SCOOP

Poker Stars Spring Championship Of Online Poker

The SCOOP started off life in the spring of 2009 with the vision of offering something completely different and unique to the online poker community.

Each of the many different series tournaments on offer has a buy-in available at three separate levels, thus giving the opportunity to players with varying size bankrolls the chance to take part in and play in special major online event tournaments with huge prize pools.

The way that PokerStars have structured this major annual series allows players to buy directly into an event for as little as $5.50 or as great, at the far end of the scale, as $25,500.

Aside of the huge cash rewards on offer, each tournament winner also receives a premium championship watch to commemorate their win and there are extra major incentives to the overall winner of the series.

SCOOP history and events

That very first series of SCOOP held during April of 2009 featured a total of 22 separate events and had a guaranteed prize pool of $30m. This resulted in a total of 66 separate tournaments spread across 11 days. With the total number of players finally involved the actual total prize pool across all events and the three separate buy-in levels on each reached over $40m.

The lowest of the buy-ins was available in event number 1, this being a $5.50 No Limit Hold'em 6 max re-buy tournament guaranteed at $50k which brought in 27,135 entries and provided a total prize pool of $135,670 paying the eventual winner Eatu100 from Finland $41,562.77 for his first place finish.

The highest of those low level buy-in event tournaments was the $270 No Limit Hold'em Heads up in the 21st event that had a guaranteed prize pool of $100k and saw a total of 1,550 entrants and a final prize pool of $387,500 paying out the winner blakeb0921 from the USA a great $65,875 for first place.

The largest prize pools at each of the three levels and of course the largest first place pay outs were all generated in the two day main event held on the 12th and 13th April. Thaddeus picked up $963,338 for first place in the high entry tournament, with JC Alvarado $502,086 and JannotLapin $151,203 following up with their great wins in the medium and low level buy-in tournaments respectively.

The huge success and popularity of the first series resulted in the second series being brought our way in May of 2010 and along with it came a massive increase of events which rose from 22 up to 38 providing a total of 114 separate tournaments and a guaranteed prize pool from PokerStars of some $45 million. The series ran over 14 days between May 3rd and May 16th and had over 130,000 players take part representing 174 separate countries.

The main event, the climax to any series of poker held on 15th and 16th of May was to see a total of over $11 million paid out across the three tournaments, with first place prize money alone across these three separate tournaments reaching an incredible $1,797,380.50.

Ryan "toetagU" Fair walked away with $1,162,3509 for winning the high entry tournament followed by midjat who picked up $443,137.50 for first place in the medium level and finally, Mr.M.MOney who pocketed $191,892.59 for first place finish in the low level buy-in main event tournament.

In all some $63m was paid out across all 114 tournaments in this incredible series of online poker making it one to remember for many. Among notable names to win championship titles in the series were Jose Barbero, George Danzer and Alexey Makarov, all Team Poker Stars Pro's, but the most notorious from that team has to be George Lind who won the honour of SCOOP player of the series narrowly edging out Francis Cagney.

SCOOP 2011

Pokerstars is the leader of both live and online poker tournaments. Beyond the SCOOP, they also created the WCOOP, the EPT, the APPT and the LAPT.

The third SCOOP series is scheduled for May of 2011 and promises to be bigger and greater still. PokerStars has announced that 38 events will be held resulting in 114 separate tournaments with a guaranteed prize pool of $45 million.

Satellites tournaments into the events started on PokerStars on Monday 14th March 2011 and are available from just $0.25 or 400 FPP'S and will continue to run through into May at the last possible moment for entry into final events.

The series itself will run from May 8th 2011 until May 22nd when we will all see what is sure to be a great climax to the main event and the series itself. See you all there!.

If you sign up at pokerstars, you can participate in the SCOOOP. You do not need to pay the entry fee if you can qualify through a cheap satellite.