What Is PFR in Poker?

PFR is preflop raise percentage: the share of hands in which a player puts in a raise before the flop instead of calling or folding. Every tracker prints it beside VPIP, and the pair describes an entire preflop style in two numbers. A 24/20 regular and a 24/6 limper enter the same number of pots and play nothing alike.

What a normal PFR looks like

A raise-or-fold strategy in 6-max lands somewhere near 18-22%. That number falls out of the seats rather than any single decision: the BTN opens roughly 40-45% of hands, UTG roughly 15-17%, and the seats between them slide across that range. Full ring sits a few points lower because more players are left to act behind you.

Player type	VPIP / PFR	What they are doing
6-max regular	24 / 20	Raises or folds, adjusts by seat
Nit	13 / 11	Premiums only, surrenders the rest
Loose-passive	42 / 6	Limps and calls, raises almost never
Maniac	45 / 38	Raises everything, no filter
Full-ring regular	17 / 14	Same style, tighter by seat count

The gap is the real read

Gap = VPIP minus PFR. Every point of it is a hand entered without a raise.

A gap under 4 points belongs to someone who raises or folds and rarely does anything else. A gap above 10 points means limps and cold-calls make up a third of the hands they play, and those hands arrive with no initiative and no fold equity.

VPIP tells you how many pots a player enters. PFR tells you how many of them they entered while telling a story.

Using it in a real hand

A 42/6 opponent raises from UTG. Six percent spread across every seat means the UTG slice of that raising range is tiny — QQ+ and AK, near enough — so A♥J♦ on the BTN is a fold rather than a three-bet, and floating them light postflop is throwing money away.

Change one number and the hand flips. A 22/19 regular making the identical raise is opening 15-17% of hands, A♥J♦ is ahead of the bottom half of that, and you have a routine call or three-bet depending on stack depth. Same cards, same action, opposite answer.

Fixing your own number

Repair the gap before you chase the headline figure. The solver-built preflop charts give you a raise-or-fold baseline for every seat, and a few thousand hands played to them drags your PFR into the healthy band without you aiming at it.

If your gap stays above 5 points after that, the leak is usually blind defence. Flat-calling a BTN open with K♠9♠ from the SB puts 2.5bb in out of position with no initiative and no way to win the pot unimproved — fold it or three-bet it, but stop paying to see flops you cannot fight for.