Jivaro – The 4-Year Old ‘New HUD On The Block’: Part 1

When Jivaro hit the poker HUD (Heads-Up Display) market 4 years ago, it was heralded as the best, brightest and most useful statistical tool an online grinder could find – and the claims were far from outrageous, the stunning simplicity a breath of fresh air for players, your scribe included – but how did they dream up such a product? Let’s take a look at the birth of a beautiful HUD…

Prior to Jivaro’s arrival, the main players – Hold’em Manager and PokerTracker – had pretty decent products out there. The problem, as anyone who has used them would probably agree with, were that they were clunky and space-grabbing affairs – at times way too much information detracting and distracting from the main aim in poker – to win!

Enter Icelandic developers Jivaro with a beautifully ergonomic display – and it was a game-changer, as Jivaro’s Jóhann Schröder told us:

“We felt that the HUD’s on the market were too ‘technical’ and visually cluttered so we wanted to give players a user friendly yet powerful tool to help them improve their game”. 

What transpired was a streamlined, real-time, full-colour display integrated into the player’s avatar showing the most relevant basic opponent stats, with a back office which allows the player to share replays, look at street specific statistics and access a Tournament Command Center among many other things…

“We had a lot of input from professional poker players and they were heavily involved in the testing process” explained Jóhann, adding that: “The statistics that Jivaro displays were hand-picked by seasoned online pros as the most important and relevant ones”.

This involved taking ideas from the best of the rest among the competition and improving on them, a creative and technical process which had several ‘eureka’ moments along the way, as Jóhann says,

“…when we first started testing the stats functionality. We immediately knew players were going to love it!”

The ‘realtime’ element of Jivaro’s baby was one of the most unique offerings to emerge from the team’s deliberations, a huge change from the other HUD’s, which usually read the users hand history files and update the statistics after each hand.

“What we wanted to do was to display all the information in real time”, explained Jóhann, adding that Jivaro “wanted to do it a little differently, so we can display everything in real time. This allows us to display pot odds and street switching on the fly”.

Very clever, and a most unexpected bonus for those who would soon be using the HUD as part of their daily grind, every extra piece of easily-digested info extremely useful of course.

 So, a new HUD was born, but how could they break through the stranglehold of its competitors? Find out in part 2, coming soon…