PokerTracker

After you import bovada/ignition hands do you simply have to delete them after you import them? Because I assume once you import them that means you dont need to save them any longer? I've been using -- get hands from folder and each import takes considerably longer as there are more duplicates. If there is something in settings or should I just manually delete them? Thanks .

okay so I went into settings and added the directory where the hand historys are located. Which I am not sure if thats more for real time importing versus my current method of just Getting Hands from Disk because I prefer to have all my hands 24 hours later where all hole cards are exposed. On another note ....It gave me message that ignition grabber was not installed. Which I am okay with .... as i want to see the holecards 24hrs later and I believe that would mess up functionality? If I could somehow import the hands currently and later delete or replace them once all hole cards were shown that would be nice. Also kind of weird that whenever I try to type a message within the Community tab on pt4 it does not allow me to press enter so I am forced to type long paragraphs . Thanks in advance and hopefully I am being clear.

Hands that are automatically imported (Play Poker -> Get Hands From Disk) are moved for performance reasons to your 'Processed' folder and hands that are manually imported (Play Poker -> Get Hands From Disk) stay where they are so you can archive them yourself should you ever need them again to prevent the importer from reading them all over again. Also if you import Ignition hands while playing using the Hand Grabber you can still import the downloaded versions later to update the hole card information in PokerTracker 4:

Guide: Manual Import of Ignition Hand Histories

"stay where they are so you can archive them yourself should you ever need them again to prevent the importer from reading them all over again" .... if they are imported I assume the need to save them for any reason is very minimal besides being extra careful? At the moment my imports are taking longer and longer because I have yet to archive or delete them, but I assume that I can just delete them and not really have to worry about anything unless I am not considering something? If I want to backup my pt4 database I can always just do that and it will have all the hands anyways? Thanks Hippo

and I am guessing when it reads the extra hands as duplicates it takes longer but doesnt really waste any extra space or does something silly like import them twice? I noticed with HEM it kind of skips over duplicates in the folder and import proccess seems a lot quicker if there are duplicates but pt4 probably reads every hand indivually and thus explains the longer delay? Thinking out loud and you dont really have to respond to this. ... obviously pt4 much more superior so was not trying to allude otherwise in anyway. .

You can delete the files if you want although if something were to happen to your database and you don't have a recent backup then you'd only be able to re-populate a new database with the original hands by importing from the original files. PokerTracker 4 will skip the import of hands already imported (that's what the duplicate counter is telling you) and an increasing number of duplicates will slow import speeds.

Personally I download them somewhere and import them, then move them to a separate archive folder along with the previous files. That way each import only needs to read the new files, but I still have a copy of all of my files for future use.