Choosing a HUD layout.

Posted: May 22nd, 2009 | Author: pipes06 | Filed under: The Pipes06 Blog | No Comments »

Choosing a HUD layout.

As I mentioned in a couple of recent posts, i’ve been playing some 6max cash for VPP’s this month. I’ve only been playing a couple of hours here and there, but during the 12k hands that i’ve played, it quickly became abundant to me how important having a decent HUD would be for my game. When i’m playing MTT’s I use a very simple HUD that has the following stats; VPIP, PFR, Hands, 3bet, Steal, Fold to steal. For any further information, I use the popups and notes to help determine the correct decision. I find that this format works well for my MTT game and suits the way the games play out.

When I began to play cash, I found that these basic stats were not enough to keep up with the game. At the moment i’m trying to incorporate a few new stats into my HUD layout. I’m going to detail a few of the stats that I use, why I find them useful and where I stole the information from.

My current 6max HUD looks like this:

It has the following stats:

Top Line-VPIP, PFR, TA and Aggression frequency.
2nd Line-Steal, Fold to Steal, 3bet, Fold to 3bet.
3rd Line-Cbet, Fold to Cbet, Hands.

For the usual stats VPIP (Voluntary Put money Into Pot), PFR (Preflop Raise %) and TA (Total Aggression), i’m going to let Pokey from 2+2 do the explaining, as he can articulate things slightly better than myself. This is a section from a post that is in the 2+2 Micro stakes archive.

“Voluntarily Put Money Into the Pot: the fundamental indicator of a player’s preflop looseness, and one of the best gauges of a player’s hand range. At uNL, you want your opponents’ VPIPs to be as large as possible. The more hands they play, the worse they are, and the more money you’ll make against them.

Preflop Raise: the fraction of the time that the opponent raises preflop. This number indicates how you will have to adjust to this opponent preflop. First off, if it is incredibly small you need not worry about this opponent raising you off a speculative hand. If the players left to act all have miniscule PFRs, you can limp with extremely speculative hands and expect to see very cheap flops, giving you marvelous implied odds. Take advantage of it. However, if an opponent with a PFR of 2% makes a raise preflop, you can fold most of your speculative hands without worrying. (NOTE: if you’re going to be heads-up against a full-stacked opponent with a PFR of under 4% who raises to 4 or 5 BBs, you can very safely call with ANY pocket pair on implied odds alone, because if you hit your set, you’ll stack your opponent VERY frequently. The tiny PFR tells you much about their holdings, and most of these opponents will commit a full stack to the pot with a hand that is powerful enough to convince them to raise preflop.)

Total Aggression: the best overall indicator of how aggressive this opponent will be postflop. Preflop play and postflop play are two different channels, and you should not expect a player to be either passive in both or aggressive in both. There are players who are highly aggressive preflop but turn into calling stations postflop, and there are sluggish limpers preflop who go hyper-psycho postflop when they hit a hand. If you see an opponent with an incredibly large total aggression rating, you will probably have to play passively against this opponent if you hit a solid hand, letting them do the betting for you. NOTE WELL: players with a very large total aggression come in two fundamentally different flavors — the ultra-weaktighties and the maniacs. An ultra-weaktighty is someone whose aggression is high because he folds whenever anybody else bets and he doesn’t have the nuts. A maniac is someone whose aggression is high because he bets and raises with any random crap. If you can tell these two apart, you will make MUCH more money. (Hint: look at the kinds of hands that they show down. If they’re reaching showdown infrequently and always with a monster, they’re probably ultra-weaktight. If they’re losing most of their hands at showdown, they’re probably maniacal.)”

Steal %: I use this stat largely as a determinant of how positionally aware someone is. It will take a few hundred hands to get this stat somewhat accurate but once you know that someone running 28/25 is stealing 40%, it is pretty obvious that they are opening the CO and Button incredibly wide. This allows you to comfortably open up your 3bet range.

The opposite of this is true if someone who has a high Fold to Steal % 3bets against you. When they 3bet you can easily dump a chunk of the lower end of your range, safe in the knowledge they are rarely going to do this light.

3Bet %: The amount of times that someone has bet over a raise. I tend to think anyone 3betting less than 3% is tight, 5-7% is around average and anything over 10% is pretty big. Having a decent knowledge of ranges and pokerstove will help in your assessment of a players 3bet range. 10% equates to 66+,ATs+,KTs+,QJs,AJo+,KQo. If you know that someone is 3betting you this much then you can work around those figures to determine how often to 4bet or call the raise.

Cbet/Fold to Cbet %: Cbet is the ratio of times that a player will bet the flop when being the last person to act preflop. Fold Cbet is similar. Basically the percentage of times that the player will fold to a flop bet after calling the last preflop raise. I go on an average of around 70-80%, and 50-60% respectively. Anything wildly outside those ranges means that a player is far too loose, or far too tight.

The majority of my stats at the moment are just extensions on my MTT HUD. I am looking to eventually include a few more stats. Probably a combination of Cold call %, Donk bet, Went to Showdown, Won $ at Showdown, fold to Turn Bet, agression by street. I’m only going to include these as I get more comfortable with the stats i’ve got.

As soon as i’m happy using the current set of stats, i’ll start to include WSD and W$SD. Red Joker posted a good explanation to these stats and more in a post here.

He deifnes the two as:

“Went to Showdown % (WtSD) – How often a player gets to showdown when he sees a flop. The higher this number is the more likely the player is to be a calling station and the lighter you can value bet. The lower the number the more you can bluff and the less inclined you should be to value bet. This should be looked at with W$SD.

<22%, this player is fairly nitty and doesn’t get to showdown often, most likely has a high W$SD

22% – 27%, indicates a reasonably tight range and is the most common, should be looked at in terms of W$SD.

27% – 33%, fairly loose range for getting to showdown, a low W$SD would indicate a calling station while a high W$SD would usually indicate a competent LAG.

>33%, this player is almost definitely going too far with his hands. Value bet relentlessly.

Won $ at Showdown % (W$SD) – How often a player wins at showdown. This can give a rough measure of a player’s postflop skill, the higher the number the more likely an opponent is to have the winning hand at showdown.

This really needs to be looked at in context with a player’s WtSD and they’re overall style of play. A maniac is likely to have a low W$SD while a smart, aggressive player’s will be higher. A good LAG will have a high W$SD where a bad LAG wouldn’t. This will also separate the nits from the TAGs. You can bluff frequently and use smaller bet sizes against players with high W$SD as they’re likely to be weak tight. On the other hand a player with a low W$SD is likely calling too much so we can value bet lighter and bet bigger against them.

>55%, this player probably isn’t going to showdown too often and can be bluffed more frequently.

48% – 55%, fairly common for TAGs/LAGs, look at in terms of WtSD.

<48%, usually has the worst hand at showdown, value bet relentlessly and don’t bluff them.”

There is a huge amount of information available regarding HUD layouts. I obtained most of my information from 2+2, Boards.ie, Cardschat.com, Stoxpoker.com and DeucesCracked.com.

The amount of stats you use is obvoiusly completly up to you. Some people are perfectly happy with VPIP, PFR and TA. Where as someone like AL1 from Stoxpoker, has a vast array of stats at his disposal. I’d like to think that i’m using a happy medium at the moment and hopefully the results will show in my hourly rate.

---