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.