Setting up my HUD & PT3....

Can you guys point me in a good direction for setting up my HUD & PT3 for optimal use?

Especially the live HUD.. I know what a useful tool it can be and I'd like to be using it the best I can

do you mean 'what stats should i have in the HUD?'

or do you need tech advice on how to set it up?

I might be the worst person to comment on this, because I have been told a couple of times that my HUD is a little cluttered and a bit information-overload. That said, as often as not, I will colour-code players based not on my hud at all, but rather straight away based on obviously fishy, passive behaviours like limping, sitting short, minraising or minbetting, hands I see them show down in the instant hand history etc. so I think it's important to not rely only on your hud, but to be actively paying attention yourself.

All that said, here's a rundown of my own HUD just to give you an idea:

Line 1: Name / Hands (Hands is set up to colour code so it is red for a small sample)
Line 2: VPIP / PFR / 3bet / Fold-To-3bet / Steal / Fold-To-Steal
Line 3: Cbet flop / Cbet Turn / Fold-to-flop-cbet / fold-to-turn-cbet
Line 4: Flop AF / Turn AF / River AF
Line 5: WTSD from flop / WTSD from turn / WTSD from river / Won@SD
Line 6: Line taken


I think lines 1 and 2 are totally standard stuff that probably everyone has on their hud, they give you an idea of whether you have a significant sample, and what someones general overall tendencies are - a glance at this line should be able to differentiate a nit, a standard tag, a loose-passive fish, a maniac etc.

Line 3 gives you more insight into postflop tendencies and helps with decisions like whether villain is worth floating, 2-barrelling etc.

Line 4 is probably unnecessary, but does help a fair bit in some situations, for example it's not uncommon to see fish with stats like 0.5/0.5/12.0 on this line, if they win@sd a fair bit as well, then they slowplay a lot.

Line 5 again helps with multiple barrelling decisions, and also indicates in the won@sd how light they call down.

Line 6 is a HEM feature (I suspect PT has the same) where it tracks a hand during the hand itself, and shows the line they took - really useful if you're multi tabling, find yourself in a tricky spot on a later streets and need to quickly remind yourself of the earlier action.

With some things, you just have to jump in and see what's up. There is no substitute for a little exploration, and no one can tell you what you prefer. Spend the time to acquaint yourself with the options and choices you have available and then make your selections. Once you've made some choices, you can go back and evaluate which choices seemed to be sub-par and maybe make a new choice.

You will exaggerate inefficiencies and personal frustrations if you take someone else's decisions as your own. After all, we're all unique (except for that one guy); what is best for one of us may not be the best for you.

In this specific case: Set up your HUD in a way that seems to make sense to you. Then tell us what you did and why.

I personally had issues in the past too with so much information in my hud until someone explained to me that I don't need a shitload of post flop stats until post flop. Have your hud set up for preflop and 3bet stats. Use the pop ups to look at post flop when you get there. Who the fuck cares about some guy with 40 hands WTS% until you get there. And some of those stats mean shit until you have a significant sample.

And to be honest, if you don't have any notes on someone with a "significant sample" you're not doing it right.

I have to disagree with Jyms about not needing postflop stats pre-flop.

You may want to leave them in the popups rather than have them on the main hud, but I actually think they are really useful - for example, if I'm going to isolate a limper with trash, I want to know I have plenty of fold equity postflop - if they are the type to go to SD often for example, then I'm going to want to isolate them with a more value weighted range, but if they're really fit-or-fold then I can open it up to basically any two cards.

Or say I want to 3bet someone but they call a ton of 3bets, that's just fine as long as they fold a lot on the flop or turn, otherwise I'm going to be 3betting them less in the first place, again with more of a value range, so I want to know their postflop tendencies pre-flop.

Sweet, yeah this is exactly the kind of info I'm talking about. I realize that a lot of stats need a big sample to really get something out of.

But for VPIP & PFR I read that having 100 hands on a guy is good for those... What do you guys think?

VPIP & PFR accumulate every hand, and therefore converge more quickly than almost all other stats. A sample as small as 20 hands will pretty much tell you what you need. With 50 hands on someone, the VPIP/PFR is reliable. After all, the difference between a 33/15 and 34/16 is pretty slim anyway.

The only time this is not solid is when someone get an extreme card distribution in their first 20 - 50 hands. Like getting a ton of great hands in a row... or the opposite, running card dead for the first few orbits. This quickly resolves itself and your Spidey senses will tell you that something is different about that villain until the stats catch up with them.

As MMM said don't worry about sample size when the stats are extreme - if someone is running 60/5 over 20 hands, they are loose and passive, if someone is running 4/2 over 20, they are a nit. The exceptions over even 20 or 30 hands to this will be rare. These are really the crucial types to differentiate quickly when you join a table, and it doesn't take many hands.

Note that a 60/40 or whatever is not necessarily a fish over 20 hands, since they have a more normal vpip/pfr ratio and could be someone running hot, wheras someone 60/5 is a sure bet to be a fish since they are calling and limping a ton.

For your more standard tags, differentiating say a 25/22 type and a nittier 18/15, yeah a hundred hands or so ought to provide a decent sample.

The ones to look out for with small sample sizes are stuff like a 30/15 over 30 hands may be a tight, aggressive player who's running hot, or a fish, so look for other evidence like posting blinds, sitting short, limping, minraising etc. Similarly a 25/10 could be a tag, or a card-dead fish, so again look for the signs that differentiate an aggressive vs a passive player.

I also tend to see maniacs take a little while to converge, like a 25/25 over 30 hands could end up being 50/50 over a hundred, they are just a little card dead again or something. With these players, I think you really do need to wait a little while to draw conclusions since a 25/25 who is 3betting and barrelling off a ton could just be a "decent" player who is running hot, so I'd play pretty straightforward with them until the sample size accumulated.

Originally Posted by BorisTheSpider

As MMM said don't worry about sample size when the stats are extreme - if someone is running 60/5 over 20 hands, they are loose and passive, if someone is running 4/2 over 20, they are a nit.

Ignoring the fact that it's impossible to run 4/2 over 20, I'll just say that someone so tight over 20 is not necessarily a supernit, as accurate tagg stats take much longer than loose fish stats to converge. a 5/5 over 20 could be 14/12 or 20/18, it's just too early to tell. All we can say is that they're almost certainly not a loose fish.

Originally Posted by BorisTheSpider

Note that a 60/40 or whatever is not necessarily a fish over 20 hands, since they have a more normal vpip/pfr ratio and could be someone running hot

60/40 over 20 could certainly be a 25/22 just running into good spots, but if you've got a decent sample at a stake, and know most regs -- I'd much rather assume that they're an aggressive fish, but if they've been playing that many hands you should have some other information to decide if they're leaning towards reg or fish.

on the topic of the desirability of postflop information, i think you very definitely want to have a feel for villain's postflop game when making decisions as early in the hand as preflop. playing vs someone's steals is a prime example of this. we want to know whether villain is fit-or-fold postflop or a barreling monkey, or never folds to flop C/R's or always folds to flop C/R's etc etc. that said, i prefer to keep my on table hud relatively simple because then i must actively search for the things i want to know (and i do) rather than just a quick glance over some numbers on the table that i don't adequately take into account anyway. also, i hate table clutter.