Poker Tracker 3: Configure the Auto-Import Page

Getting Started with PT3

Having downloaded PT3, you’ll have to go through the process of installing it and installing a MySQL database it can use. This process requires you to do almost nothing. All you should do is click “yes,” “ok,” “you handle it,” “do your thing, PT3,” at every step of the installation process and during the creation of your database. If you do anything other than letting PT3 handle this for you, it’s probably a mistake. :)

When PT3 opens on your screen, now it’s time for you to go to work. The first thing you should do is start the configuration of the Poker Tracker 3 Auto-Import settings. These are the instructions you give PT3 on what to do while it is automatically writing hand histories to your database for later analysis.

Your goal at this stage is simply to point Poker Tracker to the sites you play on, where to look for hands and where to save hands. Click on the Import tab at the top left.

The Auto-Import page:

The most significant decision you have to make on the PT3 auto import page is whether to accept the default setting that will save your hands to Poker Tracker 3′s “processed hands” folder.

I recommend changing this setting. The main advantage to changing this setting is that it makes it easier to manually back up your hand histories to an external hard drive. If you create a hand history file in your “my documents” folder, it will save you a few clicks in manually backing up your hand histories. Making it easy increases the probability that your lazy degen ass will actually do the back up. :)

One other psychological point is that we are in and out of our “my documents” folder all the time; thus, seeing the hand history folder there will serve as a gentle reminder to do the back up.

Changing the folder is easy:

Just click on the blue button to the right of the box containing the “processed hands” path, and navigate to your My Documents folder. Create a new folder called “Hand Histories” or words to that effect, and then save it.

That is all you really have to do to configure the auto-import folder for now.

One quirk I ran into setting up the auto-import was this: I set up the auto import before I had played any hands on Full Tilt on this computer. So when I tried to tell PT3 where to find FT hand histories (on the tab that says “bet fair configuration” on these screen shots, I got an error message that said “Full Tilt is not configured to save hand histories.” What was happening is that Full Tilt does not create a hand history folder until you have a hand history to save.

To finish the configuration, just open up Full Tilt (I don’t know if this quirk exists on other sites, but if you get a similar error message setting up Stars or another site, this is the likely problem) and take a seat at a table. Make sure FT is set to save hands to your hard drive, and play a hand or two so that Full Tilt’s client creates the hand history folder.

Then go back to Poker Tracker, clicjk the site configuration tab, and tell PT3 to autodetect where the hand histories are saved.

At this point you have Poker Tracker configured so that it will automatically download and save your hand histories as you play them.

The next step in setting up Poker Tracker to help you find leaks is to start configuring the reports pages to help you spot common leaks.