$100 million in guarantees
Might as well make it a PokerStars new trifecta today. The Stars three-hit combo, if you will. On Tuesday, the world’s largest poker room announces the schedule for one of the world’s largest online poker festivals, the 2021 PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP).
This year’s SCOOP will run April 4 to April 28 and will feature 102 three-buy-in-tiered events. All told, there will be $100 million in guaranteed prize pools, bringing the total prize pools across the history of SCOOP tournaments to over $1 billion.
Last year’s SCOOP was by far the largest of all time, with 124 events tri-tiered events, for 372 total tournaments and over $185 million in prize pools. For comparison, the next-largest was in 2019, with 73 events, 219 tournaments, and $105 million in prize pools.
If there are a bunch of Main Events, are they really “Main” Events?
As mentioned, each event consists of three different tournaments, each at different buy-in levels (low, medium, high). While lots of the buy-ins are quite pricey, some go as low as just a couple bucks.
The biggest day on the schedule is April 25, when six Main Events get started with over $15 million in guarantees:
- $5 million Guaranteed – $10,300 No-Limit Hold’em (8-Max) Main Event High
- $5 million Guaranteed – $1,050 No-Limit Hold’em (8-Max) Main Event Medium
- $3 million Guaranteed – $109 No-Limit Hold’em (8-Max) Main Event Low
- $1.25 million Guaranteed – $10,300 Pot-Limit Omaha (6-Max) Main Event Large
- $750,000 Guaranteed – $1,050 Pot-Limit Omaha (6-Max) Main Event Medium
- $350,000 Guaranteed – $109 Pot-Limit Omaha (6-Max) Main Event Low
Lots of tickets to win
As always, there will be a number of promotions running during the 2021 SCOOP. First and foremost are the SCOOP leader boards, which will award $100,000 in cash prizes. Naturally, the leader boards are sectioned off by low, medium, and high buy-in. There is also the Player of the Series leader board. The winners of each will receive trophies in addition to their cash prizes.
Then there is the SCOOP ticket machine starting March 28. Anyone who enters a SCOOP event will have a chance to win SCOOP tickets in a random draw. A total of $1.5 million in tickets will be awarded.
The SCOOP Fast Track is a “steps” tournament progression. Players can enter at any step, but those who want to qualify for the $5 million Main Event-High for crazy cheap can start at the lowest step for $1. Do well enough there and move up to the next step. So on and so forth until Step 4, which awards the SCOOP tickets.
And, of course, as one would expect, PokerStars is running special $4 and $22 SCOOP Spin & Go’s for SCOOP tickets.
“We’ve ensured that players of all levels have a way in to this well-loved series and have added lots of extra value and more ways to win,” said Severin Rasset, managing director & commercial officer, poker, product and innovation for PokerStars. “And to give players a break from a busy online series schedule and for those competing in the SCOOP Player of the Series race, we will not run official SCOOP events on Fridays. Come along for the ride, have fun and play responsibly.”
