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Color Code Your Full Tilt & Poker Stars Notes

In Less Than 10 Minutes With Poker Tracker 3… for free.

There are now a few programs for purchase out there that color code your Full Tilt or Poker Stars player notes. These programs typically range from $25 to $50. They also often take several hours to run and not one of them presently supports custom statistics for PT3. I’m going to show you how you can color code all your player notes in less than 10 minutes for free using Poker Tracker 3.

You generate a custom report using custom stats.

User input in the Auto Rate description triggers the color code.

You export the report’s CSV and use ‘Find and Replace’ to tidy it up.

You copy and paste tidy color coded notes into your poker site’s XML file.

You are able to table select and identify opponents instantly (Rush Poker anyone?)

Should I take this seat?

While it will take you less than 10 minutes to perform this little procedure every time you color code, there are some prerequisites involved. You must download and install the custom ‘ColorCoding’ stats and reports below. (Yes, I’m giving them away for free. I like you.)

You must also be using Auto-Rate. Now, I know Auto-Rate sometimes gets a bad rap, but that’s only because the default settings are weak (or at least not as exploitative as they have the potential to be) and many people don’t know how to successfully incorporate Auto-Rate into their game. I suggest something like the powerful rules I use in my Destroyer HUD. I’ve also outlined how I exploit players using Auto-Rate with my Crusher HUD here. My database is large and I run Auto-Rate nightly after my daily sessions. Then, the next day, I color code my notes (in under 7 minutes) and begin my sessions – searching the poker client lobby for players now color coded:

Before We Begin

This is a method that I use daily. Since I am daily replacing my Full Tilt or Poker Stars notes, I have no actual text notes stored in the sites’ databases. All my player notes (actual text like: “Low Card Wet Flop: Donked Weak with 2 pair +”) are generated automatically by NoteCaddy and stored in my PT3 database, accessible by clicking on the [Notes] icon while I am playing. I do not recommend keeping your player notes in the site’s database. I recommend keeping them in your own PT3 database. Poker sites have lost thousands of players’ notes in the past. Every time they make an update/overhaul to their notes, your notes are at risk (like when Poker Stars went from .txt files to .xml files and many players lost many of their notes). Why would you trust them with your notes?

So keep in mind, if you want to use this method of color-coding, it will erase all of your player notes in the sites’ databases. But that’s no problem, because you keep all your notes in PT3′s database, not the sites’ right? (If you don’t, no worries. Just pick up NoteCaddy and automatically re-generate notes into your PT3 database using whatever criteria you’ve been using while manually taking notes.)

Preparation Time

Before you can color code, you need some new custom stats and reports. Download and unzip ColorCodingUsingPT3.zip and put that folder wherever you’d like, but remember where it is. This is free like I said. Please google how to unzip a file if you don’t know how. I personally use 7zip.

Then in PT3, go to Configure>Configure Stats. Under ‘Section Name’ click on and highlight ‘Holdem Cash Player Statistics.’ Then click on the ‘Statistics’ tab. Click on ‘Import’ on the bottom right corner of the window. Go to the ‘ColorCodingUsingPT3′ folder that you unzipped. Using Shift-LeftClick, select all 6 of the stat files listed there. Click ‘Open.’ They will be imported. Click ‘Apply’ at the bottom of the window.

Next go to the ‘Reports’ tab in PT3. At the bottom left corner, click on ‘Import.’ Go to the same folder that you unzipped and select ‘ColorCoding FT.pt3rpt.’ Click ‘Open.’ The report will be imported. Do the same thing for ‘ColorCoding PS.pt3rpt.’

Now you will have the custom stats and reports that you need to color code. You must also have the players in your database Auto-Rated. Again, Auto-Rate is an awesome tool and I hope you’ve been using it.

Playing With Colors

Next you must decide how you want your Auto-Rate Icons to be color coded. Go to Configure>Auto-Rate and click on the ‘Rules’ tab. You are going to replace the ‘Description’ of each Auto-Rate Icon with a number that corresponds to a color for either Full Tilt’s or Poker Stars’ notes. (If you play on both Full Tilt and Poker Stars, I recommend you ‘Export’ and ‘Import’ Auto-Rate Rules according to which sites notes you are coloring. It will also probably take you twice as long to color code following all the steps listed here, but perhaps not if you’re quick.)

Also, please click on ‘Export Rules’ and save your present Auto-Rate rules before changing anything.

So here is what my Auto-Rate rules for Poker Stars looks like:

I’ve simply replaced each icon’s ‘Description’ with a number that corresponds to a color in Poker Stars’ notes. (I haven’t changed the rules or anything.)

Numbers that correspond to colors in Poker Stars’ notes:

0 = Yellow
1 = Green
2 = Cyan
3 = Blue
4 = Violet
5 = Magenta
6 = Red
7 = Orange

Numbers that correspond to colors in Full Tilt’s notes:

1 = Pink
2 = Red
3 = Orange
5 = Yellow
7 = Green
9 = Cyan
11 = Blue
12 = Purple

You may notice that the numbers for Full Tilt jump around a bit. That is because Full Tilt allows for more colors, but the colors that I skipped are colors that are harder to distinguish from the ‘standard’ colors. There are shades of violet, chartreuse, etc. that are just too hard to distinguish during play. I’ve listed the strongest 8 colors for Full Tilt to go with the 8 colors that Poker Stars uses (though there are some slight differences). Personally, I only use (what I consider) the 5 boldest most distinguishable colors when I color code my player notes. Since I use color coding for table selecting, I want colors that jump right out at me and give me the information I want in an instant.

So decide how you’d like to color code the players in your database. Change each ‘Description’ to the appropriate color number for the site you are playing on. Close Auto-Rate.

The Color Coding Reports

Now you’ll want to run the report for the site whose notes you’d like color coded. In the tab ‘Reports’ select ‘Holdem Cash Player Statistics’ from ‘Section:’ and select either the ‘ColorCoding FT’ report or ‘ColorCoding PS’ report. Click ‘Run Report’. The report I generated below has randomly assigned Auto-Rate icons for the players for demo purposes only.

Also, if you enlarge the image, you can see I’ve highlighted one of the icons and it says

Player Icon
Value:6

This means it will be color coded red in Poker Stars’ notes.

In the ‘Reports’ tab, to the upper right of the scroll bar, there is a small ‘Expand’ icon. Click on this and the report will open in a new window. Click on ‘Export’ at the bottom of the ‘Expanded Display’, name this report and save the CSV wherever you’d like. I save my reports in a folder called ‘Daily Color Code’ with a name like ’2010-10-27.’

Now, to open the CSV I’m using Open Office (OpenOffice.org). It’s free. Excel would also work I’m sure, though I can’t walk you through it like I will with Open Office.

Go to your saved CSV file and double click on it. A ‘Text Import’ window will pop up. Uncheck ‘Comma’ under ‘Separated by’, delete the double quotation marks (“) from the ‘Text delimiter’ box, and change the ’1′ after ‘From row’ to a ’2′.

Click OK. If you have a large number of players (over 65,536 – for some reason, that’s the cutoff number in Open Office) in your report, you’ll want to follow special instructions detailed below.

You are now going to change this:

To this:

(The above is a Poker Stars example. Full Tilt will look a little different. But the method is exactly the same.)

Here’s How

Select All (Ctrl A)
Find and Replace (Ctrl F)
In ‘Search For’ type:
,
(a comma, no spaces)
Leave ‘Replace With’ blank.
Click ‘Replace All’.
Then in ‘Search For’ type:
”
(double quotes, no spaces)
Leave ‘Replace With’ blank.
Click ‘Replace All’.
Then in ‘Search For’ type:
#
(pound sign, no spaces)
And in ‘Replace With’ type:
”
(double quotes, no spaces)
Click ‘Replace All’.
Click ‘Close’.

Save then Close the CSV document. If you did not import all of the CSV (i.e. you had more than 65,536 players) Save as ‘part a’ or ___filename___a.csv and heed the instructions at the bottom. You will need to do the same steps with the second half of the original CSV and you should save as ‘part b’ or ___filename___b.csv

Next, right click on the same CSV document’s icon, select ‘Open with’ and select ‘Notepad’. (If you have trouble here, google how to open something in ‘Notepad’.)

Select all the text (Ctrl A)
Copy (Ctrl C)
Close the notepad document.

Find your XML file with your player notes for the site you are working with.

For Full Tilt users it is ‘yourFTusername.XML’ (where ‘yourFTusername.XML’ is your actual screen name) found in your Full Tilt install directory. The default directory is

C:\Program Files\Full Tilt Poker\’yourFTusername’.XML
or
C:\Program Files (x86)\Full Tilt Poker\’yourFTusername’.XML

For Poker Star users, log into Poker Stars. Go to ‘Help>Open My Settings Folder’. Your notes XML file is called ‘notes.XML’.

BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING ELSE. Copy this XML file and save it someplace safe. I won’t feel responsible for you wiping out all your notes when, I’ve warned you at the beginning of the page that this method will wipe out your notes that are stored in the Full Tilt or Poker Stars clients. Don’t store notes in the poker client software. Store notes in your PT3 database. (PRO TIP: Use NoteCaddy to automatically generate notes.)

Don’t left click and open the file just yet. The default program to open an XML document is Microsoft Explorer and that SUCKS for working with XML. I use the Open Office Word-type program: OpenOffice.org Writer. I right click on the XML file, select ‘Open with’ and select ‘Choose default program…’ If OpenOffice.org Writer is not listed, select browse and find where you have Open Office installed on your hard drive. The default location is:

C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\swriter.exe
or
C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenOffice.org 3\program\swriter.exe

Click ‘Open’.
Make sure ‘Always use the selected program to open this kind of file’ is checked.
Click ‘OK’.

Now you are going to open your XML file and paste your notes from your color coded CSV (that you opened in notepad).

Full Tilt’s XML will look like this:

And Poker Stars’ XML will look like this:

Paste your notes where each image says to paste them.

Save and voila!

NOTE: Make sure the poker client software is closed when working with the XML file, otherwise it won’t work.

If over 65,536 players came up in your report (you wouldn’t be datamining, would you?) you will have to do all the find and replace stuff in the CSV once for the first 65,536 players, and again for the rest. (If you have over 131,072 players Auto-Rated, you’ll have to break it in thirds, and you have a seriously insane database.)

So with over 65,536 players, when I go through the steps above under ‘Here’s How’ I save the first half as (as per my example under ‘Color Coding Reports’) ’2010-10-27a’. Then I open the original CSV again (’2010-10-27′) and when the ‘Text Import’ window pops up, I uncheck ‘Comma’ under ‘Separated by’, delete the double quotation marks (“) from the ‘Text delimiter’ box, and change the ’1′ after ‘From row’ to a ’65538′. (2010-10-27a technically stops at ‘Row 65,537′ since you began on ‘Row 2′.) This imports the second half of the CSV. I then save it as ’2010-10-27b’. Then I copy and paste CSV ‘a’ into the XML and then CSV ‘b’ right after it, as directed in the steps above.

Whew.

Since this is free stuff, I’m not going to dedicate a lot of time to answering questions. I feel like this ‘how-to’ is exhaustive. If you are uncomfortable with where things are on your computer and find and replace and copying and pasting and the like, buy a color coding program and save yourself the stress.

This method works. I use it daily. And when you have all the prerequisites down and are comfortable with your computer set-up, you can color code your entire database every day in under ten minutes. And then you can use color coding to help table select and identify players and hopefully find tables like this one:

5 Fish, 2 Regs, and 1 Unknown… Dream table?

Tags: Color Coding, Exploitation Play, General, hold 'em, HUD, no limit, NoteCaddy, opponent modeling, Poker, poker software, poker tools, Poker Tracker, PT3

4 Comments to Color Code Your Full Tilt & Poker Stars Notes

1. 

   quick question, for pokerstars, in the notes it says update=0000000etc

   it wont work unless theres numbers there, like if you added a note in the lobby, it gives each person a unique number there.

   i even tried just randomly using different numbers there, it didnt work.

   in the pokerstars lobby under player notes i see all my people with the correct color, but no colors show up at the table, because of the update=xxxxx

   any thoughts?

   thanks
mike on December 30th, 2010
2. 

   Thanks for the info. I’ve got no thoughts at the moment and I’m no longer playing on Stars. So it may be a while before I come up with a solution.

   On the upside, the newest version of NoteCaddy seems to have sped up its color-coding process.
blood on January 1st, 2011
3. 

   hi
   i didn’t find a solution to this problem on the internet. I would love to have all losing players color coded (like -3 to -10BB/100, -10BB to -25BB and <-25BB)! I have a mac so i can't use notecaddy
   i would be ready to pay for the solution to this problem
   thank you for your help
   also i would like to take a look to your custom stats and probably by some
gnumf on August 19th, 2011
4. 

   Using Notecaddy or something similar to a method I describe here are the only ways I know to do this.
blood on August 19th, 2011

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