PokerTracker

I've never really been able to understand the column alignment within the PT4 (and PT3 for that matter) tourney reports.

This is the standard display:
And this I find more pleasing:
Changes I made:
~ Tournament # now centered.
~ Tournament Start and Tournament End are now right aligned and converted to 24hr format.
~ Tournament Desc now right aligned
~ Tournament Type and Game now aligned center.

I believe that any user defined stat in reports are not cached, and hence these reports load/udate slowly. That is not a huge problem for me as I have recently upgraded my computer to a full blown i7, however I only have 12 months worth of data in my db and already the slowdown with non-cached stats is very noticeable.

Any chance we can get the existing stats redefined, or better yet allowing report columns to be re-aligned on the fly (and 'remembered')?

Hmmm... new idea. How about a stat that combines and abbreviates Tournament Type and Game so that a single column lists LHE, NLHE, PLO etc?

Anyone?

PJs Ronin wrote:Any chance we can get the existing stats redefined, or better yet allowing report columns to be re-aligned on the fly (and 'remembered')?

The alignment in PokerTracker 4 is defined by the format of the database field, it matches the standards set out by the development environment. These are also the same alignment defaults found in virtually all spreadsheet applications or report tools, we don't do anything special, and although we agre your alignment is better on the eyes we probably won't make any changes because we would be breaking developer standards. The standards include:

1) Text is left aligned.
2) Numbers are right aligned
3) Currency is also right aligned

You may notice that the Hand History # is left aligned, this is because that field is formatted as "character varying (32)", this is a type of text format because it allows us to have hand history numbers that include characters that are not numbers if that i what the poker room provides.

I agree with you from an aesthetic POV that your format looks better than the industry defaults for formatting various column types, but its not our place to define new standards... its best that we stick with what developers have always used. For what its worth this has always bugged me as well, the design perfectionist in me wants to do something about this but I accept that would not be the right thing to do.

PJs Ronin wrote:Hmmm... new idea. How about a stat that combines and abbreviates Tournament Type and Game so that a single column lists LHE, NLHE, PLO etc?

This is actually something that was proposed and we discussed before the release of PokerTracker 4, there are positives and negatives to this concept when filtering is necessary. It might be something we consider in future versions of PokerTracker, but we tend to shy away from these types of changes until we start to work on the next version of PokerTracker (5) in a few years.

original comment deleted. I'm tired of putting forward ideas that might support tourney players and just running into a brick wall. I give up.

edit: if those rules are so hard and fast then why is there center alignment?

PJs Ronin wrote:original comment deleted. I'm tired of putting forward ideas that might support tourney players and just running into a brick wall. I give up.

edit: if those rules are so hard and fast then why is there center alignment?

The defaults are standards, but users such as yourself are free to create their own stats which differ from the norm, thats why we have center alignment, so you have the flexability to do whatever you want with your custom stats. Like I said above, I would do the same as you, I have never been a fan of alignment standards - but they are standards for a reason, even though we both dislike them. I'm stuck with these standards too ;-)

You didn't answer my question... if PT4 elements are 'standardized' to fit into only three categories:

1) Text is left aligned.
2) Numbers are right aligned
3) Currency is also right aligned

why then does PT4 have existing stats center aligned (Buddy, Date, Date Played, Fold to Raise After F Donk, Fold to Raise After R Donk, Sat Seat, Site Icon for eg). Btw, try typing a date into Excel or LibreOffice Calc cells and see what the 'standard' alignment is... it doesn't match PT4's version of events.

In any event, this is PT4's choice. They can make a product that suits developer's needs, or one that suits user needs. Developers look at the guts of a program, users look at the visual result... there is a difference. I appreciate I can (and have) defined my own stats to enhance readability, but the non-cached stats are already impacting my system (i7 3770K @ 3.5GHz, 16Gb Ram, with VB, Ubuntu, Postgres and Windows 7 all at 64bit). Heaven help those on more modest systems.

I totally agree with PJs Ronin. I have sent some other request about issues that looks like they are developed in a way that is for the developer more convenient than for the users. Examples of this are:
- Zoom functionality of the graph in the results tab.
- Scaling of the graph in the results graph when zooming in
- Marking hands while playing tons of tables
- Adjusting the number of visible hands in the Play tab. Not remembering the users preference
- Drop down boxes that keep having focus after clicking which causes a scroll action to change the drop box item

And I can give you murmurous examples in this forum.

I truly believe that you guys are working your asses of to provide us with the best possible product but having said that I still feel that our request should been taken more seriously. The comments on many of our requests, remarks etc. is literally "Thank you for this suggestion. I will be sure to pass it along to the development team at the appropriate time." and that no timeline can be given. Although I can understand that PT does not want to give away their competitive edge by publishing the the new major features of their next release I cannot understand why you cannot enlighten us with an outlook for minor requests and usability issues.

One thing I just want to clear up:

If you duplicate any built in stat and use the same column(s) and just change the name or alignment or formatting to better suit your personal needs, that won't slow anything down more than the built in stat would.

What is or is not cached are columns - if you use a built in column in a custom stat it is just as cached as the built in stat.

I'm not going to comment on the standards, I just wanted to make sure you knew that you can change this alignment and use your new stat in reports and it really will just work as effectively as the original.

kraada wrote:If you duplicate any built in stat and use the same column(s) and just change the name or alignment or formatting to better suit your personal needs, that won't slow anything down more than the built in stat would.

I'm not sure I see this, hence (part of) my original complaint. Lemme do some testing.

PJs Ronin wrote:

kraada wrote:If you duplicate any built in stat and use the same column(s) and just change the name or alignment or formatting to better suit your personal needs, that won't slow anything down more than the built in stat would.

I'm not sure I see this, hence (part of) my original complaint. Lemme do some testing.

confirmed that speeds are the same (by eyeball MK I)

Now, if we could only get standards to be standards I would see an increase in happy factor.

Edit: Just noticed that the when using 'duplicated' stats/columns I sometimes lose the win/loss row coloration.