I'm torn between whether HUDs improve your reading ability, or make you lazy. If you're never going to play live poker, than I would say using a HUD is to your benefit. If you want to play live, you need to be able to spot certain patterns,
tells, and other observations. Using a HUD will not help you do this.
The people who play 10 tables at once have to use a HUD, how else could you pay attention to the games? But this also turns these players into robots. Whatever their number reads, they have a play for it, and Ithink that's a horrible habit. When I read this forum everyone wants stats and crazy abbreviations for something I can't figure out, and I just don't understand half of it. Make your own reads, don't rely on the computer to do so.
I haven't played
online poker in a long time. But when I did, poker tracker was used solely to track my play and improve it, not to let the machine tell me who's a fish and who's a shark.
Since you play a lot of live poker, I say screw the HUD.