A bona fide moss beard in the online-poker industry, Paradise Poker has a decided edge in terms of experience and branding. The site is available in 21 languages and boasts efficient and helpful 24-7 customer support. As such, making a case for Paradise is a little like arguing for Budweiser over Milwaukee’s "Beast": You do something long enough, you're bound to do it better than your average competitor.

Despite the fact that the ball is more or less in its court, however, Paradise hasn't been content to rest on its laurels. It’s expanded its base of staunch supporters by opening its virtual doors to the International Poker Network’s global community and loaded each new player’s schwag bag down with all the usual Paradise goodies – things like chat-room access, great in-game options and card-trick tutorials.

With regard to games, Paradise hasn't taken its foot off the gas, offering a smorgasbord of standard variants – including Texas Holdem, Omaha, Omaha Hi/Lo and Seven-Card Stud – plus several rarer games like Five-Card Stud and Five-Card Draw.

All these perks seem to have paid off, garnering Paradise approximately 3,000 ring-game players and 13,000 tournament players during peak hours. Many of these folks are actually sports bettors who have migrated to poker from the room’s new network partners, and so they tend to look at betting a little differently than your dyed-in-the-wool pokie. To them, every hand is like a long-shot horse or team, and they inevitably bleed money betting on bad cards.

In terms of special offers, Paradise ponies up only average promotional goodies. Its welcome and sign-up bonuses are generally comparable to its competitors', and its theme and software aren't exactly cutting-edge.Still, you would almost expect such foibles from a staid industry presence like Paradise, which has instead looked to rewarding its most devoted customers.

It does, however, have a unique loyalty program that allows players to acquire points in Paradise tournaments and ring games and use them later as tournament buy-ins or trade-ins for cash. The site's freerolls, meanwhile, are generally infrequent, but its consistently large cash prizes make them well worth the wait.

For all these reasons, we're giving Paradise a healthy 8.9 on our in-house excellence rictor. Like an old favorite record, it might lose a little playtime to newer, flashier products, but in the end, it's one of the few we'll always come back to.