Dr Eckener is correct.
Lots of people get very stressed about the gate, and forget what they are actually trying to achieve. The aim of the gate, as well as just about everything else you do in the hold, is to get established on the inbound track. The gate is just a starting point to help you achieve this. Techniques like varying the gate (by up to single drift) are used by many people. My opinion, though, is that they just make things over-complicated.
The first time around the hold, if you were to completely ignore the gate and just see what happens on the inbound turn, you would soon find out if your outbound heading (triple-drift or double-drift or whatever) was working. If it is, then leave everything as it is. If it's not, then adjust the outbound heading next time around the hold. That alone, in the real world, would be enough to be able to fly holds which are perfectly good enough.
There is a lot of extra information which can help you with situational awareness throughout the hold, and the gate is the most important of these. But, as you say, it can vary depending on the wind, and all we know about the wind before we've flown the hold a few times is what the forecasters have told us, which quite possibly isn't all that accurate. So, whilst it is important (to IR examiners, at least) to monitor the gate, and turn in or out if you are clearly not achieving the gate, bear in mind that if it is one or two degrees out, it really doesn't matter - so long as the inbound turn is working.
What I see a lot of students doing is working very hard to achieve the gate, then turning inbound and finding that they are too close or too far out. Next time around the hold, they work very hard again the achieve exactly the same gate, and, surprise surprise, are too close or too far out. This is what I mean about "getting stressed about the gate" - it is only a tool to help you achieve the inbound track when you haven't quite figured out the exact outbound heading. If you know that the heading you used last time left you too far out, then turn in next time, and if you've got the capacity then look for a slightly different gate too.
As for DME, that depends on so many different factors that it's rarely very useful. The only thing it might be useful for is a gross-error check. Know roughly what the DME should say as you turn inbound (this will depend on the speed of your aircraft). Then, if you get your headwind/tailwind calculations the wrong way round, for example, you'll soon realise that the DME looks very wrong. But if it's 0.2d out from what you'd expect don't worry about it, because that kind of variation is quite normal.
Hope that helps,
FFF
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