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Troubleshooting Import & Report Speeds

Overview​

Some users may encounter slow import and/or load speeds in PokerTracker 4. The two most common causes are an unmaintained database and hardware limitations (insufficient RAM or slow hard drives). Make sure your computer meets our minimum requirements, then use the sections below to diagnose and improve your speeds.

Slow Import Times​

If importing hands has slowed down over time, it is almost always because your database needs maintenance. As a database grows with new hands, its performance gradually degrades until housekeeping is run.

  1. Run a full database housekeeping. This is the first and most effective step. Follow the Database Housekeeping guide to reindex, cluster, and vacuum/analyze your database back to peak performance.
  2. Check for excessive duplicate imports. If PokerTracker is repeatedly re-reading hands it has already imported, imports will slow to a crawl. See Moving Processed Files / Unable to Get Hands While Playing to ensure processed files are being archived correctly.
  3. Check your hardware. If imports are still slow after housekeeping, the bottleneck is likely RAM or hard drive speed — see Understanding and Improving Load Times below.

Understanding and Improving Load Times​

Some users ask "Why do the PT3 reports load faster for the same result set?" There are two reasons. First, PT3 contains far fewer stats, so the same number of hands produces a smaller result set than PT4. Second, in PT4 we modified the database schema to combine two tables. This improved performance in many scenarios, but the result sets are larger and use more memory.

Working with very large result sets in PokerTracker (or any database software) requires plenty of memory and a fast hard drive. To improve report speeds you can:

  1. Increase your RAM. We list 4GB as the minimum spec for PT4. RAM is inexpensive, and adding 8, 12, or 16 GB makes a significant difference.
  2. Improve your hard drive. 5400 RPM drives are below minimum spec and 7200 RPM drives are acceptable but not ideal. An SSD is many times faster and strongly recommended.
  3. Reduce the data you load. If upgrading isn't an option, limit the result set (hands) returned so performance is acceptable.

We are constantly working to improve PokerTracker, but ultimately it is limited by the hardware it runs on.

Large Data Sets​

The larger your data set, the longer results take to load and populate, so limit your data sets when possible. For instance, reviewing every player in your database via View Stats > $/T > Results > Player Summary takes a very long time on large databases (and longer still on less powerful computers). If you only need to review players at a certain stake or on a certain site, run a global filter first to reduce the data set and improve the load time.

If a specific report is taking a very long time to load, reduce the data set with a filter, and only load large data sets when it's absolutely necessary.