Poker Tracker Guide for Beginners - PokerTracker Software

I'm going to try to keep this short and simple so that I don't rant too much and stray off-topic. PokerTracker is an essential tool for anyone who's serious about winning, and I'm here to help you set it up because it can be pretty overwhelming for newbies to the software. Poker Tracker is something I highly recommend; it's great for tracking and for stats and analysis. It's well worth the money it costs, and should more than make back what you payed for it if used properly.

Poker Tracker

PAHUD is a program which, when used in conjunction with Poker Tracker, displays the most important stats right on your table. It's a key tool for multitabling and making your decisions generally easier.

To make life using Poker Tracker a whole lot easier, I highly suggest getting a POP3 email address (like gmail). You'll also have to change your email address under your poker sites to this new one that you'll have created. This will save a whole lot of time when you import tournament histories.

So! Let's get to the good stuff...keep in mind that all of this info I'm about to lay out for you and more is available on Poker Tracker's forum (PokerTracker.com/forum). If you have any problems, search their forums or make a new thread in their support section, and their excellent customer service should help you out.

Setting up PokerTracker and PAHUD for Poker Stars:

First we'll tell PokerStars (PokerStars French) that we want them to save our hand histories on our hard drive.

Open PokerStars, go to the /Options/ menu and click on /Instant Hand History Options/. Check the /Save My Hand History/ checkbox, and make sure the save directory says /C:Program FilesPokerStarsHandHistory/ . I have mine set so that it saves the HHs for 30 days just to make sure I have them on my hard drive just in case anything screwy were to happen.

$www.PokerTracker.com /> Don't forget to change your email to your new POP3 address if you haven't already done so. You can do this under the /Account/ menu, then under /Change Account/. Now we're going to enable gmail's POP3 feature which basically will allow us to tell PokerTracker to automatically read and import the tournament summaries we request from Stars. Go to your gmail account, and click on the /Settings/ link at the top right. Under /Forwarding and POP/, click the /Enable POP/ for all mail button, and click the /Save Changes/ button at the bottom. So we've configured Stars and gmail. Moving back to Poker Tracker, we're going to set up a database, and configure it to let it know where it can find Stars' hand histories and we'll give give it access to our gmail account so it can automatically import anything we request to our email from Stars. If you've already bought a license, you can create your first database. A database is basically the file in which all your data will be stored. You can even create multiple databases if you want. To name and create your first database, click on File, then Maintain Database Names. You can then name your new database, and set it as the default (dflt) for PokerTracker. If you haven't yet bought a license, you won't be able to create multiple databases yet, so ignore this step. Any data you save will be stored in the one and only database you'll be allowed to have for now, which is fine. Now click on the PokerStars button at the top. You can also access this window by going to the File menu, then /Auto-Import PokerStars Hand Histories/. This window is where we tell Poker Tracker to start or stop importing hand histories from the PokerStars save directory. Click on /Hand History Folder Location/ and select /C:Program FilesPokerStarsHandHistoryYour Username/. There should be a folder to select inside the Hand History folder with your PS username on it, but if not then that's fine. All that means is that you haven't played any hands since telling PS to save your hand histories on your hard drive, and the next time you sit down and play, this folder will be created. Don't forget to choose the folder next time you play, though. Then we're going to leave the checkboxes as follows: unchecked, checked, checked, unchecked (from top to bottom). We're going to then click the /Browse/ button, and find the /C:\Program Files\Pokertracker Saves/ folder, and click /OK/. If it's not there, then create it. For the /Set timer to check for hands every X minutes/, input 1 or 2 minutes. Alright now close that window, and go to /POP3 email setup/ under the /Utilities/ menu. I'll tell you how to set it up for a gmail account, but I can't say that I know the configurations for any other POP3 email services as I haven't used them myself. If you use a different POP3 email, you'll have to check Poker Tracker's forum to find out what server name and port you should be typing in here. So for gmail: beside Server Name, type in /pop.gmail.com/. Under Your Username, type in /yourusername@gmail.com/. Then type in your password for your gmail account so that it can access it. Type in /995/ as the Server Port #, and then finally check the checkbox at the bottom. Now that we've done that, Poker Tracker has all the info it needs to access your gmail account to import anything you request from PokerStars. Click the /Test/ button to make sure that everything is working fine, and then click the /Save/ button. <p align=$ PokerTracker Pop3

Now on to PAHUD which is really straight-forward after we get the configurations done.

PAHUD's default configurations will work fine, but we need to input a couple of things. Open up PAHUD, and click on /Preferences /under the /Options menu/. Click on /PokerStars/ on the left. Make sure /Use the Hand History files/ is selected, and then click on /Add /to pick the directory from which you want PAHUD to read hand histories. It should be the same as where you told PokerStars to save your hand histories - /C:Program FilesPokerStarsHandHistoryyourusername/. Click /OK /at the bottom, and we're now set!

That's it for the setup; from here on out it's pretty simple. Every poker game I play, I open PAHUD, minimize it, then open Poker Tracker and click on the Stars button. I click /Start Import/ and then go ahead and start playing. PAHUD will automatically display the stats on your table and you won't have to ever really do anything but open and close it.

After the tournament is done, I click /Stop Import/, close that window and then click on the /Import Hand Histories/Tournament Summaries/ button, and click /Check POP3 E-Mail/. Once your gmail has been searched by Poker Tracker, a /Get Hand Histories From E-mail /window will pop up. Make sure that everything except the /Import? /and /When window opens.../ checkboxes are unchecked. We can now click on /Import/ and let Poker Tracker import the hand automatically, and hopefully we get an /Import was a success! /message.

Poker Tracker.com

So! (that took longer than I'd hoped...)

In summary:

Download and install Poker Tracker and PAHUD via PokerTracker.com and PokerAceSoftware.com respectively
Sign up for free gmail if you don't already have a POP3 email account, and configure it to enable POP
Tell PokerStars to save your hand histories to your hard drive
Create a new database in Poker Tracker, configure Poker Tracker to give it access to your gmail account and to let it know where to read hand histories from
Configure PAHUD for the same reason
During a tournament, open Poker Tracker and PAHUD, start your auto-import of hand histories and play! When the tournament is done, request a tournament summary from Stars and import it by checking your POP3 mail
During a ring game, only importing hand histories is necessary

I really hope this made your setup easier and that you can now concentrate on analyzing yours and your opponents play instead of struggling to set it up in the first place.

Article Written by ChuckTs

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