PokerStars registered in the Isle of Man was facing a claim of $1.3 million (£600,000).

The claimant was Natalie Teltscher who plays under the online alias of ‘theVOid’. Natalie had filed a suit in the High Court of the Isle of Man claiming that PokerStars was trying to defraud her of her rightful prize of 1.3 million dollars.

Natalie was the winner of World Championship of Online Poker’s No Limits Texas Hold’em Main Event tournament held almost a year ago in September 2007. Almost 3,000 players took part in the event that lasted over 22 hours. pokerstars refused to shell out the prize money to Natalie. They claimed that Natalie had used a stand-in during the whole time. This was cheating and in breach of the competition rules and disqualified her from receiving the prize money.

After a preliminary hearing the High Court Deemster David Doyle had given an interim adjournment to allow contractual issues to be addressed. He had said, “This, on the face of it, is or should be a fairly simple case. Either the plaintiff is contractually entitled to the monies or she is not. Either the defendant was entitled to disqualify the plaintiff or it was not.”

PokerStars had produced a bundle of evidence in court. After seeing the evidence stacked against her Natalie got cold feet. She admitted that she was not the player on the account and that she had used an agent to play for her. Natalie has dropped the case against PokerStars and even agreed to pay their legal costs. However she has not revealed the identity of the agent.

Natalie is the sister of poker professional Mark Teltscher, who is an English poker professional. The highlight of Mark’s career was the first place in the London leg of the 2005 European Poker Tour. He also has a win in the Five Diamond World Poker Classic in Las Vegas. He has been placed second an EPT tournament in August 2007 and in the Aussie Millions in January 2008. His total live tournament winnings exceed $2.6 million to date.

It has been alleged that Mark is the stand-in who operated his sister’s online account ‘theVOid’. Natalie has never had a single tournament cash before this event and this has also fuelled the fire of the cheating charges. Mark was also using his own online account “Play2Kill” in the tournament but was busted early. There are rumors that Mark was using other accounts as well.

The first prize of $1,378,330.50 has since been given to the first runner-up, who goes under the screen name “ka$ino”. The prizes of the other winners have also been upgraded accordingly. PokerStars has issued a statement that Natalie Teltscher’s withdrawal of the case has completely vindicated their decision to disqualify her from the tournament and their decision to defend their claim in court. They also added that they owed it to their other members to maintain the integrity of the poker room.