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Beginner’s Guide to Heads Up Displays (HUD)

Data is more essential than ever to the modern online poker player – and HUDs are arguably the most effective way of using data available. However, for a new player, a HUD can be confusing, even overwhelming.

That’s where this article comes in. We’re going to walk through the basics of Heads Up Displays – what they are, how you make and design them, and how they should be used. Let’s get started with the basics.

What is a HUD?

HUD is short for Heads-Up-Display. In the simplest terms, HUDs are a way to display data you have on a opponent right on (or near) that opponent as you play.

Here’s an example of a HUD in action. As you can see, it’s a little overlay that sits next to the opponent and contains a bunch of color-coded numbers. Don’t worry about the numbers or the color-coding – we’ll get to that later:

How does a HUD get data? From a database program such as Hold’em Manager (HEM). Programs such as HEM perform a simple, but critical task: they collect all of your hand histories and aggregate that data. Sifting through your database every time you want a stat on an opponent isn’t a very viable method for accessing data during game play, however, so someone came up with the idea of having a small, customizable snippet – a window into the deeper data, if you will – that would appear on the table as you played, and HUDs were born.

Why Should I Use a HUD?

Some people are anti-HUD, and it’s not hard to understand why. Bad HUDs can cram your screen, and can offer too much information, leading to distractions, irritations and poor decision-making.

To paraphrase an old NRA slogan, bad HUDs don’t cause poor decisions, people do. While a HUD can be overwhelming at first, when properly designed it gives you access to critical information that allows you to distinguish your opponents from one another, allows you to evaluate the chance of a move begin successful before you make it and, in a larger sense, makes you comfortable with your data to the point where it can inspire you to attempt new lines and play.

More to the point: your opponents are probably using a HUD when playing you, and giving up that edge without a fight is a sure path to a lower win rate than you’re capable of.

How Do I Use a HUD?

Almost all major database programs feature some sort of HUD. Rather than discussing the process for each (they’re pretty similar), we’re going to simplify things and just use Hold’em Manager’s HUD for illustrative purposes.

If you’re not using HEM, you really ought to consider it. The list price is $90, but we’ve got a special affiliate deal that you can use to get the program absolutely free.

With that sales pitch out of the way, let’s get into the mechanics of setting up and using your HUD.

HEM comes with a default HUD already installed. It’s probably best to use the default until you get a bit more familiar with the HUD as a tool; when you’re ready for something custom, we’ve got details on how to build your own later in the article.

To launch the HUD when you’re playing, you have two options. You can either set the HUD to automatically launch when you start importing hands during a session:

… or you can simply choose to Relaunch HUD from the same menu if you’re already involved in a session.

If you find that the HUD isn’t placing where it ought to (your stats are showing over another player, for example) you can either switch seats to correct the issue or tell HEM what seat you prefer to sit in. To do so, navigate to HUD Options > Seating Preferences and adjust the settings (you can set seats by game type and room) to your liking.

If you find that the HUD is showing in the correct area but is obscuring information on the table, you can adjust the position of each individual overlay by placing your mouse on it, right clicking and dragging the overlay to where you’d like it to be. To save this positioning, navigate to the Table Manager in the system tray, right-click and choose ‘Save Position’.

Because these tasks can be a little annoying, it’s best to perform them on a play money table or a low-stakes table. In fact, getting used to the HUD on a single table (if you play multiple tables) or on a play money table is a quality strategy that will help you ease into a different (most would argue superior) way of playing poker.

That about it for the basics – if you have HEM running while you play, the default HUD should pop up automatically, and you’ll have quick access to any stats you have on your opponents in your database.

How Do I Customize my HUD?

HEM’s default HUD is a solid one, but there’s just no such thing as a one-size-fits-all HUD. Sit and Go players need a much different HUD than full-ring cash players, and heads-up cash players need a much different still.

We’re not going to offer up our guide on what HUD should be used for what game – that’s well outside the scope of this article – but we will walk you through how to customize your HUD (and provide some general tips for how to determine what stats are useful to you later in the article).

To get started, navigate to HUD Options > Player Preferences. That will bring up a screen that looks, more or less, like this:

This is your HUD editor. From here you can make a completely custom HUD, containing whatever stats you like. The first tab – Stats – is where you’ll spend most of your time.

The editor is pretty simple. Choose a stat that you want on the left and click the ‘add’ button in the middle column to move it over to the right. Stats in the right column are the stats that will appear on the HUD. If you’re unsure how a finished HUD looks, simply draw on the Default configuration for an example until you get the hang of it. In fact, using the Default as a starting point isn’t a bad idea.

To do so, you don’t need to overwrite the Default – that would be a pain. Instead, with the Default HUD loaded, select ‘New Config’ from the top menu. This will make a new configuration that you can tool around with based on the Default, but any changes, edits, etc you make won’t reflect in the Default.

The far right area of this screen controls the appearance of each individual stat. Here’s a close-up:

Remember the color-coding from our first example? Here’s where you set and control that feature. Why would you color code? Again, it’s about efficiency. Having stats on your opponent is no good if you can’t make use of them quickly. By color-coding certain stats, you can get a quicker read on your opponent. For example, a core stat of any HUD is VPIP – Voluntarily Put Money in the Pot. This stat tells you what percentage of the time a player entered the pot when not in the blinds. A high VPIP generally means a player is loose, a low one indicates they’re tight. So, you might set your HUD to color code the VPIP stat as green when it’s above 25% to let you know, quickly, that you’re against a loose player, and red when the stat is 10% or below.

The color-coding really helps when used across multiple stats. Obviously it doesn’t take you any more time to see that your opponent’s VPIP is green than it does to read the number. However, when you have several stats coded green to indicate looseness, a quick glance at the HUD can easily provide you with a short and sweet summary on that player’s type (and therefore, probably holdings).

If you have poker-playing friends who already use HUDs, you can easily use their configurations. Have them send you their config file (should be in .xml format), save it in the Config file of your Holdem Manager folder and then you can import it using the ‘Import’ button in the top menu.

One last customization note: You can have as many different HUDs as you like, and you can easily set HEM to display certain HUDs for certain games and sites. To do so, navigate to the ‘Use for’ tab in the Player Preferences window. You’ll get this screen, where you can choose a HUD to display based on room, format and game type:

Remember to click ‘Apply’ or ‘OK’ at the top right corner of the window to save your changes. If you close the window or exit without doing so, your changes won’t be saved.

What Should I Put in My HUD?

Good question. Again, it’s beyond the scope of this humble article to outline proper HUDs for every situation, but there are some good general guidelines that should help your HUD evolve into an optimized tool.

Less is more: It’s tempting to put everything and the kitchen sink in the HUD, but the truth is you want to work to have the absolute bare minimum that you need. Poker moves fast online, and giving yourself a surplus of information is sure to leave you lagging behind, focused on deciphering your stats rather than applying precious time and energy to untangling the logic of the hand that you’re playing.

Choose stats that suit your moves: Everyone’s got parts of their games that are standard, and then everyone’s got parts of their games that are unique to them. You’ve probably found a few moves and lines that work pretty well against certain opponents – so why not customize your HUD to help you identify those opponents? If you have found success check-raising preflop raisers on rag boards, you want PFR and c-bet stats to be in your HUD. If you’re a fearless four-bettor, then you certainly want 3-bet stats and fold to 4-bet stats in your HUD.

Choose stats that have naturally large samples:
Data is only useful if it’s reliable, and reliability is a function of sample size. It might be tempting to have some really exotic stats in your HUD (how often an opponent folds to a turn cbet out of position after cold-calling a three bet preflop, for example) but the fact of the matter is that exotic stats tend to be situations that don’t come up very often, and therefore lack a sample size that allows you to rely on their accuracy. Instead, choose stats that you know will quickly grow a useful sample size (preflop raising, c-betting, etc), so that your HUD is packed only (or moreso, anyway) with data that you can rely on.

Hopefully this primer on HUDs has helped you understand a bit more about how they function as a tool, and also about how you can employ them in your game with minimal effort. Once you get over the short learning curve, you’ll find that using the HUD will open up options in your game that you might have never imagined otherwise.

Looking for a HUD? PartTimePoker recommends Hold’em Manager. We’ve partnered with HEM to offer you a fully functional copy absolutely free – get all the details here.

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