Tutorial: Auto Import settings

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Auto Import settings

The Auto Import tab is used to import hands while you play.
If you want to import a lot of existing hand histories you should use the Manual Import tab.

To configure your sites to auto import, see the site-specific guides in the Documentation - this guide only explains how to use the general auto import options.

• Starting and stopping Auto Import
  
  • Managing the site list
  • Starting and stopping Auto Import
  • Starting and stopping the HUD
• Import Statistics
• Preferences
  
  • Databases
  • Processed Files
  • Observed Hands
  • Import Options

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Starting and stopping Auto Import

The Site List contains a list of the sites which PT3 supports in the Site column (including those which are temporarily hidden - see the Show Hidden Sites option below).

The Auto column has a tick for those sites which are configured to start importing when you click the Begin Auto Import button (see below) - these will be the sites that you play at regularly.

The Status column shows which sites are currently auto-importing ("Running").

Clicking the Begin Auto Import button will start auto import running for any sites which are configured to 'Automatically Start With Auto-Import' (see the site configuration guides in the Documentation).

When auto import is already running, you can start new sites importing by selecting a site in the list and clicking the Start Site Import button, or stop individual sites by clicking the Stop Site Import button.

If you have the Start Automatically option enabled then the HUD will start whenever you start the auto import.
Otherwise you can click the Start HUD button to activate the HUD.
When the HUD is active this button will become Stop HUD.

If you have hidden any sites from the Site List (using the Hide This Site From List option on the site config tab) then you can display again them by enabling the Show Hidden Sites option.

You can have multiple sites auto importing at the same time, either by clicking Start Site Import for each, or by configuring them all to Automatically Start With Auto-Import on the Auto Import > {Site} Configuration tab.
If you play at multiple sites and want to see your overall results you can link your accounts together; see the Tutorial: Aliases.

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Import Statistics

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Hands shows the number of hands which have been imported during the current import.

Errors shows how many hands failed to import due to errors in the hand history.

You can see which hands failed by scrolling through the Import Status pane below or opening the auto import log file for the appropriate day. These log files are written to the following folder:
C:\Program Files\PokerTracker 3\Logs

Note: These are NOT the log files that you should send to support if you have a problem - those are in the main PT3 folder:
c:\Program Files\PokerTracker 3\PokerTracker.log
c:\Program Files\PokerTracker 3\PokerTrackerHUD.log

Duplicates shows any hands which are being read but which have already been imported into the database.

These 'duplicate' hands are NOT imported again, they are rejected as duplicates.


Tip! You should not see any duplicates during normal use of Auto Import. If you do, it is probably because you have old hand history files remaining in your hand history folders; to avoid this enable the Move Processed Files To option (see the next section of this tutorial).

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Auto Import Preferences

Databases

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This section defines which databases hands will be imported into.
If you have more than one database you can import 'played' hands and 'observed' hands into separate databases, should you wish to.
To change this you uncheck the Lock option and then select the specific database from the dropdown lists. To use the active database choose "[Current Active Database]".

If you want to use separate 'played' and 'observed' databases please see the Tutorial: Managing Multiple Databases for one possible way to handle it.

Processed Files

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When PT3 has imported the hands from a hand history file the information is stored in a PT3 database.
When this has been done, the hand history files are no longer needed (except as a backup in case you need to re-import them).
If the hand history files are left in the original hand history folder then they will have to be re-read every time Auto Import is started. This can take quite a while, especially as the number of old files builds up.

To prevent this slow-down you should have the Move Processed Files To option enabled and specify a folder which is completely separate to anywhere you are importing from.
To change where the files are moved to click the ... button to the right.

Notes

• The files are only moved when Auto Import is stopped.
  
• If tables are still open then the files can be locked open and may not be able to be moved.
If you see the Duplicates count increase when you start Auto Import then you should make sure this option is enabled and let it run until all the counts stop increasing then stop it and the processed files should be moved.
See the Tutorial - Preventing Duplicates for more information.

Observed Hands

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If you are using a site which writes hand histories for observed hands (with or without a handgrabber) then PT3 can import these observed hands.
If you don't want this to happen then you can disable the Import Observed Hands option.

You should enable the Store Hand History Text option so that PT3 will store the text of each hand in the database.
Disabling this will save a small amount of disk space but will mean that you can't replay hands within PT3 and can't export hands - both of these are important functions so the small saving is not worth the inconvenience.

Import Options

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Not all sites include the table size (for example "6 max" or "heads up") in their hand histories but PT3 can try to establish the size of tables at these sites based on the number of active players in a session.
If you want PT3 to do this then you should enable the Adjust Qualifying Tables Limits option.
If this option is not enabled then all hands will be imported as full ring (for sites which don't specify the table size).

If you want your tournament types and results to be automatically detected by PT3 they you should enable the Tournament Detection option.
Not all sites include tournament results information in the hand history files and this option will have PT3 automatically detect as much unspecified information as possible.
See the Tutorial: Tournament Auto Detection for more information.