PartyPoker Becomes Latest Operator to Ban Seating Scripts

PartyPoker is banning the use seating scripts and anonymizing player hand histories in a effort to make their products more appealing to mainstream players. The company is just the latest online poker operator to embrace these changes in their ecosystem, most likely, won’t be the last.
The new policies are set to go into effect on October 5 and are part of an ongoing, Power to the People campaign the company launched last year.
As part of that campaign, PartyPoker has made it much more difficult for professional poker players to take advantage of weaker players by randomly assigning seats and holding off on revealing player names until play has actually started.The company also stopped allowing players to download their opponents’ hand histories, a much which proved to be controversial.
PartyPoker is now tweaking the strategy by allowing players to download hand histories, but will not be revealing the names of the players who actually played those hands. That’s a big reversal from their original policy but it’s one that, according to the company’s official blog, that’s based on extensive player feedback.
Despite the other changes to its policies, PartyPoker players will retain access to their own hand histories.
PartyPoker, and every other online poker company on the planet, is being forced to walk a fine line between pleasing the volume players who account for a huge share of its business, while maintaining an atmosphere that’s enjoyable for casual players.
Maintaining this balance isn’t easy but most companies seem to agree that banning seating scripts, HUDs, and other tools that give advantage players their advantages is the best place to start.