Don't know, don't care, don't use one. It's
much better to observe and pay attention. A HUD won't pick up live
tells, and if you think on-line players don't give off tells, well, you just haven't been paying attention. A couple sessions back, my vill hesitated in an unusual manner (he wasn't multi-tabling) that just screamed "Rob me!", and that's what I did: shoved into him and bluffed him off what was probably a weak top pair with absolutely nothing.
Secondly, all a HUD can tell you is what a certain player did in the past, not how they're playing
right now. One of our better players was really off his game last week. It was like playing a different player (maybe I was if he let a friend play on his account; maybe he was taking out some personal problems on his
bankroll?). If I went by a HUD, I wouldn't've made such a big dent in his account, as he was playing like a mega-fish. I also wouldn't've noticed when he was back in his groove. (this took about five days.)
HUDs can also get you into some very deep doo-doo since I've also seen fish improve: from whales to minnows to otters. Maybe they finally got sick and tired of losing all the time and decided to do some serious studying instead of simply giving up.
There just is no substitute for staying alert, paying attention, and taking notes, and reviewing them before every game. Just like playing live in a real cardroom with real cards and vills who're sitting right there in front of you. That's another way on-line players screw up: get them in a live game and they're completely lost without their HUDs. After Black Friday, I watched just essssss-loads of these guys blow off everything they made on-line in live games just because they didn't know how to make the adjustment, how to
observe.They haven't been back for several dog's ages.
