Charles Hawk: What are the main mistakes you see from players who transitioned from husngs to spins?

coffeeyay​: One very common mistake is they play too many hands pre-flop in--particularly on the button and in small blinds. I see a ton of huge mistakes in simple spots like shallow stacked push/fold play, which is easily solvable 3-way. 3-handed Nash push/fold ranges are very different from HU push/fold ranges, and that trips people up a lot.

Charles Hawk: Your HUD for husngs is the best there is available online. I would say it is a MUST-have thing for regs, like sharkystrator. :) Will you produce a HUD for Spins as well? If yes, when?

coffeeyay​: I definitely plan to produce a HUD for Spin and Go poker. However, there are a lot more technical and design issues associated with Spin and Gos that I want to solve before putting it out. I'm not willing to release a CoffeeHUD for spins unless it's perfect and solves those issues to my satisfaction. The original CoffeeHUD redefined what a HUD for HUSNGs could do. I've learned a lot about designing and developing the best HUDs, and now I know what a HUD can and should do. Because of this I know how good my Spin HUD can be, and I'm not willing to settle until it meets my expectations.

However, I am still working hard to achieve the level of detail and precision that I expect, so there is not yet a planned release date.

Charles Hawk: Are there any differences between playing hu in Spins and husngs? Should husng players think differently in hu matches in Spins?

coffeeyay​: There are some big technical differences--the blind levels are longer, and sometimes the stacks are deeper. Overall, though, that's not a big deal. Mostly there's a difference in population tendencies--even the players you face are much less experienced in HU than even the recreational HUSNG regs. This means that we need to change our strategy.

There's also more incentive to try to maximize the expectation value of your win-rate, instead of maximizing the expectation value of the size of your chip stack at end of hand (aka chipEV). This win-rate maximization is particularly important in the higher multipliers, but even in the lower ones it's important because the blind levels are long, stacks are deeper, and players are worse.

Charles Hawk: Practical question: how to define, as fast as you can, whether a player is a reg or a rec? Do sharkscope or other tracking programs track Spins?

coffeeyay​: There are a lot of ways. You can check the HUSNG hypers division lists, and Sharkscope is generally good (though it doesn't track spin and gos). I’m not aware of any software that tracks spins, but you can generally figure out how good a player is by looking at what other formats they play and how successful they are there.

There are other indicators that are less reliable but can help paint a picture: VIP status, whether they are using seating software like SpinWiz, whether you recognize their name from playing them before or a forum, etc.

Once you have a good sample it's easy to spot the patterns behind how they play. Most regulars have standard strategies that are easy to identify. Using stats like min-raise frequency, their VPIP OOP, or their open-shove frequencies can often paint a pretty clear picture that your opponent is a regular.