At a glance
- On the HUD
- Flop FR·Turn FR·River FR
- Formula
folds / times they bet and faced a raise- Typical range
35–65% on every street
- Where it shows
- Badge: a bettor facing a raise, and others still in. Panel on your turn: when you raise a bet.
- Trust it after
- 12 chances. Below that the number is faded; reads need 12 chances and a number at least one standard error outside the typical range.
What it measures
FR is about the bettor, not the raiser. They made the first bet on the street, another player raised, and now they choose between folding, calling and re-raising. FR counts the folds.
The raise can come from either side. A player who checked and then raised counts, and so does a player acting after them who raised in position or over a caller. Fold to check-raise is the subset where the raiser had checked first; FR adds the raises from behind.
It isn’t fold vs bet, which is about answering someone else’s bet, and it’s the postflop cousin of fold to 3-bet: they took the initiative, someone pushed back, and the question is whether they let go. Use fold to check-raise when you’re out of position planning a check-raise, since that’s the exact spot. Use FR when you raise from in position, when the check-raise sample is too thin, or when you want the overall picture of how sticky a player’s bets are.
How it’s calculated
- Chance: they made a bet with no bet in front (the first bet of the street), another player then made a full raise, and the action came back to them facing that raise.
- Counts if: they fold.
- Not a chance: a short all-in that isn’t a full raise, a spot where someone re-raised before the action got back to them, raises they face after raising themselves, and streets where fewer than two players could still bet.
Formula: folds ÷ times they bet and faced a raise. There are no narrower versions, just one number per street.
Example: Jonah bet the flop 70 times and got raised 11 times. He folded 7, so his flop FR is 7 / 11 = 64%. Eight of those raises were check-raises and he folded 6 of them (75%); the other 3 came from players acting after him, and he folded 1. Notice the sample: 70 flop bets produced only 11 chances, still under the 12 the HUD wants before it stops fading the number. FR builds slowly because raises are rare.
Why it matters
A raise is one of the few ways to win a pot after the flop without the best hand, and FR tells you how often that works against this bettor. A raise puts more chips at risk than the bet it answers, so it usually needs more folds than a bet would. If they bet 50 into a pot of 100 and you raise to 150, you risk 150 to win the 150 already in the middle, so a pure bluff needs them to fold 150 / (150 + 150) = 50% of the time. A smaller raise to 125 risks 125 to win 150 and needs 125 / 275, about 45%.
Compare those numbers to their FR. At 65% or more, a bluff raise in that spot is profitable before you count your own equity; at 35%, it burns money and you should raise for value. FR shapes your value raises too: a player who rarely folds to raises pays them off with worse, so you can raise thinner.
Read it with how often they bet. A high bet unopened plus a high FR means they bet lots of weak hands and give up to pressure. A high FR with a low bet rate is rarer: they bet narrowly and still fold, the mark of a weak-tight player.
Too low, about right, too high
Too low: under 35%
What it says
Once they bet, they rarely let go. Either their betting range is strong, so they have something worth continuing with when raised, or they’re stubborn and call raises with one pair. Passive players who bet only good hands land here, and so do Stations who don’t believe raises. The HUD makes no read from it, but the pattern is clear: raising them doesn’t make them fold.
How to exploit it
- Don’t raise as a pure bluff. Your raise needs around 45–50% folds and they don’t give it.
- Raise for value thinner: two pair and strong top pair against a player who bets wide and won’t fold.
- Semi-bluff raise only with strong draws, which still have good equity when called.
- With medium hands, call their bet instead of raising; a raise only gets called by better.
- After they call your value raise, keep betting the next street. Players who call raises light often call the next bet too.
About right: 35–65%
What it says
They fold their weaker bets to a raise and continue with their stronger ones, which is what a reasonable bettor does. A number in the middle of the range, around 50%, makes a 3x raise over a half-pot bet close to break-even as a pure bluff. Many regulars sit near the middle on the flop and lower on later streets. The edges are in the details: which raises they fold to and on which street.
How to exploit it
Split it. Compare their fold to check-raise with FR: many players fold to check-raises far more than to raises from behind, or the reverse, and the gap tells you which seat to attack from. Compare streets too: plenty of players fold flop bets to raises but hold on after barreling the turn. Then use raise size to choose your own size: if they fold about as often to small raises as to big ones, raise smaller. Give each split a sample before trusting it, since each half has fewer chances than the whole.
Too high: over 65%
What it says
They bet plenty of hands they can’t continue with and give up to pressure. This is common for players who c-bet or bet most flops when checked to and then fold everything that missed. Their bets are wide, their continuing range after a raise is narrow and strong, and they rarely re-raise as a bluff. Weak-tight players and one-and-done c-bettors own this number most often; on the HUD they tend to show as Rocks, Nits or TAGs with a high c-bet.
How to exploit it
- Raise as a bluff with gutshots, backdoor draws and overcards. At 70% folds, a raise that needs 50% earns well before you count your equity.
- Raise smaller. Over a half-pot bet, a raise to 2.5 times their bet needs about 45% folds instead of 50%, and they fold anyway.
- Check-raise them out of position on boards that miss their range.
- When they call or re-raise your raise, believe them and slow down.
- Keep value raises for strong hands. They fold the worse hands you’d want calls from.
On the flop, turn and river
Flop: fold to raise
The flop is where FR builds fastest and where a high number is most common. Flop betting ranges are the widest of the hand, full of c-bets with nothing, so a reasonable player folds a lot of them to a raise. A flop FR near the top of the range is normal for a frequent c-bettor.
What matters is whether the folds match the bets. A player who bets 70% of flops and folds 70% to raises is betting too many hands they won’t defend. A player who bets 40% of flops and folds 70% to raises is betting decent hands and still folding, which is an even bigger leak.
Flop exploit: against a flop FR above 65%, raise their small flop bets in position with backdoor flush draws and gutshots. These hands have some equity when called, and the raise wins the pot most of the time.
Turn: fold to raise
Turn bets come from narrower, stronger ranges, since many of them follow a flop bet that was called. The pot is bigger, so a turn fold gives up more, and solid players fold less to turn raises than to flop raises. A turn FR as high as the flop number points to a player who barrels too many bluffs.
Turn chances are scarce. A player who bets 30 turns and gets raised on four of them gives you four chances, so a turn FR usually needs several sessions before it means much. The HUD keeps it across games by PokerNow ID, which helps.
Turn exploit: against a high turn FR, call the flop bet and raise or check-raise the turn with draws and hands that block their value. The bigger pot makes each fold worth more, and the draw gives you a fallback when they call.
River: fold to raise
On the river a bettor holds value or a bluff, and their bluffs fold to a raise automatically. So river FR mostly measures how they treat their thin value bets: do they fold top pair when raised, or call it down?
A low river FR means they call raises with thin value. Against them, value-raise rivers wider: two pair or a strong top pair on a board where they bet one pair. A high river FR means they bet thin and fold to pressure, which in theory invites river raise bluffs. In practice river bluff raises are expensive, so reserve them for hands that block their strongest value and for players with a large sample at a high number.
River exploit: in most games, players who raise rivers rarely bluff, so a high river FR is often correct play. Don’t mistake it for weakness without a big sample behind it.
When it’s your own number
The HUD doesn’t make a read from FR, but anyone who opens your stats can see it. If yours runs above 65%, observant players will raise your bets light, in position and with check-raises, because a raise wins too often. If it runs below 35%, they’ll stop raise-bluffing you and raise only for value, which means your calls against their raises lose more.
A high FR usually starts with betting too many hands that can’t continue. Fix it by checking more weak hands on the flop, so your bets hold more hands that can call a raise. A low FR usually means calling raises with one pair; fold more of those against players whose raise numbers are low.
Using it on the HUD
FR shows on the table badge of a bettor facing a raise (when the raiser had checked first, the badge shows fold to check-raise instead) and on the badges of the other players still in after the raise. In the panel, when you face a bet nobody has raised yet, can raise it, and haven’t checked on that street, the bettor’s FR is the fold rate shown for your raise; if you checked first, the panel shows their fold to check-raise.
Gold means above 65%, blue below 35%, and fewer than 12 chances show faded. It has no read hint, so it never becomes a read. Samples come slowly: 50% over 30 chances is ±9 points and over 100 chances ±5, and at Jonah’s rate of 11 raises per 70 bets, reaching 30 raises faced takes about 190 flop bets. Read it with raise, fold to check-raise and bet unopened.
Questions
What is a good fold to raise percentage?
Between 35% and 65% on each street is the HUD’s typical range. The right number depends on how often you bet: a player who bets most flops should fold more of them to raises than a player who bets only strong hands. Above 65% they can be raise-bluffed; below 35% they rarely fold, so raise them for value only.
Fold to raise vs fold to check-raise: what’s the difference?
Fold to check-raise only counts raises from a player who checked first on that street. Fold to raise counts those plus raises from players acting after the bettor. Use fold to check-raise when you plan to check-raise from out of position, and fold to raise when you raise in position or need a bigger sample.
How many hands do you need for fold to raise to mean something?
More than for most stats, because the spot is rare. A player has to bet and then get raised, which may happen once in every six or seven bets. With 12 chances the number stops showing faded, but 50% over 30 chances still carries about 9 points of error either way. Treat early numbers as a lean.
Does fold to raise count re-raises?
No. It counts only the bettor’s answer to the first full raise of their bet. If someone re-raises before the action gets back to them, the spot doesn’t count, and neither do raises a player faces after raising themselves. Folding to a re-raise is a different situation with a narrower range on both sides.