No, people don't know how to use them anyway.
I think they are overrated and often more of a placebo effect against good players. And often worse, the information can be falsely extrapolated on or adjustments are over done and detrimental.
Against weak players they definitely help them lose a little faster than they would without them.
Before the internet, the good live players played to the player: over a short span of time, a player's "style" would become apparent. The HUD gives online players a mere shadow of that.
In a book by Doyle Brunson (can't remember which) he talks about "changing gears" -- where a player will switch styles midway through a session. If an online player does this, he renders the HUD less useful to his opponents.
In a recent PokerStrategy.com video, the presenter was advocating "polarized ranges".
The idea being that UTG (for example) might have an 8% range, but it would not necessarily the top 8% -- would you expect UTG to open 78s ?
Polarized ranges also help to reduce the effectiveness of your opponent's HUD.
I do use a HUD, I'll probably continue to use one, but I also take specific notes whenever I see a play I think might provide a reasonable clue to behaviour in the future.
Cheers,
--VS
Hi Folks,
Great reading so far.
Whilst I'm firmly in the camp that HUD's are not the greatest tools in the world to have whilst playing, I do feel that they've helped developed the game some-what.
Before HUDS, the average fish wasn't aware VPIP's, fold to c-bets stats etc. Now anyone with $60+ knows about these. That's forced "real" poker players to adapt and improve their game, which is never a bad thing.
'Poker is a game of skilled professionals, not lucky gamblers'
Additionally, away from the tables HUDS are great. You can take all the notes you want whilst playing, but you will miss something. So being able to go back through hand history's etc, spot leaks, tweak areas of your game, were all much harder when HUD's weren't around.
That's my 2pence for what its worth
Have fun.
'Poker is a game of skilled professionals, not lucky gamblers'
Poker is a game of skill, with very few professionals and a whole heep of gamblers, that's what poker is;)
Only maybe 25% of players are profitable. Of this % maybe only <0.5% make their main income from the game.
HUDs let you identify weaker players and highlight their weaknesses quickly. I'm only a nl10 noob so my opinion stinks but I guess at higher limits you are faced with 5 players with stats of 25/23/7 and all the hud tells you is that this guy is a thinking reg. Thus you go into "exploiting regs" mode which you don't need a hud for. If a fish pops in you can start looking at his stats and try to exploit his tendencies more efficiently. So a tool to separate fish from their money faster seems detrimental to the "poker economy".
Making sure you don't assume that just because someone is 25/23/7 they are good. All it indicates is they know how to play preflop open ranges and sometimes not even that eg. seen a guy w 18/15 stats because he is raising 15% from every position.
Fair point @metza but once you know someone is a winning reg at midstakes then how useful is hud info? Obv. analysing their game is ++ev but that needs to be a more individual process using hand histories for tells/trends rather than interpreting raw stats. Plus, if villain is decent he will play differently depending on who he faces (fish, weak reg, spazmonkey) so how useful are his stats really?
Any nl200+ players wanna chime in and tell us how useful their hud is vs. good regs at their limits?
Originally posted by redrawstump
HUDs let you identify weaker players and highlight their weaknesses quickly. I'm only a nl10 noob so my opinion stinks but I guess at higher limits you are faced with 5 players with stats of 25/23/7 and all the hud tells you is that this guy is a thinking reg. Thus you go into "exploiting regs" mode which you don't need a hud for. If a fish pops in you can start looking at his stats and try to exploit his tendencies more efficiently. So a tool to separate fish from their money faster seems detrimental to the "poker economy".
i think you're seeing it as something too black and white. it isn't 'fish' or 'reg', it's just 'player'; these words are just heuristics that describe some tendencies but realistically everyone will have some sort of leak. HUDs will just show these over a decent sample size.
i disagree that you don't need a HUD to exploit regs - in fact i think it's the other way round. fish are easier to exploit because their leaks are more obvious, so you can just slap a note over their avatar and the job is done. because regs' leaks will become more subtle as they become better players we need more extensive information.
but what i mean to say is that we should stop caring so much about whether someone is a fish or reg and stop boxing people into categories. instead we should just identify weaknesses in our opponents' games and use that info.
about the actual question of whether or not HUDs ruined poker, i don't think so. it's just added a level of complexity which means ppl have to work a bit harder and think a bit deeper. i wasn't playing before the days of HUDs so i rly don't care and i think many many players (myself included) misunderstand/misuse HUD stats in general and put too much emphasis on them. i'm really not worried about people having HUD stats on me because even if they have it, they probably don't have a great sample (and my game is always changing a bit by the time they do have a sample), and if they do have a sample i doubt they will use the numbers well, and if they can then i think it might be obvious in which case i'll work hard to play vs them or i'll just not play them. or they won't be around for long if they are that good because they will move up.
personally i don't fall strongly in either camp really - huds are just another tool in your arsenal imo, and players can choose how far to take their use of them - also most sites have 'anonymous tables' now, negating the use of huds (I have limited experience of these tables, but they seem to be a bit more loosey-goosey/fishy imo and attract more recreational players)
- also most sites have 'anonymous tables' now
I think its wrong to say that most sites have those. If you count by skin and some small sites, then probably yes, but as far as I know full till and stars do not have, and they have big % of players.
So I think we need to count in %, not in sites, and then think if its a lot or not.
