I personally have played millions of hands online and used a HUD for most of them. With that said, I think poker would be better without HUDs being allowed. This would allow poker strengths to prevail more than players ability to dissect a HUD to prevail. Players who aren't familiar or computer savvy enough to maximize their HUD are at a distinct disadvantage before the cards are even dealt.

I agree with Benton; they're a net negative. I've also played many 1000s of HUD hands, yet when I want to play a little more casually online, I think twice cuz I know if I don't fire up the full HUD engine, I'm going to be at a disadvantage. Sometimes I just want a low-key game.

That said, I'd leave it up to the sites to decide what type of game experience they want to encourage.

Wether you think they are good or bad, trying to outlaw them would be impossible to enforce since players and programmers would figure out ways to make them as add-ons.

Bad. Very bad. They highly favor the better players by enabling them to play more simultaneous tables, while having superhuman "memory" about how their opponents play. I hope they get banned by the online sites.

What exactly is a HUD? I am going to Vegas next week where can I find super satellites for the World Series?

@1JACKOFF572 HUD stands for Heads Up Display. It's a software that tracks opponents play, and displays each player's statistics next to each player's avatar on an online poker table....but the statistics include the entire history of everytime you've sat at the same table as any given player. They basically allow players to see their opponents actual playing patterns and how much they've won or lost, without having to rely on memory. So the better players that use HUDs have an unfair advantage in their ability to play a lot of tables simultaneously without having to rely on memory. They allow the good players to take all the money from the bad players faster which is why they are so bad for the game

I saw one poker site go to anonymous player names for all players. I guess to kill the huds. Kinda makes the game very impersonal though.

@sderman I heard that Bovada does that. It's probably good for preventing HUDs, but I agree it makes the game much less personal

@sderman I think I remember Cake taking on a policy years ago of letting players change their screenname once a week, as a defense against HUDs and other player-tracking tools. The natural extension of that would be letting players change their screenname whenever they're not seated at a table. Maybe that'd be a good compromise; you'd still get the personal sense that the names convey, but tracking tools would be just as ineffective (to players that changed names every session) as anonymizing the players.

@GameChanger This is true but there is actually HUD software available for Bovada. The difference is that it tracks that player while they are at the table for that session only and not an aggregate stay compilation for multiple sessions.

@robustus I think changing names after each session would work but I sure wouldn't want to be thinking of different usernames each session or week. I'd almost rather the anonymous tables like Bovada.

I have used HUDs quite a bit - mostly to find the best cash games.

I would like to see them all banned - or measures put in place for players to defeat them. I prefer to play based on skill alone, and HUDs are to poker what doping and steroids are to sports - an unfair advantage.

@BainDramage that is a perfect analogy!!

I couldn't agree more. Well said

Most players have an opinion one way or the other . Online poker is generally considered to be getting tougher to beat, and tracking your play, getting down and dirty with stats in a very specific way, is seen as essential to becoming and staying a winning player. You can also go further and review what your own HUD looks like and then you can use levelling to lure opponents into errors based upon what you know their perception will be of your play.

One way of knowing whether they are good is engaging in the game, other people might be unlucky with them but you can play first time and get lucky. So better to try. Essaycyber.

I would like to know what you guys think of HHSmithy and data mining in general? Thanks