Simplest way to track Stats

[bills217]

I've been reading a lot of the beginner posts and so forth, and I've downloaded free trials of a lot of the recommended statistics tracking software, i.e., PokerTracker, PokerStat 2 (PokerStars version), PokerEdge, etc., and so far I'm finding these tools to be extremely tedious, despite all the advice I've read on how to use them. Simply copying and pasting the e-mails to text files for conversion has proved extremely tedious. Also, the prices on some of these seem a little high to me. Somehow, I doubt all the 2+2 regulars out there spend a lot of time (and money) constantly copying and pasting these hand history e-mails to text files and so forth, especially as quickly as 100 hands can go by...but maybe I'm wrong, I don't know.

So, I'm just trying to get a feel for what all the regulars out there actually do to track their stats. Am I just not used to all the copying and pasting? Or is there a simpler, less complex, and, preferably, *free* statistics tool I can use? Any advice would be appreciated.

[smb394]

If you are playing ring games, all of the hands are written automatically to your hard drive if you select this option on Stars. You can then import them into Poker Tracker by the whole file.

Pokertracker is worth more than the $55.

[bills217]

I just picked up on the automatic HH storage feature...thanks a lot. After a lot of fiddling PokerTracker is starting to make some sense. Any other advice in this area is more than welcome.

[MrTrik]

I play on Party and just fire up PT and set it to auto import my hands from my harddrive and all is good. It is a very valuable tool. I mostly use it for analyzing my own play since I play low limit rings and rarely see the same people on a regular basis. But adding GT+ is a useful idea since it works seemlessly with PT and can help you in table selection as a beginner/intermediate. If you're an expert you might not need that hand holding though.