Looking for Poker Tracker Recommendations?

[Vulpine]

I’m considering buying Poker Tracker but I have a number of concerns about it and hoped that I could get some feedback before purchasing it. Perhaps my lack of experience with this software is the reason for my concerns so please excuse me if I'm way off in these issues. However my initial impression of the trial version is that it masks what’s important with a lot of little used data. It seems to me that the designers put in everything that they could possibly think of directly in your face instead of only putting the 10% of the functionality that used 90% of time up front? Throwing all 100% of the functionality in my face reduces the signal to noise ratio for me. At the same time, the user interface seems to suffer a great deal from the limitation of Access. So my questions are:

(1) How much of the data in Poker Tracker do you really find beneficial?

(2) Do you find the software awkward to use?

(3) Does anybody know of some software that will parse hand histories into a relational model that can be imported into SQL Server? It seems to me that with this grunt work out of the way, a person could go on to build some simple software that’s more appropriate to their needs with a modicum of effort?

[Felix_Nietsche]

I just bought Poker Tracker and I like it. If you play on Empire/Party Poker, you can set the software to upload the hand history automatically....

My one beef with the s/w is that when you have the autoload function running, it is almost impossible to access the PT database to get info on another player. I adjusted the upload from every 1 minute to every 5 minutes and that helped.

It is nice to see which hands you win the most money and which hands you lose the most money. E.g. For me 22 makes money yet 99 loses money. I now realize why thanks to PT...

I wish the s/w could distinguish between a hidden set 22(xxx) and an open set 2(22x). The s/w lumps the data for both hands together....

[sammy_g]

First, I recommend you buy it. It's worth the money.

Second, I believe PokerTracker puts the hand histories into an MS Access database that you can query with SQL.

[janeg]

I've been using PokerTracker for 3-4 weeks and believe it is well worth the $55 US.

There are a number of very useful features: Auto-rules for ranking players; Game tables with auto hand requests and updates while you're playing; the ability to replay hands and see the odds/win% plus numerous other valuable features.

Yes, you could spend the time writing software to parse the various hand histories, feed them to an SQL DB and then write some stats methods but why spend hours of your time when the guys at Poker Tracker have already done the work for you and so much more! Their fee is extremely reasonable and the learning curve for PT is pretty short.

All the numbers are a little overwhelming at first; for now I'm focusing on the stats recommended in an article by Terry Wynn at
http://www.internettexasholdem.com/poker-tips/poker-articles/tracking-your-progress-as-a-beginner/

Hope that helps
Jane