PokerTracker

For two years I’m playing on a small local site (Boss Media) with a very limited player pool. Usually I sit on the tables with the same players all the time (even on micro stakes). Therefore I have several 10k hands on many of them. The problem I have is that some regs changed their game considerably over time. (For example my hud shows 25/14 for some of them while in reality they play 27/25). So I was wondering about the best way to get their actual stats on my hud instead of a skewed mix up.

I came up with three ways:

1.) Under Configure Hud / Hud Options I could tell PT3 to display the hud stats only for the last x amount of hands.
Pro: It takes only a couple of clicks to set up this rule and it would reflect the game my opponents (especially regs) play at the moment.
Con: It doesn’t work for me as soon I open more than one table. The hud starts to behave weird and doesn’t show up for all players (or doesn’t show up at all). This might have to do with PT3 not being able to use the cache anymore, (which could lead to performance problems on slower PCs), although my new PC should be easily fast enough (if it doesn’t work on a 6 Core/8GB Ram/SSD rig it probably won’t on any other as well).

2.) Session Stats
In another thread I was told there is a session stats pop up in development for a future release of PT3.
Pro: When the pop up finally arrives, it will be easy to get an overview on your opponents play on a table. I know you can already get this information with tool tips, but only stat by stat, which is kinda suboptimal.
Con: Session stats are limited. Normally you don’t get much more than a couple of hundred hands on an opponent in a single session. While a couple of hundred hands tell you something, it’s not really a big enough sample size for many stats to become accurate.
Obviously as soon as I quit and start a new session the count starts at 0 again.

3.) Selective Purge
I could delete all my sessions from the database except for sessions I played during the last couple of months.
Pro: I would get pretty accurate stats of my opponents momentarily style of play.
Con: For obvious reasons you cannot delete a single amount of hands. You have to delete a whole session meaning you also going to lose hands of players, who never alter their play (and I guess you also are going to lose your own results of these sessions as well, but I’m not 100% sure??).
Additionally purging a session is an irreversible process. Once deleted you cannot restore a session.


So I’m wondering: What's the best solution for my problem!?

Personally I would prefer number 1. This option would even be better, if I was able to tell PT3 to only take hands for hud stats into account, which occurred after my last session in December (for example). Imho, that would even be more useful and accurate, although I might be wrong though. But for the time being a working last x amount of hands option would do the trick for me as well.

Number 2 is not a real solution.

Number 3 is kind of a hassle. I guess I would have to backup my original database and “build” a new one with old sessions removed to get the hud stats I want. Obviously after every couple of months I would have to do the same thing over and over again.

Maybe there is another way to solve my problem I didn’t think of. Any help and suggestions are much appreciated!


@ PT3 development team: Do you know of any issues with the last x amount of hands option on the Boss Media network? If not, I guess I have to open a support ticket.

@ kraada: Kinda offtopic, but I didn’t want to open a new thread.
As far as I remember you have posted a “how to read” the postflop pop up of your advanced hud. I think you even came up with a short quiz. I can’t find this “userguide” anymore and I start wondering whether I’m imagining things or not. If this post still exists, it would be nice to get the link (because I’m apparently too stupid to find it myself). If not, a repost would be great! It’s not a big deal for me, but I found your userguide quite useful and I think many advanced cash hud newbies would appreciate it. Thx!

There shouldn't be an issue with "last X hands" Boss specifically, but as you say it does prevent use of the cache so has performance implications in large databases.
There isn't really a "good" solution to this kind of situation currently, but I will remind the development team about the issue.

Kraada's thread about his Hud is here: How To: Advanced HUD Configuration

Thx for your reply.
It’s kinda disappointing to hear that there is no “good” solution and I’m surprised that this doesn’t seem to be a big issue for many PT3 users (as far as I can tell searching the forum).
I have about 500.000 hands in my database. I’m not sure whether you consider that’s large or not, but it looks like the “last x hands” option doesn’t work with that many hands, if you wanna multitable, even on a state of art PC. (Especially full ring tables seem to kill the hud). I hope the development team finds a way to make the “last x hands” option more useable in the future.

I know kraadas advanced hud thread. Actually I think he has posted his “userguide” how to read the postflop pop up in this very thread, but after the last thread update it seems to be gone. Apart from that I just realized there is no explanation to be found what the colour coded player hero stats (upper left corner) mean (or maybe I'm just blind ;-) ). Again it’s not a big deal, but I think all this information was available in the advanced hud thread a couple of months ago and I’m wondering why it’s not there anymore.

For the record, ive noticed the performance issue as well, and have to turn it off...I also have 500k + hands, and some of my opponents go back 5 yrs, and unfortunately
they play a lot different than they used to, so the only solution is to start another database and purge old hands.

A solution to this issue would be if PT3 moved processed hands into a yyyy/mm/dd subdirectory (like their competitor does). That way, whenever you want to create a new, shiny, up-to-date db you would simply build a fresh db and import HH from the appropriate month forward. Simple, neat and easy.

Tolp wrote:Thx for your reply.
It’s kinda disappointing to hear that there is no “good” solution and I’m surprised that this doesn’t seem to be a big issue for many PT3 users (as far as I can tell searching the forum).
I have about 500.000 hands in my database. I’m not sure whether you consider that’s large or not, but it looks like the “last x hands” option doesn’t work with that many hands, if you wanna multitable, even on a state of art PC. (Especially full ring tables seem to kill the hud). I hope the development team finds a way to make the “last x hands” option more useable in the future.

I know kraadas advanced hud thread. Actually I think he has posted his “userguide” how to read the postflop pop up in this very thread, but after the last thread update it seems to be gone. Apart from that I just realized there is no explanation to be found what the colour coded player hero stats (upper left corner) mean (or maybe I'm just blind ;-) ). Again it’s not a big deal, but I think all this information was available in the advanced hud thread a couple of months ago and I’m wondering why it’s not there anymore.

Just for the record, I do plan on adding all of that information back in - I changed the layout of the FAQ to make it easier to find things and the plan is to add next a detailed post on my actual HUD layout, I just need to have the time to get it done. I'm not making any promises, but I'm going to try and make it more of a priority just so that the FAQ is in less of an unfinished state.

denutza wrote:For the record, ive noticed the performance issue as well, and have to turn it off...I also have 500k + hands, and some of my opponents go back 5 yrs, and unfortunately
they play a lot different than they used to, so the only solution is to start another database and purge old hands.

Good to hear I’m not the only one having this issue. Thx for chiming in.

PJs Ronin wrote:A solution to this issue would be if PT3 moved processed hands into a yyyy/mm/dd subdirectory (like their competitor does). That way, whenever you want to create a new, shiny, up-to-date db you would simply build a fresh db and import HH from the appropriate month forward. Simple, neat and easy.

Couldn’t you achieve the same result, when you go to database management/export and use the session date filter to export hands?


As far as I can see the following way seems to be the best solution for my problem until the “last x hands” becomes more useable:

First I export the hands I want to have using the session date filter, for example let’s say all hands of 2011.
Then I create a new database.
After that I import the hands into the new database and tell PT3 to use it as my new default database.

Next year I’ll have to do the same and so on. Creating a new database for every new year might be a good idea anyway (I play about 400.000-500.000 hands per year) or are there any drawbacks to this solution (like losing custom configurations, notes or any other information except for older hands/sessions I didn’t export)? If not, I guess that’s what I’m going to do.

@kraada:
Thx for the info. I knew I wasn’t imagining things, thank god. ;-) I think it would be the best idea to put up a new FAQ with the next official update of your hud. For the time being the information provided on the preview screenshot are sufficient (although it doesn’t say, what the colour coded hero stats mean).
I really like your hud layout and I’m looking forward to any improvements you come up with in your next update. To be honest, I don’t understand, why your advanced hud isn’t included in PT3. It would be awesome to have the default layout and yours next to each other, you know, one out of the box layout for beginners one for advanced users. At the end of the day having a well constructed and thought out hud like yours is one of the main reason for anyone, who buys a tracking software. I’m aware PT3 is designed to give its users the freedom to build their own huds, but not everybody – myself included – likes the idea having to build up a hud from the scratch. (Not that I want to say bad things about the default layout, but I think we all agree it requires quite some customization to fit the needs of players, who play poker for more than a little weekend fun.) And I’m pretty sure not everybody is as talented in building huds as you are. It’s one thing to add one or two custom stats to an existing layout, but it’s another to come up with a new sleek convenient and efficient custom layout like yours!

Tolp wrote:

PJs Ronin wrote:A solution to this issue would be if PT3 moved processed hands into a yyyy/mm/dd subdirectory (like their competitor does). That way, whenever you want to create a new, shiny, up-to-date db you would simply build a fresh db and import HH from the appropriate month forward. Simple, neat and easy.

Couldn’t you achieve the same result, when you go to database management/export and use the session date filter to export hands?

I would always recommend going back to original data, eg the HHs. That way you'll get the benefit of any updates to PT3 (say, for pokerstars new 50/50) being applied to the data.

PJs Ronin wrote:

Tolp wrote:

PJs Ronin wrote:A solution to this issue would be if PT3 moved processed hands into a yyyy/mm/dd subdirectory (like their competitor does). That way, whenever you want to create a new, shiny, up-to-date db you would simply build a fresh db and import HH from the appropriate month forward. Simple, neat and easy.

Couldn’t you achieve the same result, when you go to database management/export and use the session date filter to export hands?

I would always recommend going back to original data, eg the HHs. That way you'll get the benefit of any updates to PT3 (say, for pokerstars new 50/50) being applied to the data.

I see. I didn't know that you don't benefit from PT3 updates that way. Good to know. It that case a yyyy/mm/dd subdirectory would be neat indeed. +1

PJs Ronin wrote:A solution to this issue would be if PT3 moved processed hands into a yyyy/mm/dd subdirectory (like their competitor does). That way, whenever you want to create a new, shiny, up-to-date db you would simply build a fresh db and import HH from the appropriate month forward. Simple, neat and easy.

3.09.6 BETA Changes
Changed:
Export: Window now allows selection of individual sessions and tournaments
Import: Processed files now moved to directory structure: SiteYYYYMM-DD

Thx guys!
I guess the new directory structure is only used for files, which are processed after the new update has been installed, right?