HM2 and PT4 — both as bad as each other?

I have just trialed HM2 and PT4 and they are both so unbelievably awful that I still can't decide between them.

Now, I understand that some of the things that the programs have to achieve when they are co-ordinating with all the different poker-sites are probably quite difficult, but what I have an issue with is the basics.
In HM2 I loaded my HH's site by site, and then went through them amending the results to be accurate. ( I have kept very accurate records of tournament dates and ID's, buy-ins, pay-outs)
For some inexplicable reason if it was not sure what the buy-in was, it would enter $10+$1 as the default (why is that the default, even for freerolls? If it was left at zero it would be easy to enter a figure if necessary) I changed the default value in settings but it refused to change and even after several attempts to alter it, it persisted in entering $10+$1 as the default.
When it did encounter a freeroll with $0 buy-in, if there were winnings it would systematically alter the buy-in to $0.01!!! — this ensured that the ROI wasn't infinite, but the resulting ROI that it did return of e.g. 25,000% is equally meaningless.
I had to edit each of those to zero to show no ROI
After 3 solid days of adding in winnings (acceptable), and editing out false buy-ins (unacceptable), I loaded some new HH's from merge and one tourney was loaded with the date 31/12/9999 23:59:59 (and all other fields set to zero)
All attempts to edit or delete this entry failed or, in the case of attempted purge, caused a fatal crash.
I finally resorted to a crash log and text to support, who told me the solution was to delete the whole database and start again!
I didn't!

I started the PT3 trial and then went on to PT4.
I have had no problems uploading HH's to PT4 but I did have an issue where if I set auto hand history to monitor both Cake and Intertops HH folders it would only see the last one in the list!
WVHillbilly suggested that I set Cake and Intertops options to use the same HH folder and then just monitor the one, and this is the workaround I adopted. A workaround for a very simple task that the program is supposed to be able to do, (and indeed does do for multiple merge sites)

The HUD on PT4 is not nearly as good as on HM2 (much harder to configure the appearance, and (because of e.g. full player names,) much harder to fit on the tables in a pleasing way. There is no colour coding for stats (i.e. VPIP in the green range) And no instant switching from lifetime to session stats )

I have really struggled to make sense of the graphs on PT4 but I suspect that I have just not explored it deeply enough and am pretty sure that the statistical analysis possible will be great if I can get to grips with it.

Again, the problem I have is with general usability.
I soon found that when editing tournament details it would show all games from multiple sites with incomplete stats in the top pane, but would only present 'me as the focus' in the lower pane if that player on that site was the player selected in the stats page
(i.e. if my carbon name was selected as the player on the Stats page, it would know which player to present in the lower pane when I picked a carbon game in the Edit Tournament Results Page, but if I chose a Cake game in that (Edit Tournament Results) window it would preselect a random player in the lower pane and I would have to scroll down to Samango!. How ridiculous is that!
It gets worse. I have now added aliases from other sites to my Merge Identity (it doesn't seem to allow you to create a new 'Master Identity'as HM2 does) and now it never knows who I am editing the results for in that window.
It doesn't know that I am the one using this program, despite the fact that my user name (and all aliases) is the one selected.
Is there some setting I have missed where I tell it to focus on my user names (other than the player name at top-left of stats window, which is set to me) or is it really this difficult to use?

If they were producing software in any other field, like a word processor or drawing program, I feel it just would not compete in the market place but because they are the only ones out there, between them they have it tied up.

I now think that despite producing that weird tournament date entry, I may be buying HM2 for—what appears to me to be— a superior HUD and better player alias options
Although I like the tourney edit (buy-in/payout) interface where you edit directly in the list of tourneys, I am still troubled by issues described, especially those of entering default values (there is a setting for this so presumably they will fix it so that it does work), and changing freerolls to $0.01 games (absurd — please tell me if there is a fix for this).
I will continue to rely on my own detailed records for bankroll, ROI and other related stats.

Any info that anyone can offer on the issues I have mentioned would be appreciated. Thx Sam

I would pass this data along to tech support @ HEM2 website... they always "seem" to be looking for feedback and did do a well job in the update from HEM! to HEM2 ... I like HEM2... I am not that much into statistics as you are... just the general info... I LOVE THE HUD THOUGH... As far as PT3 goes of 4... I wouldn't piss on it if it was on fire nor would I buy it for a dime... I do not like the configs and filters... I just do not like PT3... so go figure... I digress... Pass this info along to the tech team for HEM2 and they should keep an open mind!

Moe.

If HoldemManager can't detect the buyin, it will use the 'default' buyin (which you can select at settings--> tourney defaults)
PokerStars has a separate 'summary file' with all the info: buyin/rake, speed, number of players, finish position, winnings, etc.
But some sites simply don't write that information anywhere. When that happens you'll have to manually edit the results.

It's not possible to change the default buyin to 0. If a freeroll was not detected as one, change the buyin to $0.01. This is because you can't divide by zero, so allowing values of 0 will screw up certain stats in reports.

Merge is one of the worst pokersites in NOT writing such info to the handhistory file. (and not using a separate summary file)


HM2 update: http://forums.holdemmanager.com/hm2-...candidate.html

Thanks very much for your input
Sam

Just downloaded PT4 now and it's importing hands as we speak. Will probably need some help getting started so just putting it out there. Hopefully be able to discuss it with some experienced users in the coming days. Just started the 30-day trial so if HEM2 is better I'll switch to that.

Had PT3 trial on my old laptop and it counted play money winnings from CC league as real winnings on PokerStars so hope that won't be a problem again.

I've bought HM2 now (as the best of the two bad jobs) and straight away it started importing hands with the tourney date 31/12/9999 23:59:59 containing at least one hand 01/01/0001 00:00:00. I've deleted the database and started again five times now trying to track this down myself and all I've found is that this happens when I import hands from 2011 and from 2012. After removing hands that I thought I had caused the problem it still does it, so I now don't know if the hand histories are causing it or if it will keep doing it no matter how many 'corrupt' hh's I remove.
I notice that when I search the forum there are many reports of this issue but no satisfactory response. There are a few suggestions to remove the offending hands and the wrong dated tournament will disappear but no solution if it won't let you delete a hand with the date 01/01/0001 so I'm stuck with this at the top of the list where my current game should be!

On a positive note the default buy-in for unknown buy-ins does now seem to be set to $0.00 although I haven't been able to look into this properly obviously as I have to keep deleting the database!
I also don't know if the ridiculous feature of converting Freeroll buy-ins to $0.01 has been fixed yet because I haven't got past a clean import and I have to keep deleting the database.

Was having alot of trouble setting up PT4 but there was an update yesterday that seems to have sorted everything. Got 3 weeks left of the trial so gonna see how I get on and will probably buy it when that's over.

Only just noticed it's been released,

just importing my hands going to try a session with it soon!

I love PT3..hope it's better.

i just saw that PT4 was release, i would download it, but it does not support my fav poker room Full Tilt...hehehehe

Ok I have zipped 21 HH's and sent them to hm2support@holdemmanager.com ( It seemed like a more appropriate addy ).

However several things came up when I was trying to find out which HH's caused a problem.

Initially when I loaded all my saved HH's the 31/12/9999 date only appeared for some Carbon files, so in order to find the problem HH's I went through adding all Merge HH's individually.
The problem didn't always show immediately so I also had to close the import dialog after each file, change player focus to another site, then back to Carbon to make sure the error wasn't there.
During this process several Blackchip (Merge) ones failed (i.e produced this 31/12/9999 date) even though they had imported perfectly before!!


Similarly on my initial loads of these files I found no problems with any files from 2008-2010 and then moved onto finding the errors in the 2011 and 2012 batches.

After I had removed 21 files from 2010 and 2011 that produced an error on import, and had a clean database with (nearly) all my HH's from these years I then tried to add the 2008 -2010 years which had previously imported with no problems and the error recurred again.

I don't think that the HH's alone are causing the errors (because of the above, and also because I have so many failures but some people are not suffering this problem at all.
Quite honestly after spending so much time entering these individually and having to mess about in-between every import to make sure that it had refreshed properly, I am totally sick of it.

Bought PT4 yesterday and it's making me want to slit my throat. Can't find any of my hands I've played since I got it, can't find any hands that I imported from PT3. Wish I had stuck to PT3, so much easier to use.

Anyone else had problems with getting hands in to the db?

It imported PT3 hands automatically when you came to install PT4...not sure why yours didn't but very very straight forward.

However - I don't like PT4 anyway..back to PT3 for me.

Yea mine imported everything from PT3, just have n oidea where they are in the PT4 db and can't find them anywhere.

You have to go to the section labelled: Stats, then Results:Tournament. If you're using cash you go Stats, then Results: Stake or Session.

Click on each session/tournament/stake and it'll show you all the hands you've played under that heading.

I declined to update to PT4. Preferring so much PT3. I did about 6 months of the beta before they went public and want money for a product that is not substantially better than it's predecessor. In fact I found PT4 Omaha to be nice, but that is probably only because I do not have PT3 Omaha, and they want too much for the upgrade.

I've just done that but realised where it says Player: Bluenowhere4 it has the merge icon thing. How do I make it switch to the Bluenowhere from pokerstars?

That's a bug I assume, it's the same for my pokerstars, it's an icon of merge.

Yea I think I've fixed it now, it still shows a merge icon but I had to add my pokerstars alias.

I am using HM1 again, shitty HM2 want money back

i really like HM2.

For any folk who have no tracker and are wanting to get the skinny on whats what, you need to understand that we who are less than happy about the latest versions are not particularly bad rapping the newest trackers. We are generally unhappy about the amount of change in the programs compared to what we had already become accustomed to, the few added tools, and the high cost.

All of us would figure out the new versions and be thrilled we did.

PT4 is god-awful. I think whoever wrote it wanted it to be completely counter-intuitive on purpose. I've heard HEM2 might even be worse and still has actual bugs which is pretty ironic given that PT3 being super buggy when first coming out is basically the reason HEM1 got as big as it did. But all around a pretty big disaster for both upgrades. I'm still using HEM1.

thanks guys for telling me about poker tracker 4, before i buy it. U guys just save me about 100.00 not buying it