Poker HUDs: What They Show and Where They're Banned

What a HUD actually does

A HUD (heads-up display) is an overlay drawn on top of your online poker table by tracking software. The software reads the hand-history files your poker client writes to disk, stores every hand in a database, and shows statistics next to each opponent's name.

The stats describe what a player has done across every hand you share with them. Someone who raised before the flop in 4 of their last 100 hands shows a preflop raise figure of 4. There is no prediction and no magic in it: a HUD is a record of observed behaviour, nothing more.

The two numbers to learn first

Most HUD layouts lead with the same pair of stats, and that pair answers most questions on its own.

VPIP (voluntarily put money in pot) is the share of hands where a player chose to call or raise before the flop. Checking the big blind for free does not count. A VPIP of 50 means the player enters half of all dealt hands, which is far too many to be built on strong cards.

PFR (preflop raise) is the share of hands where the player raised before the flop. It can never be higher than VPIP.

The gap between the two is often the most useful reading. A 25/20 player enters a quarter of hands and raises with nearly all of them. A 40/5 player calls constantly and raises almost never, which usually marks a passive player whose rare raises mean real strength.

Stat	What it counts	How to read it
VPIP	% of hands entered voluntarily preflop	Low twenties and under is tight; mid-thirties and up is loose
PFR	% of hands raised preflop	Close to VPIP is aggressive; far below it is passive
3-bet	% of hands re-raised over an open raise	The lower the figure, the more a 3-bet signals a premium hand
Hands	Sample size behind every other stat	Below a few hundred hands, treat the numbers as noise

Sample size decides what the numbers mean

VPIP and PFR settle within a few hundred hands because every dealt hand feeds them. Rarer events need far more. A stat like "folds to river bet" may only fire a handful of times across thousands of hands. Acting on it after three occurrences is guessing with extra steps.

The hands counter is therefore the first cell to check on any HUD panel. Small samples are dominated by variance, and a read built on ten hands is worth less than no read at all.

Where HUDs are banned or restricted

Site policy is the real constraint, and it varies more than most players assume. GGPoker bans HUDs outright and says so in its terms. Other rooms restrict real-time assistance tools, run anonymous tables where long-term tracking is pointless, or block third-party overlays in the client itself.

Policies also change. The only source worth trusting is the current terms of service of the site you play on, read before you install anything. Playing with a banned tool puts your account, and the money in it, at risk.

What a HUD will not do

It will not fix your own game. The most valuable database on your machine is your own: your VPIP, your PFR, the spots where you lose money. Review those before studying anyone else.

It will not change the underlying math. Pot odds and equity work the same with or without an overlay; the hold'em odds section derives those numbers from the deck. It also does not lower the cost of playing, the rake comes out of every pot either way.

And it reads nothing at a live table. If your trip includes live poker, the habit that transfers is the one behind the HUD: counting how often each opponent enters and raises, one orbit at a time.

Where the numbers on this site come from

This article is editorial. The reference sections below derive their figures from the cards, the dice or the pay table rather than quoting them, and each one shows the working