The Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) is an annual online mega tournament hosted by PokerStars, which is a leading poker room. It is modeled after the World Series of Poker (WSOP), which is the biggest land based poker tournament extravaganza. The objective of SCOOP is to give online poker players an experience of a mega poker event. SCOOP 2011 has begun on May 8. It will span 38 events and run till May 22.
There is one major difference between SCOOP and WSOP. Each SCOOP event is actually three independent events with low, medium and high buy-ins. This allows low rollers to participate and also ensures that players are not forced to play at stakes that do not suit them. All events have a guaranteed prize pool that will be shared by the winners in the declared manner. The total prize pool across all 114 events (38 x 3) is $25 million.
As in WSOP, there is a declared Main Event, which is the most prestigious, has the largest prizes and enjoys the greatest participation. At SCOOP 2011 the Main Event is Event #38, which is the last event. The poker variant is Texas Hold’em and the betting structure is No Limit. The combined prize pool for this event is $4.75 million. The low buy-in event gets $750,000, the medium buy-in event gets $1.5 million and the high buy-in event gets $2.5 million. Some of the other notable SCOOP 2011 events are Event #20 No Limit Hold’em and Event #35 No Limit Hold’em Heads Up Match Play. There are events in Omaha, Seven Card Stud, Razz and H.O.R.S.E. as well.
Apart from a major slice of the prize pool the top winner of each SCOOP event will be given a swank Movado gold watch with the PokerStars spade and SCOOP Champion on the face. The winners of every high, medium and low event will receive the watch. PokerStars has also announced a SCOOP Leader Board. Players will receive points based on how they perform in the various SCOOP events. The player who finishes on top of the leader board will receive the Player of the Series trophy, a seat at the main event of WSOP 2011, a prize package to the 2012 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, a seat at the Grand Final of the European Poker Tour and a special edition PokerStars chip set.
Players can enter the SCOOP events by paying the designated buy-ins. However, satellites to SCOOP events are running round the clock at PokerStars. The buy-ins to the satellites are much lower and this is a great way of winning a seat at the SCOOP events. Some of the buy-ins are as low as $0.25.
When the SCOOP 2011 schedule was first announced earlier this year it was with a much larger prize pool base. The sum total of the prize pools was then $45 million. After the seizure of the American domain of PokerStars, it was evident that there would be no participation from American players. Therefore the prize money had to be reduced considerably.