Tracking Programs & Hand History Converters

doctorbs

I'm getting to a point where I'm making an ok amount of cash playing poker part-time (for my bankroll and limited amount of free time lately, anyways), and I've finally decided to start taking the stats/tracking more seriously so that I can better fix the leaks in my game.

What programs would everyone recommend for tracking everything? I've heard that Poker Tracker combined with another popular program (can't remember the name) is an awesome combination to keep track of everything... now if only I could remember the name of the program :P (if you could also provide links that would be awesome, I wouldn't want to accidentlly buy some cheap rippoff program with a similar name after doing a search through google).

Also, does anyone know of some sites (or software, if it's available) to do hand conversions from PokerStars hand histories? I've found some URLs to some online ones, but none of the links seem to be working.

Any info you guys (and gals) could give me would be greatly appreciated.

Hork42

Pockertracker will import Pokerstars hands without having to use anything else to convert them...

zero

Hey, I'm not sure of what other program you've heard of, but Poker Tracker is well worth the money. And hork is right, you don't need anything to import stars hands. For sites like Pacific that don't provide hand histories you'd need some program. And the main reason I'm posting is because I love Poker Ace HUD. If you're using poker tracker I think this is a necessary add-on. It takes the stats on your opponents from your PT database and displays them right on the table while you're playing. I love it. Check it out if you want: pokeracesoftware.com

doctorbs

I've been playing with the trial copy of Poker Tracker since I made that post eariler today, and it totally seems like the way to go.

One question though. In order to have completely tournament/hand stats, what's your recommended way to get the histories? I noticed on PT's site it says that sometimes because the hand histories are too long you won't get the complete email of them, and therefore your stats might not be complete... is there a way around this?

Also, I'm guessing the best way to get histories is as soon as you're done a tournament click on the cashier and have them send the hand histories for that tournament #, and then import it right away?

Haven't played around with the software too much yet, so I don't want to get part of the way through and realize I could've done things faster/easier if I had done it a different way... figure it's probably better to just ask upfront.

Hork42

There's a setting in the Pokerstars software that you can toggle so that all your hand histories get saved to your hard drive.

Then point PT to this Directory and voila!

doctorbs

Is there any way to have the hand histories saved as well as the tournament summaries? My hands imported (which oddly enough don't always display when I open the software), but none of the tournament information, such as buy-in, # of entrants, etc., were imported.

ol-stone-face

You have to do it manually. From the pull down menu go to File-->Poker Stars Tournament Results - Manual Entry...

Then you enter the info such as buyin, type of tourney, number of players. You then can enter what place you finished and any $ you won. Now the tourney will be visible to you when you open the Tournament Player Statistics

doctorbs

Sweet.. I just found the option in PS's menu to send me the tournament summaries, and they seemed to import fine.

I guess my last question (hah!) is, how good of a job does PT do at linking summaries to tournaments to hand histories?

I'm going to go through all my past tournament emails and request the hand histories & summaries for them, and I'm guessing PT will know which ones go with which, and which ones have already been imported already (and just ignore them), but I figured I'd ask before I just assume.

moose

The 'other' program you are thinking of is GameTime+ which gives you the HUD. It is free!

doctorbs

Thanks for all the info everyone, I appreciate it!  I've gotten my PT reg code and everything's ready to go now, just need to re-send my hand histories and summaries from past tournament (not so much fun, but I figure it's well worth it).

Is there any way to get a list of all tournaments you've played on Poker Stars?  I'm going to go through all my "results from pokerstars tournament..." emails and importing them into PT, but those are all the ones I've finished in the money in, not all the tournaments.  Just wondering if there's a way to find out the Tournament #s for all tournaments played.