This year NHUPC players gathered together at the Pure nightclub – Caesars Palace, and what seems to be of great interest to Bluff Magazine is the fact that Raymers’ sponsorship was a once-off, specific for this event. Apparently Raymer has to prove himself in solid play before the site will consider full-time sponsorship contract. In the first round he played against Mike Matusow and in the second round this was Phil Gordon. 64 of the poker elite were lined-up to battle it out for the title.

Raymer was the second player after Chris Moneymaker, to win a World Series of Poker Main Event after having played and qualified online. His bracelet was won in 2004.

This is the first event in the history of the championship a that winner did not defend their title. Last years’ winner was Annie Duke, and brother Howard Lederer were both conspicuous by their absence. Sadly both were away, at the bed-side of their mother who had suffered a near-fatal stroke according to Tweets from Mike Matusow.

After some fast and intense action in the field the grand title winner in an epic heads-up poker battle between Chris Moneymaker and Erik Seidel; Seidel came up the winner again. We don’t know what happened to Raymer. Erik Seidel on the other hand has won more live tournament money since the beginning of 2011, than any other poker pro. He took away another grand prize of $750 000 – not bad for a days work; but small potatoes for this professional poker player.

Chris Moneymaker says he tried every trick in the book, he was however also short-stacked, and in the end Seidels’ superior skill won the day – but he is having a very good run. Moneymaker won $300,000 for his runner up finish and called Seidel a “true champion”!

As far as Raymer is concerned, he was also selling shares of himself for the NHUPC (have you seen him – there is plenty to share?) at ChipMeUP, a popular online staking site. The partial stakes cost $3 each and 4 000 shares were available. “Tony G” Guoga, purchased 2,000 of the shares which cost him $6000! Raymer reserved 60% of his winnings from the NHUPC for himself and 40% for the ChipMeUp shares; however 40% of nothing is still zero!

He stepped up to the plate to take on this 20 year old Swedish player who seems to quite naturally fit into the description of “poker phenom”. Blom already had two out of three wins under his belt as Isaac “philivey2694″ Haxton met with him first and beat Blom to the finish. Next in line was big mouthed Antanas “Tony G” Guoga, who has been dying to play against Blom; Blom cleaned him up and evened the Showdown score to 1-1. Daniel “w00ki3z” Cates was the next challenger, Blom won once again and now the score was 2-1. This weekend true to form Blom took the prize and the current score in the PokerStars SuperStar Showdown is 3 – 1 for Viktor “Isildur1” Blom.

The PokerStars SuperStar Showdown is similar in a way to the “durrr” challenge however it is a once-off high-stakes event to match challengers specifically against Blom in a face-off. The heads-up match features 2,500 hands played across four tables of no-limit hold’em and/or pot-limit Omaha at $50/$100 or higher; the competitor decides their preference. The winner is declared by the poker player with the most profit at the end of the match. Otherwise he may also felt his opponent in the process. Blom and Katchalov played 4 heads-up tables of no-limit hold’em.

These events are advertised in advance so that fans can logon and watch the action taking place from the online rail so to speak, and they are a well attended series. Judging by Blom’s notoriety, he may well just pay off for the PokerStars sponsorship. What was really strange about his sign-up with Poker Stars was that he was in fact a notorious Full Tilt Poker player.

Although the action got off to a slow start, I am not going to give you a blow-by-blow rundown of the action that did take place. You can find this online at any good poker news site. Let us suffice it to say that after back and forth play – Blom had his timing down well and by the time that the 2 500 hands ran out, even Daniel Negreanu who was on the rail commented ” So this Isildur1 kid might be pretty good afterall ” Blom took his biggest score in these events to date – $111,750 from Katchalov, and admitted in the chat box that luck had favoured him. Now all we have to do is wait for another date and another challenger – word at the tables is; Daniel Negreanu has now expressed interest!

Customer service is so important that it can be responsible for the entire failure of a site and any online casino you play with should offer a telephone number for both local and international callers. Look out for this, if the site does not offer telephone contact details, it is out opinion that they are not worth the trouble of joining as a member.

They need to provide FAQ’s or frequently asked questions, but another failing is only providing FAQ’s and no other way to have questions answered. FAQ’s are supposed to be a list of questions and answers most frequently asked by customers, but we have looked at these at many sites when we have had a query and nine times out of ten, they don’t answer our query, so it is also vitally important to be able to contact the site and receive a fast response.

While some people advocate that your first port of call should be the FAQ’s page with a query, we disagree and before you even register as a member of a site, contact them to test their response time. If they want your custom, they will respond in good time and give you an idea of who you are dealing with. There is nothing worse than asking a question and not receiving an answer.

One thing that any customer of an online casino must realize is that they are a vitally important part of the site, and there would be no site without them. This means that any question they ask is important enough to warrant a fast reply. By and large our experiences with good sites, means good customer service and the best sites offer this in more than one language. The more languages they offer, the more assured you will be of prompt and good service.

If you are unsure where or how to contact a site; more often than not the contact details will be on the home page. If this is not there it may appear under a “Contact Us” tab or on the “About us” page. If the casino has no easily identifiable point of contact, it would be completely irresponsible to hand any of your hard earned money over to them, no matter how reliable they say they are. Because who are you going to speak to when the chips are down?