Is a $5.99 HUD Any Good?

The Jivaro HUD, with premium membership priced at only $5.99 per month, is something of an outlier in the poker database world. Aimed at serious players who don’t want information overload. What we really want to know though, is whether or not it’s good value for money.

The jury is still out more than three years after the product was released into the mainstream market. As we looked into last month, this HUD took a totally different development route than it’s sibling rivals Hold’em Manager 2 and Pokertracker 4. Rather than collecting more data than can be possible useful for even an above average player, Jivaro concentrates on what’s important. Sure, there are going to be many disagreements on where the line is drawn here, but the vast majority of players who have tried Jivaro Premium have reported their satisfaction.

Is a HUD Even Necessary?

Following the 2003 poker boom, eagle-eyed software developers who gained a taste for online poker spotted a gap in the market. After 200 years of poker there was finally an opportunity to collect masses of data and revolutionise strategy. 

Many myths were busted as the best players pored over millions of hands and how the game was played changed forever. The old school live players now had a choice - play online and raise their game to the new ceiling, or get left behind. Live games in general are softer than what is to be found online, although in this modern era many online players have chosen to play both disciplines, meaning that live poker is no longer as ridiculously soft as it once was.

Now, after around 15 years worth of HUD and database use, we can see that not much has really changed for the average player since it all started. This is why Jivaro has become such a popular product. It is the first HUD to concentrate on what really matters, and remove the ability to waste countless hours sifting through information that won’t make a single dent in your win rate.

Seemingly aimed at those still in denial at HUD use, programmers at Jivaro have strived to minimise any distraction from the HUD itself and made the graphical overlay as efficient with screen space as possible.

Much care has been put into ensuring that Jivaro uses up as little space on your poker table as possible. We understand that our application is secondary to the actual poker playing and as such we try to have Jivaro stay as much in the background as possible.”

Premium Service 

If you are one of the many poker players who no longer have the patience to be constantly updating your 50 stat HM 2 HUD, the Jivaro Premium service might just be what you are looking for. To avoid giving you too much information on a single street, the HUD changes according to the game situation to show exactly what you need to see.

The premium service comes at only $5.99 per month but gives you access to all the new updates as well as 24/7 online support. The member’s forum is always active with players discussing with the developers what improvements they’d like to see. 

This is all in comparison with the $159.99 that Pokertracker and Hold’em Manager charge for a product which will eventually become out of date and require another outlay of your cash.