As more online poker operators announced massive turnouts, PokerStars also trumpeted its own gargantuan numbers last week. The Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) remains one of the platform’s most popular events and 2020 proved the biggest yet.
With players around the globe at home during the Coronavirus pandemic, many headed to PokerStars. This year SCOOP awarded more than $185 million, the biggest total prize pool in the history of online poker.
Record prize pool reached after PokerStars adds to series
After early SCOOP success, PokerStars bumped up the schedule with 44 additional events. The company also moved the $85 million guarantee to $135 million.
That proved to be a wise decision and produced more than 2.9 million player entries over 124 events. The schedule actually included three separate tournaments for each event: Low, Medium, and High.
All three Main Events surpassed guarantees. The $109 buy-in Low edition produced 46,238 entries for a $4.6 million prize pool. The winner, “auercan,” took home $371,750.
The $1,050 Medium buy-in Main Event awarded $6.5 million with 6,475 entries. “HayashiJoão” earned a huge $920,066 for first place.
A player named “Alexgirs” won the biggest prize of the entire series in the $10,300 Main Event High. The tournament awarded $6.1 million with 609 entries and the winner secured a nice $920,595.
The United Kingdom topped the country leaderboard with 46 wins. Brazil followed in second with 45 wins.
UK players “raidalot” and “pads1161” secured more than 90 cashes, taking home $519,276 and $258,584 respectively.
PokerStars SCOOP success stories
Beyond those main event wins, several other players produced some nice stories during the series. PokerStars ambassador Lex Veldhuis smashed his own and the Twitch Poker record after reaching 58,543 concurrent viewers during Day 3 of the High Main Event.
At one point, Veldhuis even had the most-watched channel on Twitch, topping 128,000 other streams. Other interesting notes include:
- Rui “RuiNF” Ferreira was crowned Player of the Series. This comes after some massive live scores for this Portuguese player in 2019 on the European Poker Tour.
- Connor “blanconegro” Drinan broke records after winning the most events in a single SCOOP series. The American won five events for a total of more than $550,000 in prize money.
- PokerStars Ambassador Fintan Hand earned the biggest cash of his career. The Twitch streamer from Ireland won a $1,050 Six-Max Turbo Shootout for a $73,652 payday.
Satellite qualifiers scored big in SCOOP
With plenty of satellites throughout SCOOP, there were plenty of nice success stories. Here’s a look at a few of those:
- “neGREENu” produced one of the biggest satellite scores. This player turned $11 into $37,008 after finishing in fourth place in the $109 NLHE Progressive KO event.
- “alexandro156” turned a $1.45 satellite into $21,612 after placing second in a $11 NLHE Progressive KO event.
- “chikitin099” earned $27,009 after qualifying for $5.50 after coming second in a $22 PLO Six-Max.
Another SCOOP may be in the books, but live poker is still not available for many. With so many players around the world still at home there’s a good chance more big series will continue.