My Bud the HUD

Well after several trips up north and a few Harry Potter screenings I finally have some time to write up another update! And considering I've had my new HUD program up and running for about a month now it's about time I show it off and explain how I use it.

So what is a HUD?

In general, HUD stands for Heads Up Display and in poker it refers to a program that overlays information about your opponents onto the tables you are playing at so you can make more informed decisions. It's kind of like a transparancy being plopped down over your computer monitor.

Support for different poker sites varies as certain sites openly allow HUDs (Full Tilt, Pokerstars) while others ban them from being used (Cake). As you play more and more hands with people, the stats will update automatically giving you a more accurate definition about your opponent's play.

Poker HUDs are extremely customizable allowing you to view whatever stats you want about your opponents. Here's what my current HUD configuration looks like.



You can see I have a small box of stats for each player sitting near their name on the table. I got this fantastic layout from a friend online. My stats for each player are as follows

NAME / A / B / C / D
E / F / G / H
I / J / K / L

A: VPIP - The % of hands where my opponent Voluntarily Puts money Into the Pot. Higher means a looser player who I will call with worse hands, lower means a player who only plays the cream of the crop so I should be careful.

B: PFR - The % of hands my opponent plays pre flop with a raise. This gives me an idea about how good of a hand my opponent needs to raise. So even if they play 100% of their hands preflop, if I know they only raise with aces and kings I can get out of the way.

C: Aggression factor - Basically it just tells me how often my opponent will bet or raise compared to how often they will just call. Good for sniffing out big hands from passive players.

D: Showdown % - When my opponent sees the flop, how often does he take the hand to showdown? Can tell me when an opponent is incapable of laying down a hand that they raises preflop with or let me know that I'm beat when someone calls a bet who usually never makes it to showdown.

E: Flop Cbet % - If my opponent raises preflop, how often will he bet the flop? Lot's of people (including me) will bet most flops if they were the original raiser preflop. This gives me an idea of how serious someone's flop bet is.

F: Fold to Cbet % - Related to E, how often will someone fold to another player's cbet. If this is high, I will bet the flop with almost any two cards because of the number of times I will win the pot from my opponent folding.

G: Steal attempts - Stealing the blinds is when you raise as the first person in at the cutoff or button position, often with less than desireable cards. Thus the name. How often does my opponent attempt this given the chance?

H: Fold to steal % - Similar to G. How often does this person give up their blinds to a steal attempt? I love when this is high. I'll raise any two cards and eat those blinds up.

I: 3bet % - When someone before them raises preflop, how often will this player re-raise? Not HUGELY important, but good to know whether the person is serious or not with their reraise.

J: Fold to 3bet % - Related to I, how often will they fold their original raise when you reraise them. Great for slamming the hammer down on loose annoying aggressive players. I prefer to just call preflop and let them bluff again on the flop before crushing them but hey it's still a good stat to have.

K: BB/100 - Big Blinds per 100 hands won (or lost). This is the yardstick of the poker world. You are striving to win about 10 BB per 100 hands in a cash game. So at my levels, that's about $1.00 per 100 hands. While 4 tabling at 60 hands per table per hour, that's about $2.40 an hour. Yay for half of minimum wage! Anyways, this stat lets me know who the fish are and who the sharks are. But there really aren't sharks where I play yet. Just fish and mentally incapacitated fish.

L: # of hands vs opponent - The higher this is, the more reliable my stats become.

So there you have it. Obviously I never want this to become a crutch that I rely on but it's great information to have when used properly. Also, it's not an automatic way to win. Hell, my winnings on Full Tilt have been crap compared to what I was doing on Cake which doesn't allow a HUD. The HUD can't protect you from constantly having the second best hand. :)

As for my play in general lately, this month has been pretty crap so far. I've lost most of my big pots and only won the small ones so I'm not experiencing quite the same success I had been in previous months but all is not lost! I still have half the month to play and hopefully I'll turn things around to show a respectable gain at the end of July.