PokerStars Releases Schedule for $40,000,000 SCOOP 2014

PokerStars SCOOP

Germany’s George Danzer, last year’s PokerStars SCOOP Leader Board High winner. (Image: PokerStars.com / Neil Stoddart)

With apologies to American poker players, who can’t join in the fun, PokerStars has released the full schedule for the 2014 Spring Championship of Online Poker, and promises it’ll be the richest online poker series in history, with a mind-boggling $40,000,000 in guaranteed prizes spread over 135 tournaments.

Running from May 14th to 18th, SCOOP 2014 is boasting 13 tournaments with $1 million-plus guarantees and 90 tournaments with $100k-plus guarantees. SCOOP has been breaking records each year since its 2009 inception – last year the championship paid out $75, 585,435.05 in prize money, and, with three extra events this year, 2014 will very likely exceed that.

So what’s new? Well, for the first time there will be three events on each day of the series. As usual, there will be a smorgasbord of variations and formats to choose from – 18 different games in 15 different formats, to be exact – with the addition of re-entry tournaments and Progressive Super-Knockouts for the 2014 championships.

From Standard to Exotic

Players can choose to play all kinds of games, ranging from the standard to the exotic, with Badugi, 5-Card Omaha Hi/Lo, Single Draw 2-7, 5-Card Draw all on the menu. And of course, SCOOP, as always, is structured to allow players of all pockets to take part with its unique three tiers of buy-in levels (low, medium and high), which means tournament buy-ins range from $5.50 to $21,000, essentially transforming 35 events into 135 tournaments.

The highlight of the championship, of course, is the Main Event, on May 18 at 14:30 ET. The buy-in structure will be $109, $1,050 and $10,300, with guarantees of $1m, $2m and $3m, respectively. There will also be a $21,000 High Roller Heads-Up tournament on May 17th that promises to attract some of the world’s top players.

Four Leader Boards

SCOOP’S structure throws up three Player of the Year leader boards, in the low, medium and high categories, as well as the overall best player. The first three winners will receive a trophy and 2015 PCA package, with the overall winner getting a Trophy and an EPT Grand Final 2015 package. There will also be special prizes for the first 250 places on the Low Leader Board, the first 50 in the Medium, and the first ten in the High.

Last year’s SCOOP Leader Board High winner was George Danzer, who said: “SCOOP is such a great series because the three-tier buy-in championship gives players of all levels the chance to take part in such a prestigious series. This year I’ll be aiming to go one better and finish top of the Overall Leader Board and add to my collection of three SCOOP bracelets.”

Online satellites are running at PokerStars.com with buy-ins starting at just $1. Come back soon, America, we miss you!

Written by
Philip Conneller
As part of the team that launched Bluff Magazine back in 2004, and then as Editor of Bluff Europe, Philip Conneller has (probably) written thousands of articles about poker and has travelled the globe interviewing the greatest players in the world, not to mention some of the sexiest celebrities known to man in some of the world’s sexiest destinations. The highlight of his career, however, was asking Phil Ivey (as a joke) how to play jacks, and emerging none-the-wiser. Philip once won $20,000 with 7-2 offsuit. He has been told off for unwittingly playing Elton John’s piano on two separate occasions, on different sides of the Atlantic Ocean. He became a writer because he is a lousy pianist. He lives in London where he spends his time agonizing about Arsenal football club, yet in Wenger he trusts.

Comments

BluffMeAllIn wrote...

Runs May 4th to 18th, looks like a typo on the may 14th start.

Looking forward to some of these events that fall on the weekends.

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