What's in Your HUD with Kevin Frame (Kevlar)

We sat down with Kevin "Kevlar" Frame from Saltcoats, Scotland to get his take on poker software from the view of a small-stakes grinder.  Kevlar has almost $150,000 in tournament cashes according to PocketFives, most of which comes from a variety of iPoker skins.
 
PokerSoftware:  What poker-related software do you use while playing or for analysis and study?
 
Kevlar: I use the Holdem Manager 2 HUD at the tables. When studying, I mainly use Holdem Manager 2 to analyze hands.  More recently, I downloaded Equilab and ICM Trainer for more in-depth analysis, but haven't used them very much yet.
 
PokerSoftware:  How is your Holdem Manager 2 HUD set up, line by line?
 
Kevlar:  1st line - player name, hands, big blinds
2nd line - VPIP, RFI, 3bet, fold to 3bet
3rd line - flop cbet, turn cbet, fold to flop cbet, fold to turn cbet
 
All of the stats are quite heavily filtered and color-coded. I sometimes add in extra stats, usually steal-related, but I like the numbers to be quite big, so I prefer to try to keep it as simple as possible and rely on the pop-ups for more in-depth stats when required.
 
PokerSoftware:  Tell us how you filter and color-code and how this is useful to you.
 
Kevlar:  All of my stats are filtered based on different ranges of big blinds and number of players at the table because players play very different styles with different stack sizes, on full tables compared to shorthanded, etc.  So, I try to keep the stats as relevant as possible to the current situation and not be misled by stats that occurred under very different circumstances.
 
I color-code the top line of stats so that tighter numbers are red, what I would consider normal ranges are orange, looser numbers are green, and ridiculously loose numbers are purple. This is so I can quickly glance at the colors on a specific player's HUD and have a rough idea of what style they play.

I also set the big blinds number to be bright yellow so that it stands out from the others and I intend to color-code some of the other lines so that they are easier to read, but haven't got around to it yet. All of the color-coding is generally to make the HUD easier to read quickly when multi-tabling.
 
PokerSoftware:  Tell us about Equilab and ICM Trainer.  What do these programs do and how do you plan to use them?
 
Kevlar:  Equilab is a tool that can be used to run hand simulations and see how a hand or range performs against another hand or range. I will use this when reviewing hands to see what ranges I should be calling/shoving with in certain spots and see if I made a correct decision. Like I said, I haven't really used it much, but it seems to have some advanced features that evaluate equities on every possible turn and river card, so I will hopefully be doing some in-depth analysis with it to help improve my game.
 
ICM Trainer is used to analyze the ICM implications of certain spots, for example that a spot that would be +chipEV, but should not be taken at a final table due to the sizes of other stacks and the pay jumps. ICM is a very important part of poker and an area I feel I need to put in a bit of work, so I look forward to doing some studying using this software for any decisions I make where the stacks of other players should also be taken into consideration.

PokerSoftware:  Do you think HUDs should be allowed?
 
Kevlar:  I can see the arguments for both sides. On the one hand, you have the argument that the stats are all things that could be learned from paying attention anyway, so you aren't gaining any extra information, and anyone is free to purchase and use it. On the other hand, it does provide an advantage by allowing good players to effectively multi-table. There are many amateur players who don't know it exists and who tend to be put off just by hearing of its existence, as they think it allows players to make perfect decisions, which is obviously not the case.
 
I think if they were disallowed, there will always be someone who finds a way to be able to use them and then those people would have a pretty big advantage over everyone else. So, it is probably best to keep it as a level playing field where everyone is free to purchase and use it if they wish. Also, most players, myself included, don't fully utilize their HUD and only use it as a guiding tool anyway.
 
You can check out a bit more about Kevlar on his blog at kevlarpoker.com or on Twitter under the handle @kevframe.

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