Stack-to-Pot Ratio (SPR)

Also known as: stack to pot ratio, SPR

The effective stack divided by the pot on the flop — it sets commitment thresholds and how much postflop maneuvering room remains.

SPR measures how deep you are relative to the pot, usually fixed at the flop:

\[ \text{SPR} = \frac{\text{effective stack}}{\text{pot}} \]

It's the single best shorthand for how committed a made hand is. Rough brackets:

• Low (≤ ~3): commitment territory. Top-pair-top-kicker and overpairs are effectively stacking off; you're often pot-committed once you bet once.
• Medium (~4–10): real postflop poker — equity, fold equity, and board texture decide stack-offs.
• High (> ~13): implied-odds and set-mining territory — non-nut hands play cautiously, implied odds and reverse implied odds dominate, and the nuts gain enormous value.

SPR is driven by the preflop pot and stacks: a 3-bet pot lowers SPR (more commitment), a limped or single-raised pot keeps it high. It also frames geometric sizing — the bet fraction that gets you all-in by the river is a function of the remaining stack-to-pot ratio. In tournaments, plan SPR around ICM: low SPR plus a bubble factor above 1 makes thin stack-offs much worse than the chip math suggests.