At least we know the dates
While the schedule is not yet complete, PokerStars has announced that the Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) will run May 5-29, 2024. The 16th edition of one of the biggest online tournament events of the year will “cover all the bases of tournament poker, with multiple poker variants, tournament formats, and three tiers of buy-ins for every event.
Other than that, there’s not much information yet. It will be massive, of course, as it always is. The 2023 version of SCOOP featured 121 events and therefore, with the three-tier buy-in structure, 363 tournaments. There were 1,277,595 total entries, generating $91,906,701 in total prize money.
The largest tournament was the very first: the “Low” buy-in $2.20 No-Limit Hold’em event with a $125,000 guarantee drew 65,731. On the other end of the spectrum, Event #14: $1,050 No-Limit 5-Card Draw, Six-Max, Progressive Knockout with a $30,000 guarantee had only 33 entries.
Brazil’s Felipe “lipe piv” Boianovsky won the Main Event and the series’ largest first prize of $1,036,199.
In 15 years, there have been 2,917 SCOOP tournaments, 13,573,790 entries, and $1,324,455,144 in total prize money. Brazil is the comfortable leader in SCOOP titles with 370, followed by UK with 296, Canada with 226, and Russia with 205.
Regional SCOOPs are a-go
PokerStars has provided information on some of the regional SCOOP variants, though. Spanish, French, and Portuguese players will enjoy over $10 million in guaranteed prize pools for their SCOOP, held April 7-28. The opening event is a $1 million guaranteed Sunday Million Mystery Bounty with just a €100 (I say “just” as if that’s not still a high buy-in for me, but it’s the lowest-ever Sunday Million buy-in for the region).
The €500,000 guaranteed Main Event on the final day of SCOOP is a mystery bounty tournament, as well. There is at least one mystery bounty event each day of the Southern Europe SCOOP.
In North America, players in Ontario, New Jersey, Michigan, and Pennsylvania will get to take part in the North America SCOOP series, set for April 5-22. There is $7 million guaranteed in this one, though remember that not all of the states/provinces share player pools. Ontario and Pennsylvania are ring-fenced, while New Jersey and Michigan do share tables.
Pennsylvania will have $2.25 million guarantees, Michigan/New Jersey will have $3 million, and Ontario will have CAD$2.3 million (US$1.7 million).
The full schedule for PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker will be published on PokerStars’ website and in the poker client in the near future.
