Poker Tracker Version 2.0

To use this feature, select "Auto Rate Players" from the Utilities Menu. This feature was added to version 2.05.00 of Poker Tracker. In order to rate players as you load hand histories into your database, you must first use this window to establish the criteria that should be used and the rules that must be met to rate a player in a certain category.

Step 1 - Criteria - for those of you familiar with the Advanced Notes export, this first tab functions identically to the first tab on the Advanced Notes export window.

• Don't rate me, my screen name is: - select this option if you don't want the auto-rate process to rate you. THIS IS RECOMMENDED because choosing to rate yourself will take the most times since you are obviously the player in your database with the most stats to crunch. If you check this box, them you should also select a player name from the dropdown list.

• Hands Played - Players must have at least ____ hand played - All time or Since a Date - use this section to select how many hands a player must have played in order to be considered for auto-rating. You probably don't want to set this number too low as a small number of hands isn't likely to give you an accurate picture of a player. The All time and Since a Date buttons allow you to set the criteria even more. If you only want to include players that have played x number of hands since a certain date, then check the Since a Date button and then enter the date you want to use as criteria. If you want to count all hands played, regardless of date, then leave the All time button checked.

• Dates To Use - Use all dates when rating player or Only rate based on sessions played since a date. Given that a players style can change over time, you can elect here only to use stats from sessions played since a certain date. For instance, you may only want to use stats for a player over the last three months to get a more accurate picture of how the player is currently playing. Alternatively, you can also choose to rate a player based only on the last NN number of hands they have played. Please note that if you use this feature, the number of hands is stored at a session level. So if you choose to only use the last 150 hands to rate on, if the player has five sessions of 40, 50, 50, 40 and 30 hands - Poker Tracker is going to use the sessions of hands 40, 50, 50 and 40 for a total of 180 hands rated on.

• Players At Table - if you want to exclude short-handed games, which could skew a players statistics, you can use this feature to tell Poker Tracker to only use hands with a certain number of players at the table during the rating process. You don't need to use this only to exclude short-handed games. If you want to rate a player based on their short-handed play, you can use this option to exclude full-table games as well.
  NOTE: If you use the BETWEEN options, the numbers are inclusive. So if you use 7 and 10 - it means games with 7, 8, 9 or 10 players at the table.

• Only Use Hands From Selected Limits - again, this will limit what stats are used when determining how to rate a player. Some players play at multiple limits but if you only want to rate them based on their play at $5/$10, then you would select the $5/$10 limit by checking the appropriate box.

• When Determining Number of Hands Played - you have 2 options here. If you have selected a specific limit in the list above, you can have PT only count the total number of hands played at that limit when determining whether to rate a player. For instance, if you select $5/$10 from the list of limits, you can select the "Count hands played only from selected limits" button. When Poker Tracker is checking player stats, it will make sure that the player has played the desired number of hands at $5/$10. However, if "Count hands from all limits played" is checked, only the stats from $5/$10 will be used but when counting the players total number of hands, it will count all limits that player has played.

Step 2 - Rules

The next step is to assign rules to the icons you want to use. Double-click on an icon and the following window will open...

Use this window to establish the rules that should be met by players meeting the criteria established on the first tab. In the example above, I have chosen to define a Tight/Aggressive player as anyone voluntarily putting money into the pot less than 17 percent of the time AND whose pre-flop raise percentage is greater than 10. Note the "AND" that is used in the previous sentence. For a player to fit into this category, they must meet ALL of the rules that you setup for the icon.

You can add as many rules as you like by clicking the "Add Rule" button.

To delete a rule, click on the rule and then click the "Delete Rule" button.

When you select the "Between" qualifier, then you will have to enter two values, one in "Value 1" and one in "Value 2". NOTE: When you use the between option, when doing the stats comparison, the two values are INCLUSIVE. So if you enter a rule for a VPIP between 10 AND 15 then this means anyone with a VPIP of 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 or 15 will meet this criteria.

Click the "OK" button to save your changes and return to the previous window. Click the "Cancel" button to close the window without saving your changes.

When you return to the Rules tab, any changes you made will be reflected in the "Rule" column next to the icon you select. If you have more than one rule for an icon, this description is likely to scroll off the screen. If you hold your mouse over the rule column, a tooltip window will appear to show you the rules expanded.

One thing to be careful of when defining rules is having overlapping criteria. For example, if you define a Rock as a player with a VP$IP less than or equal to 10% and a Tight/Aggressive player as someone with a VP$IP less than or equal to 15% and a PFR > 10%.  This would cause an overlap and cause a player with a VPIP <= 10 but a PFR > 10 to still be rated as a Rock which may not be your intention. This is because the rules for a Rock are evaluated before the rules for a Tight/Aggressive player.  One way to correct this would be to make use of the "between" qualifier on the rules window. You could make a Tight/Aggressive player have a VPIP between 10 and 15%. However, if this isn't what you want, you could use the "Priority" column to make sure the Tight/Aggressive rules are evaluated before the rules for a Rock. Set the priority for Tight/Aggressive to be less than a Rock (see picture above).

To change the icon description, click the Customize Icon Descriptions... button.

To Export your rules and icon descriptions, click the Export Rules button and enter a file name you want to save the information to.

To Import rules that another player may have sent you, click the Import Rules button. NOTE: Before you do this, it would be a good idea if you exported any rules you may have saved in case you want to revert back to those rules. When you import rules, you will be given the option of whether or not to import the icon descriptions that go along with those rules. These descriptions may differ from your customized descriptions so use this feature with care. If you import rules and don't want to save them, just close the window without running the batch rate and the changes will not be saved.

Step 3 - Rate

The final step in the auto-rate process is to run the batch rate function. The batch rate function uses the criteria you have defined on the first two tabs to rate the players in your database.

If you only want to rate players that currently have a particular icon assigned, then make sure to check the icon in the Only Rate Players If Their Current Icon Is section. For example, if you only want to rate players that have the default icon or the question mark icon, then you would have only these two icons checked in this section. Please note that using this option defeats the purpose of the auto-rate function because it will not adjust the players icon if their play changes over time. However, some users like to use a particular icon for certain players and do not want that icon changed. Telling the auto-rate to ignore players with this icon would be faster than going to each player on the stats window and checking their "Do not auto-rate this player" box (see below for more details on this).

* If you make changes to the first two tabs AND DO NOT run the batch rate process, your changes will not be saved.

Click the "Rate Players Now (Batch)" button. As the players are being evaluated, if the player icon needs to change then their name will display in the section below. It will show what their previous icon was, what the new icon is and the rules that the player met in order to be rated in the category displayed. If a player does meets the criteria you established on the first tab (i.e. they have played enough hands, etc) but does not fall into any of the rules you defined, then the players icon will go back to the default icon.

If the batch rate process is running and you want to stop it, hit the escape (ESC) key and it will stop running.

If you notice after the batch run that the icons don't appear to be what you expected (maybe you didn't define your rules properly or you got unexpected results) you can click the "Undo Last Batch Ratings" button and the icons will for the players that got rated will go back the what they were before the batch rate was run.

Now that you have defined your criteria and rules, you can tell Poker Tracker to auto-rate players as you load hand histories into your database. On the Import window, click the "Auto rate players..." button displayed in the graphic above. Note that this will cause the import to process slower because it has to do this rating process.

On the General tab of the Ring Stats window is a checkbox "Do Not Auto-Rate This Player". If you know that a player should be defined as a particular icon, despite what their stats are, select this button so the player is not rated and will not have their icon changed.

Next to this checkbox, if a player has been auto-rated while importing hand histories, you will see two fields.

• LAR - means last auto-rated - this is the date the player was last rated when you imported hand histories.

• PI - means previous icon - this was the icon that the player was, prior to being auto-rated the last time. It just gives you a little insight about how the player has changed since the last time they were rated.