PokerTracker & Autorate

[JayKon]

I have been playing with the Autorate feature of PokerTracker and am looking for the optimal number of hands recorded to get a given confidence interval for the rating. I'm currently using Drivitt's posted ratings for those who care.

PT will start rating at h hands and use the last h' hands. The rating system looks at VolPut$inPot%, PreFlopRaise% and a post-flop "agression factor" ( (%raise+%bet)/%call ).

Anyway, we have 169 unique starting hands and 3,270 specific starting hands.

- So, how many hands (h) to I need to see before I have 50% confidence in the calculation? 75%? 90%? 99%?

- What confidence do I really want before using the data?

- What values would be good for h'?

- Is there any benifit to keeping the total hands low (detect tilt, or a change in playing style)?

- Any other thoughts on the matter?

Thanks,
Jay