Natalie Teltscher claims she struck lucky on the Pokerstars.com website, insisting she won an online world championship tournament in September last year.

She has taken her case against Victoria Street-based Rational Entertainment Enterprises Ltd to the High Court in Douglas.

But the defendant claims that the plaintiff is not entitled to the winnings as she was disqualified for breaching tournament rules because she did not personally play the game but had an agent play it on her behalf.

The court heard that the plaintiff had a Pokerstars user account known as 'the VOid' which along with 2,997 other user accounts was entered into the World Championship of Online Poker No Limits Hold'em Main Event tournament on September 30.

Ms Teltscher said she agreed with a third party that they should play the entire tournament on her behalf.

After 22 hours the VOid was left as one of only two users left in the tournament. They entered a split prize agreement and VOid won but did not receive the $1.228 million pay-out.

But the defendant claims she never entered or played in the tournament and it was entitled to disqualify both the plaintiff and the person who purported to play under the user name the VOid for breaching tournament rules.

Deemster David Doyle adjourned the case, ruling that the contractual issue had to be determined first before any other issues could be addressed.

In his judgement, he 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.'