Updated on 22 Feb 26 by
Barry Carter
Poker Expert

The HUD debate went into overdrive this week

partypoker have banned HUDs and downloadable hand histories, prompting a fierce debate within the poker community.





HUD

One of the great debates in online poker has been the ethics surrounding Heads-Up Displays (HUDs). Some people consider them fair game, some consider them an unfair advantage, others think either way they are bad optics for the game and put recreational players off from playing.

The HUD debate went into overdrive this week when partypoker enacted three big changes:

  • They forced an screenname change for all players
  • They banned HUDs explicitly
  • They removed the ability to download hand histories

All three moves designed to negate the advantage gained by players with large hand history databases. The screenname change rendered any previous hand histories useless. The banning of HUDs meant future hands tracked would not be used against players in real time. The inability to download hand histories (they still will be available to view inside the partypoker client) was a move designed to prevent hand history sharing.

If you want further input into the rationale behind these changes, partypoker LIVE boss Rob Yong took to Twitter this week to defend all the changes. He pulled no punches in his replies to comments to the tweet below. It really is a fascinating read whatever side of the debate you come under if you want to get an idea of the direction partypoker is heading in:

Naturally high volume grinders are against this move as a HUD is what allows them to play more tables. Some consider it an unfair advantage to have all this statistical data at hand which was not personally observed by the player in real time, others consider it simply a way of mitigating the disadvantage multitablers put upon themselves by not being able to focus on all their tables.

Whether that is the case or not, it is hard to argue that HUDs and software in general are a barrier to entry for some potential online players. Rightly or wrongly some people consider HUDs cheating and an unfair advantage. As Yong argued, if a new player discovers that upon depositing for the first time they will be seated next to a player with a wealth of statistical information on their tendencies, it may put them off poker before they start.

A counter argument to this is that the HUD only really comes into effect when it is a regular against another regular, because recreational players usually do not put in the volume necessary to make the information a HUD shows reliable.

While a lot of grinders understand and, in some cases, welcome the removal of HUDs, Yong and partypoker have come under much more fire for the decision to prevent downloadable hand histories. As Yong suggested, this is to prevent hand history sharing, which famously happened against Viktor Blom in one of the biggest losing sessions in poker history.

While plenty of arguments have been made about downloadable hand histories allowing players to improve their own game away from the tables, the bulk of the criticism for this new practice has been that tracking software helps prevent cheating. There have been a lot of high profile cases, most notably the UltimateBet and Absolute Poker ‘superuser’ scandals, where detective work by players, facilitated by tracking software, helped unearth cheating. Hold’em Manager, who understandably have a vested interest in this debate, have led the charge on this.

When probed about this particular issue, Yong and other partypoker representatives (including our own pleno1) have simply tried to assure players that partypoker’s security framework is now so reliable that they have nothing to worry about. Even though, as Nick Jones from pokerfuse pointed out, around 25% of recently banned bots at partypoker were identified by player reports, not internally:

Interestingly this week the MPN Network reversed their own decision to restrict downloadable hand histories. In their words they made a mistake and wanted to make their games more transparent, help players improve their own games and also comply with laws on data portability:

The subject of how to ‘level the playing field’ rages on and it seems every operator is experimenting with new ways to police predatory practices – from blind lobbies, anonymous tables, new formats, reduced rakeback benefits and restrictions on third-party software. There is little doubt that online poker has an image problem that HUDs have contributed to. Time will tell whether there will be a greater image problem that could come from not allowing players to help police cheating in the games they play in.

This writer is quite welcoming of the HUD ban. While I don't think HUDS are a form of cheating, it is hard to ignore they create a negative image of online poker for new players to the game. For that reason alone this is a welcome experiment by partypoker. Preventing downloadable hand histories, however, does feel like a step too far. For those of us who were around during the infamous 'superuser' scandal it is going to be a hard sell for any poker site to convince us their security is infallible.

Should HUDs and downloadable hand histories be banned? Let us know in the comments:


Barry Carter
Poker Expert

Barry Carter is the editor of PokerStrategy.com and the co-author of The Mental Game of Poker 1 & 2, Poker Satellite Strategy, PKO Poker Strategy, Endgame Poker Strategy, GTO Poker Simplified, Mystery Bounty Poker Strategy and Beyond GTO. In 2025, he won the Global Poker Awards for Best Book and Twitter Personality of the Year.