Let’s cash those points

I cashed in my Full Tilt points yesterday for a bunch of useless merchandise. I didn't have enough points to get anything worthwhile, and couldn't see me earning enough in the future to make it worthwhile saving them. I got myself a Poker book, JVC headphones, Poker Set, and a beach towel. It got me thinking that I've built up a ton of loyalty points at various sites over the last couple of years. The plan was to save them up, but I think I might spend the weekend going round the various sites cashing in my points for worthless merchandise, should be a bit of fun.

Had another good day on Pokerstars. As I've mentioned before the NL50 Pokerstars games after 1am EST are some of the softest around. Often after a day of work I'm a bit tired to concentrate on playing my A game at NL100. The Pokerstars NL50 games are perfect for these times. If you are Australian the soft time is between about 3pm and 7pm before all the games die off.

Today's Topic: Online payment processors

If you plan on playing a decent amount of poker and want to clear bonuses on various poker sites then it is essential to setup an online ewallet. An ewallet is sort of like an online bank account where you cash money to and from each poker site. The advantage of the ewallet is that payments between the poker sites and your ewallet happen relatively quickly so it makes moving money to various poker sites quite simple. The three main ewallet options are Neteller, Epassporte, and Click 2 pay.

• Neteller:
  

  Neteller is the granddad of online poker ewallets. At one stage they pretty much dominated the poker scene. Because of this the US government took exception to them during their online gambling crackdown and has done their best to cripple neteller. To their credit Neteller has done their best during this difficult period, and now might be making a comeback. Neteller is a listed company on the London AIM exchange (they have just been relisted), which help ensures their integrity.
  

  • Pros: Are accept by most online poker sites, Reasonably secure, able to link to a Neteller Mastercard (for easy withdrawals at any ATM around the world) , good customer service
    
  • Cons: Processing fees are not cheap, Neteller could find it harder to survive now they do not accept American, or Canadian customers.
    
• Epassporte:
  

  Epassporte is a lesser known ewallet. They offer a similar service to Neteller, but are accepted by less poker sites. They have high fees for getting money into your account, but low fees for poker site transfers and withdrawals. So if you are a winning player and don't need to keep loading new money on to your Epassporte account, then they are by far the cheapest ewallet.
  

  • Pros: Cheapest ewallet once funds are in your account, linked to an Epassport visa card (for easy withdrawals at any ATM around the world), can link to a US bank account for fund transfers.
    
  • Cons: Not
    able to be used at a lot of poker sites, average customer service, high fees for initial deposit, low transfer limits.
    
• Click2Pay:
  

  Click2pay is a German ewallet which offers a fairly similar service to the above two.
  

  • Pros: Easy account setup, accepted by most poker sites, good customer service.
    
  • Cons: The most expensive fees of the three, average web site account management features.
    

My recommendation is to get both an Epassporte and Neteller account. If you only want or need one account then stick with neteller as it is accepted by nearly every poker site. If you are a winning poker player (Don't have to reload often) and mainly play on Pokerstars, and Full Tilt, then I think that Epassporte is the best option. Also I would recommend to keep only as much money as you need to with any ewallet. While I feel the 3 ewallets above are all reasonable secure, they will never be anywhere near as safe and secure as your bank account.

Today's Link:

I can't find any interesting links today, so today's link is www.aussiepokeronline.blogspot.com. Yes here. If you have any questions or queries about anything to do with online poker, place it in the comments field below and I'll do my best to answer it.

Have a good weekend everybody and remember you can lead a horse to water, but only a donkey will follow you to the river.