Disadvantages of Using a HUD in Poker

Disadvantages of Using Poker HUD Software

Such is the hype and praise surrounding poker HUDs that we only thought it necessary to bring you back down to earth and shorn some of the benefits from players who use poker HUD and live hand tracking software.

HUD’s Don’t Hand You the Game on a Stick: First of all, HUD stats won’t guarantee that you sneak every bluff and outwit your opponents on every chance and street.  Poker HUD’s should be treated as online “reads” on players and as tools to help you narrow down holdings on each street.  Having these as measures to understand a player’s long term game and playing style are really useful.  But you can’t solely rely on them when making calls or double barrel bluffs against opponents who seem “weak”.  For example, an opponent who raises 4BBs pre-flop on the cutoff and has a RFI stat of 30% (very loose) doesn’t mean that he couldn’t be holding a strong hand like KK.  The stats need to be applied correctly and in the right context.

HUD Stats Needs Large Samples to be Reliable: Most Poker HUD stats require you to build up a history of your opponent before they become reliable.  Although you only need about 50 hands to get an accurate VPIP figure and other pre-flop stats, it takes a lot more than this (up to 1,000 hands) for accurate figures for the later streets.  HUD stats can not only be wrong for beginners, but every time a new player enters the game you still won’t have any reads on him.  Keep in mind to always check the “number of hands” stats before relying on someone’s figures.

Multi-Tabling Turns you into a Stats Junkie: This isn’t so much a critique of HUD’s as much as it is about multi-tabling.  As you play more games I find that you lose traditional methods of reading opponents in the game in replacemen of HUD stats and a box of figures.  Stat Junkies tend to be very successful but they also have to deal with higher daily variance getting involved in a lot of coin-flip situations that they’re “stats” say are profitable.  Playing by the stats also takes a lot of fun out of a game very quickly!