@indio: yeah exactly, that's why it's been long known that purely math based players have a lower ceiling than feel based players, the old Mr. Spock vs. Capt. Kirk syndrome -> guess who's the captain?! That extra unexplainable quality (sixth sense?) where you make moves that are unrealistic for math based players is a separator for sure, even in hypers (until endgame ofc). An added advantage for feel based play is the smoother transition from online to live. Math based obv. have a much harder time going live......good video too, that guy should play baseball!

What you should do is play coffeeyay this way: force him to go HUD-less and you use a HUD. Yet another advantage, total reliance on oneself, not tools.

Now I'm done!

^ Coffeeyay's alternate account obv. Don't worry, people won't stop buying your 'friend's' HUD. If u don't have anything poignant to add, why clutter this thread with a trivial jab? Just go...

I do not see at all how can someone play better WITHOUT a hud. If you have a strong feel for the game if anything the HUD can give you a little bit more information, it doesnt mean to go against strong reads/feel.

The main use of it is when you play a certain player for many many hands but then you only reencounter him like 6months after (do you kind of forget his tendencies). If after a long sample he 3bets very wide he is unlikely to have changed that, and you can use this info to widen your 4bet range.

Extra information can never hurt, if a HUD bothers someone, well hide it and just check it whenever you feel like confirming your reads. If you can't hide it just put a damn sticker on your screen, I don't know...

@NittyDonk: I know most people agree with you, I certainly do, but you're just wasting your time. Some people just radiate stubbornness.

overusing a hud is a leak, just as not using any sort of hud or atleast any sort of program like poker tracker where you can check on villains you play alot during or after playing them.
if you think you play better without a hud, you are not using a hud correctly. either because you never tried to learn it, or you just don't want to/think you don't need to.

The only really irksome remark was 'not using a HUD is a leak'. For anybody who doesn't use a HUD, that's basically a criticism. Quoting the top players who play HUDless is a good way to at least quieten that criticism a little.

Here's my personal argument why a HUD isn't necessary. I feel like an opponents priority as an opponent is to confuse. No player wants to be transparent, whether at the lowest level where 'strong is weak and weak is strong' or developing up to the highest level with 'merging ranges'. As such, dynamics are more influential. Relying on math can be contradictory to the fundamental notion that a player tries to adapt to exploit us and as such our HUD may be one step behind. I can accept that a HUD is a useful extra tool, especially when multi-tabling, but I think players can live without it and in fact would probably see the game without the blindfold on with the HUD switched off.

However, coping equally as well without a HUD does require a reliance on a lot of experience and a good memory. I think that trends strong enough to be conclusively shown on a HUD should be recognisable and memorised and as such the brain should be as powerful as a HUD for these situations and the other information is so subject to fluctuation so as long as we are prepared and understand what option is most likely for our opponent to take we shouldn't need a HUD to successfully adapt to each opponent.

147_star: u have a way of explaining the difficult things easier, that's a skill! But not sure if it will sink with a lot of people. You see, saying a HUD is not necessary is counter-intuitive for a lot of folks. They cannot fathom how someone can give up all this bounty of free information right in front of them! It's also easier, why drive a manual transmission car when automatic cars are available. Many probably think we are stupid for saying these things!

Certainly, if you have poor memory, exclusively bumhunt and never play good regs, watch TV while playing, multitable like mad, have difficulty reading hands/boards, have weaker mental ability to adjust and adapt, use a HUD in-game, you NEED it.

All I know is, after talking with some of the best regs around, and also through my own analysis, here it is: Logic = Predictable. The higher the stakes u go, the better the players u play, the more this is valid. EVEN in hypers. 147's post explains it quite well. Playing by feel is part logical - part something else, and this hybrid player is the one NO ONE wants to play.

And since free information is being given out, let me also point out that, now more than ever, it is good to be able to play different forms of poker, and removing your reliance on tools is quite a necessity to be able to get good at many types of poker formats.

Anyways, I think people are getting sick and tired of me clogging this thread up, but I have enjoyed the arguments both sides have given, and both sides have valid points for different people. Again, the only real problem is when narrow-minded people like Coffeeyay say that u NEED to use a HUD, that's absolutely ridiculous.

what top players dont use a hud?

Too personal. Ask around...

I thought Isildur and Fisfarfar had been mentioned and I know a few very good cash players who don't use a HUD but I know most do.

There is a strong case for game theory at the highest stakes but for a player who won't meet an opponent very often at all I think a HUD isn't essential nor would it be a leak not to have one provided you can recognise and memorise / note down key characteristics.

I am playing a lot of games at once this year so will be making an effort to learn this side more so once I do I hope I can post back and say how essential it is but at most stakes when I tried it (albeit on a relatively basic level) I found it didn't tell me anything that I couldn't work out from the games and I couldn't fully trust it based on poor sample size and other metagame factors.

Of course the way Coffee said it, he should (maybe did?) have known that people that don't use a HUD would get upset.

While quoting good players that don't use one is fine and will win some people over, I don't believe it is a correct or particularly weighted argument.

It's sort of like back in 2007 or so when I first came around here, there was more discussion about "this top player doesn't know basic pot odds" "this top player doesn't think about ranges, he just relies on his instincts." At the time, there was a strong minority of decent players that still believed that these weren't leaks, that these were options.

Not using a HUD, or not using one correctly may still be a leak, but that doesn't mean you're a bad player or you're a lesser person or any of these personal style rebuttals that happen when people bring up tools that some don't use.

A player that stays up all night partying, sits down at a cash table the next day and crushes, he's probably still leaking with his sleep habits and focus. He'd probably do better on average if he wasn't up all night partying. That's a leak. Playing someone who has an edge on you too long, that's probably a leak. Playing too long, or playing too short, setting arbitrary stop losses and winlosses, these are all likely a form of a leak. Some might let you cope better with a previously larger leak, but they're still things you can improve, they are still leaks.

But more importantly, all you have to do is look back to see that using what the best players in the game do as evidence of a non leak is a very troubling argument. The best players even 2 years ago don't stand a chance against the best today. That's basically true for every 2 years. If we use that argument in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, etc. we can see now how full of leaks all those guys are.

And you are absolutely right, using a HUD is not necessary. Neither is using a 50 buyin bankroll, or eating healthy or sleeping right. Good players have proven over and over again that you can win a ton of money and still have many things to improve in your game/life.

But the consistently best are more often striving to improve every little bit about their game and approach that they can.

At the very least, I believe that it is a factual statement that any good player can find value in a HUD, at least some of the time in the games they play. You don't need to look at it every game, you don't need to have it on all the time, but utilizing a HUD in a real # of your games, if you're not doing that it's likely something you could improve.

The way Coffee phrased it, obviously it's going to piss some people off, and obviously there's going to be some people that are going to be more focused on him selling the most known HU HUD out there (perhaps me too, though it accounts for a very small % of my work/compensation, much less than reputation/honesty is worth on these forums).

I think if he said a HUD is necessary, he would be incorrect. If he said you need to use a HUD to be great in this game, he would also be incorrect. It's a tool that if used properly by a professional level player is very likely to be a profitable addition to their game.

And the arguments about gameflow and manipulation of stats, that's all completely valid. The point is not to read the HUD word for word, it is to understand the stats, the value of them and their limitations. If a guy is 3betting to like 350 instead of 500, the hud is going to show a non all in 3bet. Though his 3bet to 350 is basically a jam and his 3bet to 100 is not, the HUD won't see that. You need to understand things like that if you're using the HUD properly, because if you just look at stats and make a decision now you have an entirely different type of leak, one that can be far more dangerous than simply not using a HUD. But I think good professional level players should certainly feel like that information is something they want to have, and they need to put in real work to think about the limitations of the stats they have on their HUD, not just fire it up and think "now I've increased my winrate."

That becomes a more interesting argument. Of course a $5 player just loading up a HUD without knowing much, it's not essential. And you can probably extend that a few buyins higher/to losers of any level/to lazy people of any level or skill.

But we're talking more about professional level players, or those that are working hard to be professional level. I think Coffee's statement is absolutely true for them.

And given how far HUDs can go today with the custom stats available, unless you are a photographic memory level person (rare) or you spend hours studying each player regularly (inefficient, you don't know when you'll play a guy again either), then the HUDs that are out these days can give you information you can't possibly memorize.

Just to mention again, the limitations thing is just so huge, and not just saying "this guy cbets 90%, so he's obviously weak here" again, huge leak not to know about the situational/texture information/not to think about sizing, but it's not the HUD that is leaking there, it's the player being lazy/ignorant of how to use it properly.

fis uses one, isildur is a special case

very good post overall, with this being the TL;DR version of this whole thread imo.

i think youre just missing information without one. nobody is saying dont pay attention to dynamics but it just lets you more accurately define their ranges. i guess for some people it may be like subtitles on a movie. even if the dialogue is in english, i cant stop focusing on the damn subtitles

Are you really going to make the same argument as Bunzablood? Player x does not use a hud therefore huds are useless!

You guys really go off on a tangent when you make arguments. Stay on topic! Nobody is arguing that you cannot win without a hud, nobody is arguing for completely relying on a hud to make all of your decisions etc etc. What we want to know is it more profitable to use a hud? If you claim it is more profitable to not use a hud then you need to demonstrate why. Your above post failed to do so. However, reading your post, I am going to guess you are going to make the same argument as Dave, for some the answer is yes and for others the answer is no. I will then counter by saying if they use the hud incorrectly then therefore that is a leak, as Coffeyay has already mentioned! So basically you have to demonstrate how having extra info can be detrimental when used correctly.

I'm basically saying this.

Here's an example that some of you may see:



What you have to do is firstly, read the text out loud as fast as you can. Wait a moment, then read the colours out loud as fast as you can. With no mistakes!

For some, this is trivial. For others, one will be harder than the other. Some will have real difficulty in managing to correctly reel off the eight words a child can speak. Me, I can read the text easily but I often make a mistake trying to say the colours.

For most, it will be easier to speak the words if they are simply plain white text... The content is the same, merely extra information has been added.

Question for Coffee

The Coffee HUD is very cool.

1. Have your results improved after you started using it?
2. Could you show us your graph before and after you started using it?

I know that results don't mean everything but I'm pretty sure this would show people that good HUD's are very valuable.

Last graph I have of him is from December. Not sure when it started, and I'm not sure when he started using the HUD (and before it was released I'm sure he experimented with different ideas in it too). And not sure if he used a different HUD before then either.



But I would say that even if he started using his HUD halfway through (showing an improved EV in the 2nd half of the graph), it is not even close to a good argument that the HUD is good/better than not using one. Even over 20k games, you see variation from players all the time, who they play, how they are focused/playing, what buyins they play, the starting hand and board texture distribution/variance that I don't believe is accounted for in EV yet in any meaningful way. Lots of factors influence these things. Even if we saw him go from being up 10k before the HUD to being up 50k in EV, that happens to people using a HUD from day 1 and to people using no HUD ever.

Thanks Ryan

That convinces me.

It will be interesting to see if the "non-believers" can come up with any supporting evidence of their own.

Ryan literally just said in the last post that this graph doesn't give weight to the argument that a HUD is better / essential so not sure what ultimately convinced you?

Anyway, to return back to the OP's question, a HUD can be a hindrance. Without investing a lot of time and possibly money for coaching on how to properly use a HUD, or without creating / buying a custom HUD, you will find your HUD can often give false / limited information. This is especially so over the limited sample size that is found at lower stakes where reg wars happen less since statistics are consequently less reliable.

Every decision has to be weighed up against our own experience so starting with a HUD could lead to over-reliance and as such be a hindrance and I believe this to be the case for a lot of players.

Now I would agree that investing this time and money would be worth it and would more than likely ultimately pay for itself for most players. However, we shouldn't assume everybody has the ability to effectively use a HUD, same as we shouldn't assume all players can effectively understand dynamics, gameflow, sizing and timing tells. As such, as a forum we should be more understanding with people's limitations with HUD's, much the same as we are with their limitations as poker players. We wouldn't expect a $15 player to think on the same level as a high stakes player, yet we expect them to understand their HUD in the same way. Getting the most out of your HUD can only take you as far as your understanding of poker so weaker players will be tricked by their HUD's since they incorrectly interpret ranges and situations and the %'s mask a very different board texture or dynamic.

Those who advocate HUD's, try a session HUDless. See if you become more alert. We have to keep continually testing ourselves to keep ourselves fresh so see if that helps. As such, when we come back to the HUD we might find we have pushed ourselves up a level by requiring more thought and focus.

I would be very interested to see the results and thoughts after a few sessions of HUD players playing HUDless to see what their thoughts are. Who's our first volunteer?

Nobody is arguing whether or not a hud can be a hindrance for some players. But if you are not using you hud correctly then that would be considered a leak because that is something you can improve upon.

"We shouldn't assume a $15 player can interpret the data as well as a high stakes player."

First, I don't assume this. Second, it is still a leak. If the $15 player improved his data interpreting ability he would make more money, that is all that matters. Let's say this same $15 player had a leak of not c/r certain hands that he should vs....lets call him, player A. Now let's say the $15 player also plays the turn really poorly, making the certain hands that he should c/r no longer optimal to c/r. What advice would you give such a player? Would you tell him, you suck at poker so never c/r these hands, or would you tell him to improve his turn strategy?

You don't need to be a mathematician for a hud to have a net positive result either, so you shouldn't need to spend money on coaching or a math degree. Obv the more you know the better....

I'm taking an AI (Artificial Intelligence) course right now and my teacher spoke a little about this. Human's are very good at pattern recognition and he said we don't really understand how human's do it. They thought they were going to gain a lot of insight into it when creating a program, like "Deep Blue" to play chess. But instead all they found was that the deeper you can search the tree of possible solutions, the better the computer will play chess. So human brains can intelligently recognize patterns while a chess playing machine just does somewhat of an exhaustive search, it's a little more sophisticated than that. But my teacher said they were disappointed they really didn't come up with something that was intelligent.

Btw, reading the text was easy, but i had to read those colors really slowly lol