a one-glance answer to “how good is this player?”, nothing else on a HUD comes close.

Method note. Cohort: 31,315 players with ≥2,000 hands, No-Ante 3–6max NLHE cash across GGPoker, PokerStars, iPoker and 888. Won-When-VPIP = hands won ÷ hands voluntarily played, computed per player from raw actions (a hand counts as voluntarily played on any preflop action other than folding or checking a free option); WPWV counts wins where the player never saw a flop. Winrates are median EV bb/100, post-rake; “winning player” means EV > 0 after rake. Types are defined in Player Types, Measured. No solver output was used anywhere in this article.