By Joe Ewens
There’s nothing quite like the World Championship of Online Poker. Or at least there wasn’t; until some bright spark at PokerStars devised the SCOOP. The Spring Championship of Online Poker debuted in April 2009 as an annual younger brother to the more established WCOOP. Just like its sibling, it presents a series of poker tournaments across a wide range of disciplines and styles with unparalleled guarantees and well crafted structures.
The SCOOP has also provided a platform for innovation. High profile tournament festivals are usually designed to cater to the cream of the crop. The likes of the WSOP, FTOPS, and even the WCOOP are prestigious tournaments with buy-ins that ensure only the best will be able to compete. These top-level price points undeniably add an air of respectability, but leave the average player watching from the sidelines. With the SCOOP, PokerStars devised a three tier system that retains the top class events, while creating duplicates to cater for every level of player. Each SCOOP event has a High, Medium, and Low stakes variety, so that while the top pros battle it out for the big money, the low stakes grinders can still build their own massive prize pools.
2009
The inaugural SCOOP event got off to a rip roaring start. With the weight of PokerStars and the WCOOP behind it, players of all levels flocked to participate. The lower buy-in events were a particular success. Those who had previously only followed proceedings from afar were now competing to craft their own piece of online poker history. This first festival guaranteed $30,000,000 in prize money, although the total prize pool ended up exceeding $40,000,000. There were 22 events, each with 3 versions - meaning that 66 tournaments were completed over an 11-day schedule.
There were a number of exceptional performances in this first year of the SCOOP. thehoffa managed the impressive feat of winning two tournaments, but was summarily outdone by Terrence “Unassigned” Chan. The Canadian pro managed the incredible feat of winning both the Medium and High stakes version of Event #20 (6-max Limit Hold ‘em tournaments). The overall best player of the series was getcrunk, who picked up a trophy, a WCOOP main event seat, a 2010 PCA prize package, a seat at the 2010 EPT Monte Carlo, and a PokerStars chip set.
Any good tournament organizer knows that to conclude your series with a bang you need a top notch Main Event. The SCOOP ME did not disappoint, with more than 22,000 players competing in the tripartite tournament. As was the case with the rest of the series, most of the players were in the Low Stakes event. JannotLapin topped 18,476 other players to win the $151,203.71 first prize. Team PokerStars Pro member JC Alvarado put his skills to good use in winning the $502,086 Medium Stakes award. Top honors, however, belong to Jude “j.thaddeus” Ainsworth. The Irishman captured the $963,338 first place prize for his victory in the 2009 SCOOP High Stakes Main Event.
2009 Tournaments and Winners
SCOOP is sure to be a huge hit with the tournament players around the world, so there's little doubt this will be a huge annual event for PokerStars. Lucky for you the news crew at FTR is here to bring you all the action. You can follow along with the current series or catch up on past series by following the links below:
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