Why would anyone pay for a premade HUD?

We chat to Nick Korolev from Hand2Note about the benefit of custom HUDs and his new tool FreeBetRange.

The big question most players will have is – why would I pay for a HUD I could (in theory) create myself? Hand2Note has a HUD Store where you can buy premade HUDs. 

Nick Korolev: Mostly, to save time. Yes, Hand2Note provides you with comprehensive tools to create personalized HUD/popups. And if you're willing to learn how to use all the features, and then create your dream HUD profile - you should probably go that way. But you should be aware of the drawbacks of this way:

You'll spend a lot of precious time that you could've spent on your development as a player - working in solvers, analyzing your hands, etc. - that work can't be done by anyone but you.

You will make mistakes in creating stats, and it may affect the quality of your decisions. As in any other business, in the beginning, you will make mistakes due to lack of knowledge, inattention, etc. It'll take way more time than you assume for you to become a solid HUD/stats creator. So you should learn first, and then thoroughly test your stats. Again, it may make sense to dedicate that monotonous job to professionals and dedicate your time to smth more meaningful for your career.

Of course, you will not achieve maximum personalization when buying a ready-made package. But, all the packages are open for editing, so you'll be able to make adjustments in the HUD and popups.

Also, in case you need a fully personalized pack and still want to save time, you can order a custom package - we have a custom HUD order service. Our HUD expert will help you to shape your request and implement all your ideas.

In case you are willing to take the time to create your own HUD, great, we’ll be happy to support you. Remember that we have 24/7 customer support service, feel free to contact us anytime if you have questions during the process.

How much work would have gone into some of the premium HUDs you have on offer?

Nick Korolev: It depends on the package and the competence level of the creator. For instance, at the time I created Simple Research - I spent around 3 weeks completing it. For a beginner, this can take much longer.

Also keep in mind that you will have to learn from your mistakes, test all the stats, etc. Besides that, Hand2Note is very advanced software, and as you create a pack, you will learn more and more features, and you can endlessly get stuck in the "improvement" process.

All the ready-made packs already have gone through all of this. They have been tested and are constantly being improved as players' feedback accumulates.

"Hand2Note has lots of unique HUD features"

Can you share some features of H2N HUDs that PT4/HM do not have that would make premium HUDs more enticing?

Nick Korolev: Hand2Note has a lot of unique features that bring HUD/popups to completely another level compared to outdated trackers. There are a few of them:

Quick hand view. You have instant access to the list of real showdowns of your opponents. Thus, even on small samples, when the stats make little sense, you will have solid information about the opponents' game style.

Extended popup with diagrams, bet sizings, and hand strength tells. You can hover over any stat in the HUD or popup and get a super detailed visual report of exactly how villain constructs their range in this spot, what sizings they use with which hands, and so on.

Please note that some parts of these popups are restricted to display while playing on PokerStars.

Advanced note-taking system. You can make notes in 1 click with pre-defined quick note templates. drag&drop hand histories right into a note, etc.

All that features are available in every package, as they come with Hand2Note from the box.

A lot of the features of some of these HUDs look almost like guidance on the most profitable action to take – where is the line between this and RTA? Things like ‘EV of bet lines’ and ‘find where your opponents are unbalanced’

Nick Korolev: It's a big classic debate to figure out at what exact point the software we use becomes "unethical" from a fair play standpoint. We can draw a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 is not using any software at all, and 10 is where we use RTA, data mining, advanced report on every player, and so on.

We are trying to keep things balanced: to give as many features as possible to the players to improve their game, while remaining in the "ethical" zone on the mentioned scale.

For example, in Hand2Note you can't "draw" GTO ranges using HUD cells and dynamically show them in the right situations - Hand2Note recognizes this and won't display them.

The “EV of bet lines” that you mention is not really relevant in terms of reading opponents at the tables. These numbers require a huge sample to become reliable and are mostly suitable for your own game and field trends analysis outside the tables.

"Range research is a powerful tool for exploring field trends"

The ‘research’ HUDs particularly ones for population research are very interesting. Is population research more important than studying individual opponents?

Nick Korolev: Range Research is the most powerful tool for exploring field trends and developing your exploit game. Of course, studying your opponents individually is very useful, but when it comes to recreational players, we're very limited in that way. We almost never have a good sample for that kind of opponents. So, what we can do, is automatically create an alias of many similar players and investigate how these types of players behave in all possible game spots. That will give you way more confidence and understanding of how to exploit your opponents more profitably even in uncertain and low-sample spots.

Packages from the Research category usually include a set of popups containing very detailed statistics on all possible game situations, sizings, boards, and so on. Using them with Range Research feature, you can quickly explore how your opponents behave even in the most specific situations. Of course, for this, you need a solid sample.

Your new tool FreeBetRange is very interesting because at a time when people are expected to have charts viewable while they play, this is a tool that encourages people to memorize ranges instead/also – have I got that right?

Nick Korolev: We give people a choice - they can either use their charts while playing or practice them in the app using Trainer. Using charts while playing may be prohibited by your room policy, so we recommend checking that.

As for the Trainer - we have two modes for studying your preflop strategy. The first - the classic one, when you’re at the table with two cards and have to make a decision.

Please note that for this mode you can configure hands dealing coverage for every range you practise - to avoid many easy-fold decisions and make your learning process more dense and efficient.

The second training mode is “Drawing a range”. In that mode, you try to reproduce your ranges and check the accuracy of your answers. Using this way of learning, you not only memorize your strategy but also practice “range vs range” thinking.

"View your strategy in a convienent form"

I’ll end with the same question I started with – why would customers use this tool when they already have things like PIO/GTO+/SimplePreflop, etc. – all of which they are importing the ranges from into freebetrange?

Nick Korolev: We actually do not compete with the mentioned apps, Freebetrange and this software solve different problems.

Solvers are great to study and analyze, but often not that convenient for storing, managing, and applying your strategy. Freebetrange solves that - we have a simple, intuitive but at the same time powerful interface to manage your strategy and view it in a convenient form.

Not all apps give you the ability to train ranges. Freebetrange provides you with two training modes for efficient learning as we discussed in a previous question.

Also, Freebetrange is a browser app, you don’t need to install anything. All your data is automatically synchronized, and you can sign in from any device at any time.

Lastly, Freebetrange is way cheaper.

We have a lot of customers who use both solvers and Freebetrange. Freebetrange may be your main preflop app, where you store your strategy, and besides that, you can have a few other learning tools.

To find out more about Hand2Note head on our to our Hand2Note forum.

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Use our special discount code H2N10JSJPS and you'll receive a discount of 10% on your first purchase of Hand2Note as a PokerStrategy.com player.

Hand2Note is available in two different offers:

Furthermore, there's also an ASIA version of Hand2Note available that includes support for a dozen Asia-focused rooms, including mobile-only operators like our very own partner room KKPoker.

To get the 10% PokerStrategy.com discount on your first purchase of Hand2Note, simply use our code H2N10JSJPS in the checkout process.

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What is Hand2Note?

Hand2Note provides online poker players with statistics, poker analytical tools and data visualization, containing a full set of tools for playing poker seriously and competitively.

From HUDs, popups including visual presentation of preflop and postflop ranges, reports, graphs, analysis and much more. The software includes everything you may expect from typical poker tracking software, along with a lot of innovative and powerful features required by a professional poker player.

Hand2Note HUD

One of the central features, the Hand2Note HUD, offers three types of typical Heads-up Displays used by serious players:

• Static HUD shows the same stats for all players at the table. You probably used this kind of HUD in other software.
• Positional HUD shows different stats for different players at the table depending on their positions, hero's position, stack sizes, number of players in the hand and many other criteria known at the beginning of the hand.
• Dynamic HUD shows stats depending on players' actions in a hand. For example, it may show the stat OPEN RAISE MP only when a player open raises from middle position.

Note: The Positional and Dynamic HUD are prohibited at PokerStars but allowed at a variety of other poker rooms.

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