Microgaming Poker Network players can change nicknames every 30 days/1,000 real money hands from July

The Microgaming Poker Network (MPN) announced that players will be permitted to change their nicknames every 30 days or after 1,000 real money hands, whichever comes sooner. The room aims to defend recreational players from seating scripts with the move and the update will go live with the July software update.

The leader of the poker section at Microgaming, Alex Scott has announced several important changes in the official MPN blog on June 8. 

"Our next major release, due next month, also introduces Alias Changes – players will be able to change their alias every 1000 real money hands or every 30 days, whichever is sooner, and everyone will get one free change when the feature rolls out. The intention behind this is simple – we want to stop parasitic players from ruthlessly pursuing weaker players. We also want regs to play each other once in a while, and we don’t want players to create a new account with a new poker room just because their alias is unlucky. So we’re making the alias change feature quite prominent and I hope that a lot of players will use it."

In today's game there are very few regulars who don't use some kind of tracking software. In addition to Holdem Manager and PokerTracker some regulars also use forbidden seating scripts, which look for weak players and automatically seat the script users next to them.

Recreational players who don't spend time improving their game and only play poker for fun are going to have a hard time walking away with a positive experience if they are being hunted. Also, there are players who stop playing on an account because they feel embarassed that anyone with an access to tracking sites can see that they lost a lot of money.

Nickname changing will be especially useful for these players, but the effects of seat scripting are also be reduced as regulars have to gather information about their new opponents constantly.